


Brockton's Celestial Forge

by Lord Roustabout (Lord_Roustabout)



Category: Jumpchain, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 50
Words: 707,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23949661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lord_Roustabout/pseuds/Lord%20Roustabout
Summary: The Celestial Forge is the greatest combination of crafting powers in Jumpchain, meaning it is the greatest combination of crafting abilities in all of fiction. In Brockton Bay a forgotten side character's trigger event ends with him linked to the Celestial Forge rather than his intended shard. His slowly expanding collection of tinker abilities and the influence of his new benefactor pulls him into the heart of the conflict about to rock the city and decide the fate of the world.As part of a writing experiment that turned into a narrative. Perks and items form the Celestial Forge (pastebin.com/35AJD9Lj) are selected randomly based on progress through the story. Ultimately an excuse to explore the technology and crafting abilities of multiple sources of fiction.
Comments: 2984
Kudos: 1107





	1. 1 Introduction

It was hard enough being a college dropout in a city with a half dead economy. In Brockton most people were either ignoring the reality of the situation or had given up hope completely. Realistically the only growth industry was cape work, and if you weren’t a cape that meant tourism, the PRT, or henchmaning for the truly desperate. Most of the city would have given their right arm for superpowers. Too bad they don’t understand what you have to go through in order to trigger, or how the powers you get don’t exactly match up with what you dreamed about.

If I thought the current level of what my power was capable of was all I would ever get I would probably be pretty frustrated. Back when I was in college everyone dreamed about being a tinker. When you were in an engineering program in the same city as Armsmaster it was really inevitable. When I finally got powers they didn’t exactly match what you’d expect from a tinker. Then again, from what I’d learned most tinkers didn’t exactly function on the level of what you’d expect from a tinker.

See, technically I had only made one thing so far. It was a doozy, but still not exactly the stuff heroes are made of. I might have been able to leverage it into some obscure application, especially the secondary effects, but it would have been a challenge. Still, it’s not as bad as it could have been. Or would have been.

I’d had my mighty pseudo-tinker powers for all of a week and had not accomplished much in that time. Mostly I’d been focusing on sorting out the mess of my life that had resulted in my trigger event. I wouldn’t exactly say bridges were burned, but there were some close relations that it would be awkward to deal with for a while. Triggers don’t really fix anything. Well, they might if it’s one of the ones that turns you super strong to deal with being crushed by a car, but for anything that has a longer buildup there’s no amount of power that is actually going to fix the problems with either you or your life that led to that situation. Accepting that at least let me start to move on.

I was riding the bus home after a grueling week of work. They say there are no jobs in Brockton Bay. That’s not exactly true. There are plenty of jobs as long as you’re relatively young, clean, willing to put up with abuse from the general public, and don’t need to support anyone else or have any serious obligations beyond basic survival. Which is how I was able to land a job as a part time retail worker in the rich side of the city. In a store where everyone other than the manager was part time, since that let you avoid all those pesky benefits that would have to be paid.

It was how I was able to afford a truly terrible apartment in not quite the worst area of the docks. I was currently living in the part of the city they had warned us against when I first moved out of dorms. It at least got me away from Captain’s Hill and thanks to my power was just bearable. The apartment was about a five minute walk from the nearest bus stop, which it this neighborhood was a somewhat harrowing experience. The apartment was part of an oversized house that had been divided into five units, which placed mine as a long thin studio apartment. My theory was it had been assembled out of left over space. The fact that it had to be accessed from what must have been a converted fire escape only did more to convinced me. It was clearly a case of ‘we have this extra space. Can we get someone to pay for it?’.

I know there were much worse places. I’d looked at what they offered in my price range Downtown and this was totally worth the half hour bus commute. Plus, thanks to my power, it had one advantage.

Once I got home I dumped my jacket and headed for the closet. This would probably wear thin eventually, but for now, after just a week of having my power it was still a blast. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my key.

It was the first thing I built, if I could count as the person who built it. There were two kinds of things I could make with my powers. Things made out of normal material, and things like this. I couldn’t recreate the key if my life depended on it, but that doesn’t matter because it will always exist. I’ve essentially made it a universal constant that I will always have this key. Destroyed, lost, or just separated and it will turn up in a few minutes. That effect, and what it could accomplish was enough that if I didn’t know the full scope of my powers I probably would have assumed the key and what it could do was everything. Then it would be off to the PRT to let them try to figure out how to brand me as a door based superhero.

I slid the key into the closet door and turned it. Rather than open into a small and musty collection of shirts and winter coats the door revealed a blank white cube of a room exactly five meters on each side. Safe and mobile access to an extradimensional space wasn’t a terrible power and could probably have any number of applications. I mean, if I wanted to go villain it would have let me clean out entire stores without anything weighing me down. I was putting it to a much more mundane application.

Right now the cube contained a duffle bag, mattress, work desk, small bookcase, two storage trunks, and an old office chair. There was also a battery lantern on the desk since the lighting level in this area left something to be desired. At least it was dark enough that it was possible to sleep here, and the place had less temperature and odor issues than my own apartment.

I wasn’t here just to get away from my living conditions. Aside from the entry way there was a single door on the left side of the cube. Before I headed that way I set up the crude door bar I had built earlier. One downside was I couldn’t close the door while I was inside. That was probably a safety measure since I didn’t know what would happen if the door I used was opened when I tried to get out, or worse destroyed. I had no intention of getting stuck in here forever, but I wasn’t going to let anyone wander in behind me. Between my locked, bolted and chained apartment door and the chunk of steel wedging this door shut as far as I could get it I was reasonably secure. It wouldn’t stop most of the capes in this city, but I was thankfully off their radar by virtue of not doing anything superhero related.

I walked through the inner door into my workshop. It wasn’t exactly what you would expect when you heard the words ‘tinker’ and ‘workshop’. The place wasn’t bedecked with the blistering technology of a science hero. It wasn’t even a top quality manufacturing facility. This was more of what you would get from a high school metal shop. There were tools and machinery, but it was fairly basic stuff. Not even a proper numeric control lathe. I was lucky I had a manufacturing component in my college courses otherwise I’d be completely lost here. My high school had phased out shop class long ago so it was only thanks to a single college class offered more as a formality that I knew what I was doing.

Fortunately the place was stocked with materials and safety equipment. Unless I wanted to work with exotic alloys or bring in high tech equipment the whole place was designed so I wouldn’t have to go out for anything. That was a very good thing. I don’t know if it was true, but there were rumors about people who triggered as tinkers started buying random stuff like loads of silly putty, old microwaves, or cleaning chemicals only to get exposed by various agencies or gangs on the lookout for behavior like that. I had my doubts, since that seemed like it would generate loads of false positives, but who knew how good the thinkers working for people like that were.

I didn’t want to end up exposed, especially not with my powers at their current level. So the fact that I had a private, personal, and well stocked workshop was a blessing. It was just too bad I couldn’t build anything worth a damn.

What I had produced in my after work hours over the last week was nothing more than curiosities. Honestly it had been more about trying to get used to working with this kind of equipment again. The closest thing I’d made to a useful tool was that door jam, and that was just a matter of measuring correctly and working the right tools. I had rough tinker facilities, but I didn’t have any tinker knowledge.

That is, I didn’t have any yet.

I closed my eyes and felt out the potential extent of my power. Over three hundred flares of lightning burned in my mind, all but one completely beyond my reach. The only mote I could touch was the single piece representing my workshop. The embers were arranged into twelve general constellations each along a different theme, but I could barely glean what it was at the moment. These were what I was working towards. These were the reason I hadn’t given up and sulked off to the Protectorate. These were tinker powers.

Every one of them represented some level of crafting ability, power, knowledge or resource. I could just barely feel them now, but I knew how strong they were. Even the weakest among them was significant and the highest tiers were world shaking. These were hero powers. More than that these were Hero powers, powers on the level of the first, legendary, and unlimited tinker. Powers that would let a person be the kind of technology superhero that used to appear in comic books, not the stripped down nonsense that was currently running around.

There but for the grace of god and all that.

My reach had been slowly building in the week since I got my powers. It was gradual at first, but had accelerated recently. Soon I would have a chance to link to another one of the points of light. The constellations shifted and changed so I had no idea what I would be able to reach, or even if what I had built up would be strong enough for whatever spark swung close at the time. This was the first time this had happened, but being able to feel it coming was incredible. I was lucky to have the level of understanding of my power that I’d been blessed with.

Like pretty much everyone in school I’d taken electives on parahuman studies. There were rumors that the cape population of the city took those courses in their secret identities, and the younger members of New Wave showed up occasionally. They were the cool courses that everyone was interested in. Get a chance to learn about the history of capes, cape impact on society, and theories on how powers worked. With the insight I’d gained since triggering I could say most of what they were teaching was pure crap. That may have been intentional since people trying to self-invoke a trigger event was a nightmare in terms of self-inflicted harm. Some of the other stuff was so far off the mark that I had to wonder if there was an intentional attempt to conceal it. Passenger theory had barely been touched on, and that was mostly to dismiss it. I kind of understood, it seemed ridiculous, and it was a lot more likely that anyone who thought their powers came from an outside intelligence was crazy rather than uniquely insightful.

I was definitely in the latter category. I could feel my passenger’s excitement as my reach grew for the final grasp. A mote swung close from one of the mid-sized constellations. My power tried to grasp it, but the energy was too much. The flare of energy spun away and out of reach. There was mild disappointment from my passenger, but not despair. My reach was growing. Another mote would come, and I would be able to handle a stronger power by the time it arrived.

The emotional reassurance of my passenger was probably the most comforting thing in my life. My connection with him didn’t go any further than what he was feeling, but that was still incredibly enlightening. I trusted that he had my best interest at heart, or at least my survival. The reason I trusted that was because of how badly he wanted this set of powers complete.

I didn’t have much information from my passenger, but I did understand my power. Generally people have a roughly instinctive understanding of how their powers work. Mine were a little more in depth than that. I understood the nature of how powers were gained and what they meant. I knew the name of the power I had, Metalwork Workshop which was from the Toolkits constellation of powers. And I knew the name of the entire array of powers and how badly my passenger wanted it to be complete.

My power, or the array of my potential powers, was the Celestial Forge. From what I could tell it was the ultimate tinker power and my passenger’s combined Holy Grail and Mount Everest. His emotions when considering the breath of the powers were complicated, but mostly centered on a longing to see them in action. He wanted this to be completed and was heavily invested in me being the one to finish it. All his guidance and support was for the purpose of turning me into the greatest tinker that had ever existed. I just hoped I could live up to those expectations.

I wasn’t likely to see any new powers tonight. I’d completed a circuit of the various pieces of borderline scrap metal that represented my crafting projects from the previous week. A persistent infinitely restocking workshop really was incredible, but without the skills to make better use of it all I had was a hobby room. I checked my watch. It was getting on past six. I had kind of blocked out this evening for dealing with any new ability I got from my power, but that was a wash. That left me some time to prepare for the other aspects of being a superhero.

There’s a common impression that tinkers make something of a soft target in cape fights. That might be true for anyone who doesn’t show up with power armor or a personal force field, but the fact is most capes out there have no physical boosts at all. Brutes are common enough, but outside of that category everyone is as vulnerable as a normal human. The problem for tinkers is that they have time commitments that keep them from being able to train to the level expected from capes.

See, if you don’t have some power that makes training unnecessary the amount of physical conditioning necessary to just survive a cape encounter is insane. Fortunately I had already been running regularly before getting my powers. That was great for endurance, but there was the whole issue of muscle growth and combat skills to think of. I was lucky enough that my neighborhood had a solution to both of those problems.

I left my workshop and closed the door to the extradimensional space. The transition from pristine room to dingy apartment was stark, but at least my apartment got slightly more livable now that I didn’t need to allocate space for sleeping or storage. I headed to the small kitchenette area and grabbed a high protein snack before gathering my workout gear and leaving the apartment.

Another load off my mind thanks to my powers, not storing anything of value in the apartment made me a lot less concerned about leaving it. I effectively had access to all my worldly possessions anywhere. As long as I could access any kind of door and I’d never have to worry about them being compromised. There were tinkers who would kill for that kind of security and my powers provided it as a near afterthought.

My destination was only a couple of blocks away and was in a fairly active part of the neighborhood. This was an area of the Docks where the people who still lived here were holding out hope for the city turning around. It was an endearing investment in the community that probably only persisted because there was minimal value to be found here for any of the local gangs. I was heading for an old building dating to the fifties that probably hadn’t been meaningfully updated since then. Still, having a boxing gym within walking distance that only charged forty dollars a month for membership was worth the potential fire hazard. Actually, fire was unlikely considering this place was probably stuffed to the gills with asbestos.

I checked in and got changed. The place was practically a time capsule, but it worked for what I needed. I had no illusion about being ‘fight ready’ after less than a week, but I was getting into a decent routine that would generate meaningful improvement eventually. I grabbed one of the jump ropes for a warm-up along with a set of push-ups, squats and crunches. I spent about fifteen minutes practicing the basic combinations from my introductory lesson before switching to the heavy bag.

I pushed as far as I could but there were hard limits I was still struggling with. Endurance from running didn’t translate perfectly to this kind of workout. Eventually I was catching my breath with a water bottle while half collapsed on one of the side benches. That was when I saw Doug wandering over from the main ring.

The best way I could describe Doug was if someone took Mickey from the Rocky movies and scaled him up to about six foot five. The guy was pushing sixty now but had apparently been an absolute terror in his youth. He had transitioned into coaching with all the grace of a rabid bull and would typically serenade the entire gym on deficiencies in your technique in a voice worthy of a drill sergeant.

He was in something of a good mood when he approached me, apparently having shouted himself out during his earlier training session. “Joe! Good to see you again. Too many young guys vanish after their first class.”

“Well you know,” I took a sip from my water bottle. “Don’t want to embarrass myself the next time I see Mr. Laborn.”

He nodded at that. “The man knows his boxing, though he’s probably a good part of why guys vanish after their first class.”

The gym gave a free training session with signup. Given how intense the coaches were I think that was a strategy to weed out anyone who wasn’t serious about this kind of thing. Doug was a good example of that, but Mr. Laborn was on a whole other level. “He around tonight?”

“Na, doing something with his kids. You looking for a practice round?”  
  


I emphatically shook my head. “Not even close to ready for that.”

“Stick with it and you’ll get there.” He nodded contemplatively. “We don’t get too many guys from the college down here. You’re engineering, right?”

I suppressed a wince. I had danced around my enrollment status when I filled out my application. Dropping out of college hadn’t been a smooth process and until recently I had still held out some hopes of finishing my degree.

That was gone now.

“Was engineering. College didn’t work out for me.”

“Sorry to hear that, kid. What happened?”

No one would ever accuse Doug of having an excess of tact. That said there was something about the guy that made him easy to talk to. There was a decent chance that no matter what I said he would tell me to suck it up and head back to school, but that was just his nature. There wasn’t real malice behind it.

He also wasn’t going to let this go without some kind of answer. “A bunch of stuff. College, well it looked better from the outside. Like, it’s supposed to be this fresh start where everything’s different, but you just run into the same problems as the rest of your life.”

He snorted. “Problems never go away. They’re part of life. You just get to pick the window dressing.”

That brought a weak grin to my face. “I guess. Things just kind of fell apart for me. Can’t really name a single thing that set it off.”

“Uh-huh. Was it a girl?”

“What?”

“With guys your age it’s usually a girl. Or there’s a girl somewhere in the equation. That what happened?”

“No.” Doug’s expression said he didn’t believe it. I let out a slow breath. “Ok, I had a pretty bad relationship that fell apart spectacularly, but I didn’t drop out over that.”

“It’s never only a girl, but I’ve seen dozens of guys your age trying to get their lives together. There’s always a girl in there somewhere.” He paused. “Or a guy, but they’re usually quieter about that.”

I nodded. Colleges had a certain social mentality that didn’t exactly mesh with having super powered neo-Nazi’s running around. Brockton’s solution seemed to be dressing up everything with just enough deniability to avoid attracting attention.

Doug was looking at me expectantly. I glanced around. No one was that close to us and his students were savoring the brief respite from his tutelage as a chance to catch their breath and desperately rehydrate.

I hated talking about this. It wasn’t just that the entire relationship was cringeworthy in retrospect. What really got me was everyone looking at it and assuming that was where everything went wrong. They thought that the rest of my life was fine and I’d let it all fall apart over some girl. Still, Doug was legendarily bullheaded but not known for making snap judgements.

“So I was in the engineering program. It was pretty small, like twenty five people. Mostly guys as well. Just three girls in our year.”

“So you went after one of them?”

“Not at first.” He gave me a look. “Ok, there was this girl who had transferred from math to engineering in sophomore year.”

“Really. What was her name?”

“Sabah.” Doug raised an eyebrow. “She was Iraqi. Really good at math but her English wasn’t perfect. That gave her some trouble with parts of the course work. I helped her out with that.”

“And one thing led to another?”

“Not exactly. We spent a lot of time together but it never really went further. I suggested stuff but she was always really demure about it, like a whole bunch of non-answers and putting things off.”

“That was probably a hint.”

That stung. “Yeah, I got that in hindsight.”

“So what happened?”

“It wasn’t going well, but one of my friends convinced me to give it another try, just ask directly and put it behind me.”

“Not bad advice.”

I actually flinched at that. “Uh, so I tried and it went bad. She tore into me and we had words. It was public and messy and I figured that was it.”

“I’m guessing there’s more?”

I nodded. “I tried to avoid her after that, but six weeks later she comes to me, apologizes and says she had a bad day and wants to work together again.”

“So what did you do?”

“I tried to go back to the way things were, but it was really awkward. And she ended up transferring to the fashion program pretty soon after.”

“Seriously?”

I shrugged. “Everyone was surprised. She didn’t talk to anyone about it, she just left. I found out later she had lost her dad to a heart attack. I guess that’s the kind of thing that makes you reevaluate stuff.”

Doug nodded grimly.

“Look, it was a mess, but that’s not why I dropped out.”

“Not saying it is, but that kind of thing usually contributes.” He looked around the gym. “I’m not going to give you some bullshit speech about how boxing is like life and how what you learn here will carry you through. Boxing is boxing and life is life. The only thing they have in common is they’re both hard, painful, and take a lot of work. College might not have worked for you, but you’re a bright kid and are willing to put in the hours. You’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

“Don’t let it go to your head. Now I’ve got to get back to those slackers before they think this is some kind of holiday.”

While Doug stomped off to terrorize his students I wrapped up my workout with a marathon of pushups, squats, and crunches. I figured if I buried myself in exercise I might be able to drown out the horrible feelings the conversation had dug up. It was basically the same principle that had gotten me into running. By the time I showered and slunk back to my apartment my body was burning but I had managed to put my college years mostly out of my mind. I threw together a cheap but high protein dinner, mostly beans really, before opening my workshop and crashing for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Workshop (Personal Reality) 100:  
> Each purchase of this adds to your Personal Reality Workshop needed to perform specific type of craft, which is to be specified when purchase is made. It comes with a basic set of tools and supplies. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Additional purchases can add different types of Workshops to your Personal Reality or expand existing ones. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat backed to be restored to its original condition within 48 hours if damaged or destroyed.
> 
> Access Key (Personal Reality) Free:  
> This is a special key which lets you access your Personal Reality and its contents.  
> When inserted into any lock on any door, the door opens to reveal a gateway into your Reality at a predetermined location within it. You are the only person who can take the key from the lock, the gateway remains open as long as the key is in the lock, and if key is ever lost or stolen you will find it in your pocket a few minutes later. You cannot close the door as long as you are inside the Personal Reality.
> 
> Entrance Hall (Personal Reality) Free:  
> This is the room your Access Key opens a door to. It starts off as a 5 meter cube with blank white walls, floor, and ceiling, as some doors, one leading to the current Host Reality, the other into your Cosmic Warehouse, with additional doors leading to other extensions as these get added to your Personal Reality. Feel free to customize this Entrance Hall as you see fit. Additional Halls can, at your discretion, be linked only to certain keys or only to certain extensions. This allows you to have an entry hall just for skiing if you want.


	2. 2 Preparation

My watch alarm woke me up early the next morning, demonstrating my absolute commitment to becoming a hero. For a chance at a cape career I was willing to endure two six o’clocks in the same day.

I am not a morning person. I have never been a morning person. Before I got my powers I would run in the evening. It was nice, peaceful, and I had all the time in the world. Now that I have to do more than just cardio I needed to find another time to run. That turned out to be the ungodly hour of the day where no sane person would be active.

After downing a piece of toast and enough coffee to silence the voices telling me this was a terrible idea when I had a warm bed in a pocket universe waiting for me, I left my apartment and headed for the Boardwalk where the other mad people were exercising. I hated them all. Some had the ill manner to smile at me when they ran past. I know it’s a Saturday, but there is no place for smiles at this hour of the morning. This is an hour of grimness that only the desperate would use for exercise.

Oh God, that person had one of those jogging strollers with them. You can subject yourself to the madness of early morning workouts but please spare the next generation. Break the cycle of abuse. Save your children from this hell.

My morning run was a straight shot to the coast then a loop up and down the boardwalk before swinging back to my apartment. It was roughly the same route I had taken when I ran during sane hours, but now I got to enjoy the piercing rays of the rising sun stabbing at me as they reflected off the bay.

I took a short break when I reached the road access to the Protectorate HQ. It was a glittering strip of the same force field that protected the Rig extending over the water to shore. The amount of traffic it saw was always light and at this time of day it was completely empty. It was an impressive piece of tinkertech, both in scale and in how long it had been maintained. That was true for most of the Protectorate headquarters as it hovered above the waves sending shockwaves out across the surface of the water from each of the emitters at its base.

If I was a typical tinker I would probably be reacting to all kinds of aspects of this technology. I wonder if that’s another way tinkers expose themselves. Does the Protectorate have some kind of monitoring program that watches for people drooling glassy eyed over their installations? Maybe, but for me it was just some pretty looking sci-fi themed architecture.

The sound of a motorcycle rumbled from the city and I turned to see a man in blue and silver armor peel off the main road onto the force field. As Armsmaster vanished across the way various people cheered or fished out smartphones. It was early for tourists but even locals didn’t see the heroes every day. I took another minute to watch as he reached the Rig and disappeared into one of the garages.

That could be me someday.

Well, not exactly. Judging by my passenger’s emotional reactions he was not in favor of the Protectorate. I had initially worried it was some kind of aversion to heroics, but there was no reaction on that level for other teams. In fact the Guild got a significantly positive response. The thought of any of the city’s gangs got various negative reactions with the most intense being connected with Coil. I don’t know what it was about him that caused a mix of fear, hatred, and rage that overshadowed even the local Nazis, but it was enough to make me warry. Given the situation I was in I had decided to trust my passenger’s judgment. It hadn’t steered me wrong so far and considering it was where my powers were coming from it seemed like a good idea to listen to it.

The sighting of Armsmaster was the most interesting thing to happen on my run. Beyond that it was just a tour of the visitor friendly parts of the Bay at a time of day nobody should have to endure.

Did I mention I don’t like mornings?

As I left the Boardwalk and was heading back through the docks to my apartment I considered how to spend the day. I didn’t have enough of a handle on where my power was going to try to plan out anything meaningful about my hero activity. Until it settled enough for me to have a vague theme to work with anything I planned would be total speculation. I wasn’t dumb enough to try cape work with my current powerset, so that left training and conditioning, since that was likely to pay off regardless of what I got from my next power.

I had just arrived home when I felt the excitement build from my passenger. I quickly focused on the Celestial Forge and felt a constellation swinging. This time my reach was twice what it had been last night.

I felt myself latch on to a mote of power. It was from one of the smaller constellations and a little less powerful than the mote that I had missed on my previous attempt. As my connection solidified I felt my knowledge of the power and its constellation expand.

This was not a tinker power. This was something better. This was a brute power that required tinker support.

That constellation was called ‘Clothing’. I didn’t have a good sense of the other powers within it, but this power was called ‘Fashion’. Despite its name it had nothing to do with clothing design, other than the fact that it would allow me to wear anything as my cape costume. That was because what it did was extend the defensive properties of the toughest protective item I was wearing to both my clothing and body. I could wear a kneepad and have my entire body and every piece of clothing be as tough as the material it was made out of.

It was absolutely incredible in terms of mobility, not to mention cost. I could put resources into a single piece of armor, just enough to cover a tiny fraction of my frame, and I would get that level of durability for my entire body.

I needed to test this out. Not because I doubted it. That was one thing I was sure of. Every power I would get was as reliable as my key had proven to be. I had complete faith it would work precisely as described. The only limitation was that the item needed to be designed for protection and had a lower size limit of the aforementioned knee pad. Outside of that caveat it could be anything.

All my plans for the day were done. I needed to work on this. I could head to a thrift store and see what I could find, but I had a full magic metal shop to work with and just enough technical knowledge to get started.

I am not a master smith, not by any measure. As such the product of my morning’s labor in the workshop would not be winning any design, beauty, or craftsmanship contests. It consisted of a steel wrist bracer that hinged and clasped around my left forearm. The whole affair had involved some less than perfect shaping and welding, meaning the seams were raised and lumpy and the fit was uncomfortable.

That was not important in the face of its effects. I had made the bracer out of the thickest, toughest steel I had in stock. Despite only covering half of my forearm it was noticeably heavy. I would have to replace it with something more ergonomic once I had a chance to refine things. The point was that now my entire body and everything I was wearing had the same level of reliance as the half-inch steel plate that made up the bracer. 

I did not test that in the workshop. For one thing everything there was designed to work the same material I was using as a durability standard. Instead I hit the kitchenette and tried to see if I could prick my finger with one of my knives.

The end result of that experiment was that knife not having a point anymore.

A pair of scissors also completely failed to cut the fabric of my shirt and I found myself unable to tear even a single loose thread. A bit of cautious experimentation with the element of my hotplate confirmed the same level of resistance that steel would have to heat was applied to my body and clothing.

This was incredible. The big thing was it showed these weren’t just crafting abilities. There could be all kinds of powers waiting in the Celestial Forge. The second thing was I now had a power significant enough to allow me to actually function as a cape. I wasn’t completely sure I was bullet proof, but I was probably bullet proof. Maybe high powered rifles would give me some trouble, but I don’t think most handguns would be a problem.

I still needed to figure out the limitations. I got the defensive properties of the strongest piece of equipment I was wearing. Theoretically that could apply to things like chemical and biological protection as well, but that was starting to approach fairly exotic levels. I’d need specialized equipment for that. Still, being able to carry around a selection of wrist guards that were each tailored to a specific type of danger had a certain appeal.

There were other limitations to consider. Obviously the defensive bonus was based on the item that was providing protection. If the details of this power got out it would be relatively simple to target or otherwise focus on removing that item. Also it was defensive properties only. It would probably protect my knuckles when fighting but it wasn’t going to provide any increased offensive capacity beyond my willingness to fight recklessly by weathering more attacks. No increase to strength either, so if I got grappled, pinned, or otherwise swarmed I would be screwed.

So it was a powerful ability but not a perfect one. It did mean I could get better defense than a tinker in full armor without the bulk of an extensive suit or the time and resource requirements needed to make it. One downside was it only extended durability to my body and clothing, so any equipment that didn’t fit the definition of clothing was still vulnerable.

I wonder if it would be possible to track down a piece of tinkertech armor. I’ve heard most of the sites selling tinkertech are scams, but there has to be some kind of secondhand curio or collectable market for old hero armor. All I’d need is a piece of some kind of advanced alloy and I’d get the full effect of its durability. But if something like that did exist I could safely assume it would be well beyond my budget.

My first tinker power had arrived and it worked out to effective invincibility as long as I played things smart. I would still need to worry about suffocation and probably chemical and biological attacks. Good thing there wasn’t any cape in Brockton who specialized in the use of poisons.

Why was my passenger feeling nervous all of a sudden?

Maybe it would be good to go over some matchups. I got out my now seriously long in the tooth laptop and logged on to the PHO wiki. I’d gotten this thing in my first year and time had not been kind to it. It was a budget purchase back then and despite my attempts to look after it the screen had a tendency to flicker and the internal speakers were totally shot. I’m pretty sure I would end up laughed out of any serious cape organization if I showed up with this thing and claimed to be a tinker.

Still, it served the purpose for basic internet use. I was obsessively cautious about doing anything cape related online from my own computer and especially from my own apartment but a little wiki walk wouldn’t raise any flags.

I had the added advantage of my passenger’s insight while browsing cape profiles. I didn’t know exactly how accurate it was, but things like the seriously negative reaction to the newest member of the local Wards team yielded some interesting results. She seemed to be a dependable if slightly edgy hero, but a little digging into cape forums produced some fairly convincing evidence that she had a history of excessive violence and a rumor that she joined the wards as part of a probation deal to avoid being charged with attempted murder. None of that had been on my map beforehand, so it lent some credence towards trusting the passenger’s judgement.

Some of the insights were still completely mystifying. I had no idea what the weird feeling of offense that was shared between Battery, Triumph, and Gallant meant. It was similar to what he seemed to be feeling when I reviewed Faultline’s crew and looked at the listings for Newter and Gregor the Snail, though it was much more sympathetic for the Case 53s. Any browsing of reports on New Wave triggered a mess of emotions, mostly concern, fear, and compassion that spiked when I focused on Panacea. Also my passenger did not like Armsmaster, but it was more a level of distrust than actual hostility.

I started with the page for the Archer’s Bridge Merchants. No surprise there, general disgust, though the feelings connected to Skidmark were more wary then I had initially expected. That confused me enough that I had dug into cape theories and found someone who had done the math on the effect of Skidmark stacking his propulsion fields. Calculations based on various video clips and the movement rate of different sized objects suggested that there were no diminishing returns with his power. If the man layered a field enough times he would be able to launch something into orbit or create a mass driver that could wipe out anything in the city. Brocton was only kept safe by the restraint and limited ambition of a drug addict that kept him at a shaker 2 rating.

So, defense against the Merchants. Assuming that durability worked as advertised and wasn’t just skin deep I could probably survive anything short of a massive layered field launch from Skidmark or one of Squealer’s larger vehicle mounted weapons. Nothing else should be able to seriously injure me, but I could end up trapped by Skidmark or Mush fairly easily. In short, I should be alright if I ran into them and needed to escape, but taking the fight to them was out of the question at this point.

I looked into the ABB next. Lung would be able to scale to a point where he could literally rip me apart, but if I kept fighting him long enough for him to reach that point then it’s my own fault. As far as I could tell I should be able to endure most of Oni Lee’s arsenal, providing he doesn’t shove a grenade down my throat. The Wiki page had been updated with a new member since the last time I had checked it. They had a new tinker in the gang. Bakuda.

The scream of fear from my passenger was incredible. I quickly clicked the link while trying to parse through the mess of emotions. Whoever this was she was incredibly bad news. This was nearly the level of response that Coil triggered.

The Wiki page was sparse, mostly focusing on her assault on Cornell. Her activities with the ABB had been limited to a few appearances mostly to show the flag to other gangs rather than any demonstration of new technology. That probably meant she was still setting up. Not everyone carried their workshop around in their pocket. The loss of tools, research, and materials could take a tinker nearly back to square one. Once she was set up, that’s when things would get serious.

There was a limitation in the fact that she had to build consumable devices. I didn’t know how good her manufacturing was, but if the ABB was willing to throw enough resources behind her things could get messy. There had been something of a stalemate between the gangs for years but every time a new cape showed up there were flare-ups. If they were strong enough then territorial lines could be redrawn, but things would usually settle eventually.

Tinkers were different. They were pure force multiplier. Tinkers were capes that didn’t typically operate based on a limited set of powers so counters were only effective to a point. Squealer was probably the only reason the Merchants were still a proper gang rather than a couple of parahuman thugs operating out of the bad part of town. If Bakuda was half as good then the city could be heading for a gang war.

I clicked on the video link ‘Bomb Threat @ Cornell’ and watched it play out. The video did little to reassure me, particularly the effect of the detonations.

So, tinker that triggered in relation to their college life. That hit close to home. Well, she might not have triggered due to that but somehow I doubted she’d make the college her first target if it hadn’t had some connection to how she got her powers. I knew how messed up tinkers could get, the long drawn out nightmare that lead to their triggers and how nightmarish the powers could actually get. When I think about what kind of power I could have ended up with it makes it hard to sleep.

The variety of the explosion types either means that she is an incredibly versatile tinker or she has little control over what she is making. Knowing what I do about tinker powers I’m leaning towards the latter. Unknown crafting is a dangerous combination with any tinker ability, but combine it with an explosive specialist and you have a nightmare.

I felt my power try and fail to latch onto a mote from a new constellation. The rate my reach was growing wasn’t constant, but it seemed to be getting faster on average. As the mote of power moved past me my reach continued to grow in preparation for the next chance to gain a new ability.

Not for the first time I thanked my lucky stars or whatever gods had blessed me to allow me this ability instead of the tinker powers I would have had coming to me. A passenger obsessed with crafting was a million times better than the alternatives waiting for anyone who triggered conventionally.

It was clear Bakuda was going to be a problem. With those effects I couldn’t rely on any level of physical durability to hold me together. I needed a better way of countering her, or I needed to stay out of her way. Right now that seemed like the best option.

I navigated away to the E88 wiki site. There was the common level of general disgust my passenger felt for all members of this gang. The emotions around Purity were a bit more complicated, but no less negative. From what I knew she had somewhat split from the main group and had been doing independent raids. Still, that wasn’t what I was here to figure out.

My defensive prospects against Purity weren’t looking good. She could bring down buildings and was rumored to have blasts that hit like Legend. I doubted anything short of full tinker tech miracle armor would save me from that. She was the worst of the possible match ups though. Rune, Kreig, Hookwolf, Night , or the twins could probably overpower my defense, though it wouldn’t be easy for them. I didn’t know how I would stand up against Crusader’s ghosts. They apparently worked on some weird Manton Effect interaction, so probably best not to risk a confrontation. Storm Tiger could probably hurt me, but not that badly. With Victor it would depend on how Othala juiced him up. I think I could handle the pyrokinesis she could grant, but I didn’t know the limits of the super strength she bestowed. People like Cricket and Alabaster could be difficult to deal with but probably not that threatening.

I probably had nothing to worry about directly from Kaiser. From what I could tell he had limited ability to direct his blades through people. Without significant force I would be looking at a few scratches at worst. Of course, he would also have the easiest time capturing me. That was something I would be doing my best to avoid.

Of the major gangs that just left Coil. My passenger’s reactions had convinced me he was a threat, but not why or how. His wiki page still had no hint on his power and just a few clips of the mercenaries he used. His men were at least well equipped. The high powered rifles they used could be a problem on their own, but I didn’t like my chances against the tinkertech lasers they had attached. Fortunately they limited their actions considerably and I wasn’t likely to run into them at random.

That covered the major threats in the city. I could keep digging through every third string villain or hypothetical matches against the heroes, but that wouldn’t be a productive use of time. Likewise I decided against jumping over to the forums. That was a time sink that I couldn’t afford anymore. I had a limited amount of time off and still had a huge amount of preparation to do before I was ready to be a hero.

I started making a basic lunch and considered how to spend the rest of the day. I needed to keep working on my physical conditioning, so that meant keeping my diet and getting to the gym. I had to be careful about overdoing my workouts, but I could manage that by lowering intensity and focusing on different muscle groups. I had pretty much stolen my entire training and diet program from a fitness forum and those places tended to have people shouting down any stupid risks in training.

Also, as good as the bracer was for overall defense I could use a subtler option. I would hit the Market and see if someone was selling old kneepads, wrist guards, or some other similar type of protective equipment. If I could get a basic kneepad I might be able to wear it under my jeans to get some constant level of protection without attracting attention. It wouldn’t do much against guns, but should boost my durability to the point where melee weapons wouldn’t be much of a concern. I didn’t want to get my cape career cut short because of a mugging gone badly.

The Market would have to be my first priority. It was already noon and the stalls would have been set up for hours. They would already be pretty well picked over so I’d need to go there right away to have a chance at anything decent. I wolfed down my lunch and headed out.

Because of the nuances of Brockton Bay’s public transportation system if you were starting in the Docks it was actually faster to walk to the Market than take the bus. The road access to the Lord Street Market looped around the outside of the city through seldom used and poorly maintained back roads. Bus service to that area was a trial that used the weird fifth color on the bus schedules and varied based on time of year, day of the week, and probably whether Mars was currently in retrograde. Unless you were hauling an amount of goods that made walking impossible it was better to just cut through fields along the coast past the north end of the Boardwalk. It wasn’t a clear route, but it wasn’t a route for anyone outside the city. You live here long enough and eventually someone would show you the shortcut across abandoned lots, old industrial areas, and the weedy fields in the no man’s land between the Docks and Lord’s Port.

The Boardwalk disappeared behind me with its designer boutiques and twelve dollar ice-cream and the reality of the city opened before of me. Fifteen years ago this would have been the heart of the city’s industry. Lord’s Port would have been running constantly and the surrounding region existed to support and sustain the shipping industry. Since that dried up the entire area had decayed to a shadow of its former self. There was still the odd business still active, probably too invested in their equipment to be worth moving and just profitable enough to squeak by, but abandoned lots and decayed buildings were a much more common site.

However, when you approached the market you could be forgiven for overlooking all of that. Gradually the human element of the city started to grow, beginning with the cars of people who parked further out to avoid having to deal with the nightmare that was the Market’s parking situation, then the occasional person that had begged off from the crowds for a smoke break. Then the sound started. The subtle roar of hundreds of people in the same place, talking, laughing, bargaining, and haggling. You heard the Market long before you caught site of it.

The place was packed today. It made sense that it would be. Brockton didn’t have horrible winters but it wasn’t exactly comfortable in February and March. A clear Saturday in early April would be one of the first good outing days of the year and it looked like plenty of people shared that mindset. The people running the stands seemed to have seen it coming since there didn’t seem to be an unmanned stall in the entire Market.

I started working my way through the crowd. Most of the stands I could skip after a glance. Handcrafts, surplus designer clothing, costume jewelry, vintage records, or artwork held no interest for me. Unfortunately there wasn’t a stall labeled ‘Loose Athletic Protective Equipment’ that I could make a bee line for. Some people were selling old electronics and tool sets that held a lot of appeal, but I had committed myself to holding back on the tinker scrounging until I had some crafting powers to work with.

It wasn’t that I was worried about being exposed. I’m pretty sure whatever hypothetical thinkers monitored purchasing habits wouldn’t be tipped off by me buying an old game console and vcr/dvd combo. The thing was I have very limited funds to work with. I didn’t want to invest in electronics only to end up with a specialization in vehicle engines or chemistry. Case in point, before I got my last ability I would never have considered the need for isolated pieces of armor.

It was a shame because there were a lot of tempting possibilities here. Even without power assisted crafting abilities there was an appeal in taking apart old machinery. I guess I would never have ended up in an engineering program if I didn’t have those instincts. Still, I pushed them down and pressed on.

A quick, and I use that term loosely, circuit of the market didn’t reveal any stand specializing in protective sports gear. That left me hunting through individual stalls. For a good portion of Brockton Bay the Market takes the place of a yard sale when the time comes to clean out the garage or declutter the house. It’s easy to spot the people using it for that purpose. People who make their living from the Market have a professional attitude. They have well-made signs, neatly organized merchandise, and proper cash boxes. Some of them even have those new smartphone card readers. They provided a stark contrast to people with optimistic expressions and a table full of random junk. Those people were my best chance to find what I was looking for.

It also turned what should have been a simple shopping trip into an ordeal. If I wasn’t being strictly conservative with my finances I could have walked into a department store and picked up a whole set of pads in five minutes. Instead I was hunting around through a heavy throng of flea market shoppers trying to find a budget piece of skateboard equipment. It was not exactly the shining start to a cape career I would have envisioned.

Still, given what some tinkers had to go through for supplies this counted as a cake walk. An hour sorting through junk was nothing compared to tinkers who ended up having to rob chemical depos or required rare earth elements to be able to accomplish anything.

I didn’t have a problem finding skating pads. The problem was every set I had found so far was child sized. And by that I mean designed for preteen or younger. I don’t know if I was seeing the residual equipment from abandoned skating hobbies, or if once they reached teenage years their parents stopped insisting on full sets of pads. Sizing was going to be a problem for me. I had my growth spurt late, but it had decided to make up for lost time in spades. Even stuff sized for teenagers wouldn’t work for me.

I felt activity in the Celestial forge and moved out of the flow of shoppers to focus on it. One of the largest constellations was swinging towards me and my power latched onto a small mote from it. I took a moment to focus on the new power. The constellation was ‘Quality’ and this particular power was called ‘Bling of War’. This power didn’t strictly speaking give me any new crafting abilities or technical knowledge. Instead it allowed me to design and build things in a much more ‘stylish’ manner.

It was an aesthetic upgrade. I could add style or even a certain theme to what I built. While it wouldn’t help me with the practical requirements of construction or design it would allow me to sidestep the early tinker cliché where they initially debut in a set of gear that looks like it was the product of a junkyard screwing a trash compactor.

Hell, most capes outside of the Protectorate and major gangs fell into that category. I’d seen forum threads joking about the number of capes whose debut costume was either a ski mask or a hoodie. I thought back to the bracer currently resting in my workshop. The bulky hinge, the crude weld lines, the ill-fitting bend of the material. My mind was suddenly filled with a thousand ways I could have done that better. None of them would have improved the protection or accessibility of the item, but it would make it look like the thing was made by a professional rather than a twelve year old left unsupervised in a metal workshop.

I badly needed more crafting skills. I had a very limited ability to make things, but with this power at least everything I made would look excellent, even if it wouldn’t function any better than whatever crude thing I could pull together. I made a point to check some of the book stands before I left. If I could get a couple of how to books I might be able to make decent progress on a costume. Since my durability boost extended to my clothing it really didn’t matter if the costume I pulled together was terrible quality or poorly made. It would hold up as long as I had a piece of armor to buff it. I knew enough metal work to get something functional bashed together and this power would make sure it looked good.

This did mean I would have to completely rebuild my bracer. It should be a bit easier this time now that I’m not making things up as I go. Still, that was hours of work wasted. That’s the life of a tinker, I suppose, it never stops.

One interesting thing was that connecting with this power didn’t take all of the reach I had built. Rather than start from zero I still had about half of what I had accumulated. The next time a constellation came within range I would have a much better chance of making a connection to a new power. It was an interesting aspect of the mechanics, and anything that helped me get on my feet faster was good by me.

In the end the best I was able to find were a pair of soccer shin guards. They weren’t that tough, but I should be able to wear one without attracting attention. I could probably copy the design and make something out of steel when I had a chance, which would give me better protection, close to what I got from my bracer, without attracting attention. The book search turned up dry. The only ‘how to’ book I found was on the basics of carpentry. I would really do better at a used book store for that, and that’s assuming I didn’t end up with my power giving me enough technical knowledge to make everything in those books redundant.

So I had killed two hours and gotten a pair of shin guards out of it. Grant it they came at rock bottom prices, but I had to get better at managing my time. I actually had some projects now, considering I had a crafting boosting power, if a completely superficial one. But I also needed to get to the gym. I promised myself I wouldn’t let my workouts lapse because of tinkering. If I wanted to exist outside the workshop or lab I would need to be able to handle myself in a fight. That meant training was essential. Which meant not skipping my workouts just because I had a shiny new ability.

So I left the chaos of the market, looped back through the docks to my apartment and grabbed my gym bag and a snack. The food requirements for trying to build muscle were absolutely insane. When you had to eat, what you had to eat, the ratios, before or after workout, it was nuts. I honestly miss the days I would just focus on distance running.

The gym was fairly quiet and I was able to power through my training without much issue. I finished with a long cooldown and set of stretches, then headed back home. I made an early dinner, then headed straight into my workshop.

The first thing I did was try to recreate my bracer. Fortunately the stock of materials constantly refreshed. I don’t know if it would be possible to deplete it with a major project, but none of the light works I’ve done so far have made a dent in it. All the metals I have in stock are basic stuff. Standard grades of steel, aluminum, and other metals. I have sheet and bar stock and a small supply of simple mechanical parts like hinges and latches. Nothing high tech or even cutting edge. No exotic alloys or treated metals, nothing fiber reinforced, nothing more advanced than the higher end of hobby work.

It did mean I didn’t have to worry about restocking. With the state of my finances this was a godsend. Once I got some better crafting abilities I could only guess at what I would be capable of. Most likely I would run into a block in terms of tools and supplies. This was fine for simple projects like this one, but I would need a supply of more advanced components to put out things on the level of a professional tinker.

With an idea of what I was doing the project went a lot smoother but I still couldn’t get the fit perfect. I suspected I’d need a lot more experience with metal shaping or specialized equipment for that. Despite sitting a bit awkwardly on my wrist and not being any more durable than my first attempt the bracer looked amazing.

The formerly chunky placement of the hinges and latch now smoothly blended into the design. The weld seams looked so professional that it could be mistaken for being molded in a single piece. There were little touches on the edges that added a sense of sleekness and the surface was beautifully finished.

All the little stylistic touches had taken some extra work, but nowhere near the amount they should have. If I tried to build something like this before getting that last power it would have taken weeks and not come out anywhere near as finished. It was beautiful and it was only my first attempt.

Once I had a theme, an idea of what kind of hero I wanted to be, then I would have to rebuild it to match. For now it was just a beautifully made wrist guard that, thanks to my other power, effectively made me bullet proof.

It was getting into the evening, but I decided to take a crack at another project. With my durability boost I could theoretically head out for hero work. The thing was I would need at least some kind of offensive ability. I may have had access to a magic metal shop, but my knowledge of how to work with it was limited. I’d considered trying to throw together some basic weapon, but given how crude my earlier work was I’d decided to wait until I had some ability to facilitate things.

Well, I had an ability now. Not one that would help with anything advanced, but one that would at least stop me from embarrassing myself when I showed up with a basic weapon.

I was making a baton. It was absolutely the simplest weapon I could make, a metal club. I was adding a little more flourish than just taking a piece of bar stock onto the streets. A bit of work on the grip, some rounding on the top, texturing on the handle, but generally it was a foot and a half of metal that I would be able to hit people with. I wasn’t expecting much from this project.

Once again my new power came through. While the function was no better there were little design touches that added a professional air to it. A sense of sleekness and elegant craft seemed to exude from it, despite the incredibly basic design. All the little shortcuts I’d taken were made to look completely intentional rather than as cheats for someone who barely understood what he was doing.

I took some experimental swings with it. The solid metal had a heft to it that would probably mess someone up badly if they caught a blow. The balance was a bit off, probably to be expected what with my complete lack of weapon smithing experience. I had gone for the design because it was the most basic thing I could think of. No worries about technique, grip, or proper form. Hold and swing. I’m sure there were ways to improve upon that, but mainly I wanted a weapon that I couldn’t screw up, and this fit the bill.

So there I had it, basic cape equipment. Significantly heavier towards defense than offense, but that was better than the alternative. With this I could actually do it, I could go out and be a superhero.

That led to another problem. Two items, no matter how powerful, did not make a costume. I had a power that could pull together any style I’d want to go with, but I didn’t have much to work with on that front in terms of skill, materials, or even a theme.

I had not given much thought to what my cape debut would be like. Sitting before the Celestial Forge had been so intimidating that I kind of assumed whatever I ended up with would create a self-evident identity. Well, now I kind of had one, but what identity was I going to go with? If I went out now I’d be debuting as a highly durable low strength brute with a couple of pieces of nicely made equipment. That was a far cry from the technology hero I had been imagining. It was by no means a bad powerset to have, but considering most of my other powers were going to be tinker based, did I want to go with that?

Not really, but I didn’t know what I was going to end up with next. If I got another couple of support or utility powers before I landed something that let me start making high tech items would I be comfortable waiting around for whatever my first crafting power would be? Probably not. I didn’t have the burning need to head out and seek combat that some passengers created. All mine wanted was to complete the Celestial Forge. While that would normally make him risk averse there was better growth of my reach when I was active. It had sped up over the last week as I settled into my hero prep and had been getting much faster recently. I knew that getting active in the cape community would be my best bet for landing new powers.

As I considered things I felt my passenger’s excitement as a constellation swung close. I closed my eyes and focused on it. It was the same constellation I had failed to connect to with my first attempt. This time my power was strong enough to latch onto a mote as they flew past. Unlike last time this took every ounce of my stored energy to secure the link. Finally I had the connection and could tell what that constellation was.

It was the ‘Alchemy’ constellation and the mote I had connected to was ‘Evermore Alchemist’. With the connection made knowledge flooded my mind. Specifically knowledge of how to combine twenty two mundane materials in thirty five unique combinations that would produce instant effects on the level of a parahuman’s abilities. I had not gotten a crafting ability. I had gotten a combo platter of superpowers. And they were serious powers. Some of these could duplicate blaster effects that were strong enough to maim, if not outright kill. I would need to be very careful about how I used them.

The formulas were divided into light and dark alchemy, essentially offensive and defensive. The defensive formula had combinations that could be used to heal. Heal! I was new to the cape scene, and having Panacea in the same city kind of skewed perception, but healing powers were incredibly rare. I’d read a theory that there were no healing powers, that all healing that happened was either a side effect or creative application of another type of ability. That was definitely not the case here.

I took a breath to calm myself down. This was something I would need to assess carefully. I had been expecting maybe some kind of mechanical expertise, or the plans for a set of ray guns or jetpacks. I was not expecting thirty five new powers to be dropped into my lap.

Actually, reviewing the nature of the formula it wasn’t right to call them powers. There was a mechanism to this that was a lot more nuanced than most powers. I knew how to trigger base effects by combining reagents, but there was an immense amount of space for improvement and refinement of technique. I would need practice to be able to get the full potential of this ability.

Fortunately, in most cases, the required reagents are fairly common. There was one formula that required a specially built amulet and another that needed a specific and obscure breed of pepper, but most of the rest could be managed with things like wax, water, vinegar, or grease. Some would be harder to find but still relatively easy. Gunpowder was the only one that would be likely to raise red flags and that was only needed for one formula, though that formula was a doozy.

One of the trickier reagents to supply would be the plants. Aside from the aforementioned obscure pepper the formulas also used roots, mushrooms, and acorns. Getting a good supply of those would take some doing.

So, what did I have to work with now? My workshop had replenishing supplies of grease and iron that I could raid. That alone was enough for a couple of defensive formulas. I had water to work with, but that didn’t open up any new possibilities. Likewise, cooking oil could work in formulas, but not as well as petroleum products. Still nothing possible there without additional reagents like wax or roots.

Still, I wasn’t going to let this go. I got some stock and milled off a small piece of iron. Then I got two lumps of grease. In a movement that felt both completely natural and totally alien I mashed them together and threw the mix into the air above me. It burst into light and coalesced around me, wrapping my body in a reflective barrier.

The Reflect formula created a field that reflected any supernatural effect back at its source. It only lasted a minute, but it was a phenomenal defensive ability and I could pull an effectively infinite source of reagents to power it.

I decided that was enough for now. I had a major power here. Tomorrow I would head out and seriously stress my finances. I needed reagents and more importantly a way to carry and access them in the field. The components of a formula weren’t that bulky, barely a handful, but they were consumed on each use. I would have to go out well supplied and would be on the clock in any drawn out fight. Also, if anything would trigger tinker warnings it would be my upcoming shopping spree. There were not that many mundane reasons to buy large quantities of sulfur.

Still, limitations or no, I had an incredible ability. This was a serious power that someone could build their entire career on. For me it was just an incidental part of the Celestial Forge.

I went to bed that night with more optimism at my situation than I had felt in the entire week since my trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Fashion (Highschool of the Dead) 200:  
> Your clothing and entire body acquire defensive properties equal to the most superior protective items you have currently equipped. Emphasis on protective item- an iron or steel ring won’t give you metal-tough skin- the minimum is things like knee pads from extreme sports, helmets- even an apron would count, though all that’d do is protect you from the dangers of a kitchen...
> 
> Bling of War (Macross) 100:  
> It's one thing to have a weapon or vehicle of mass destruction, capable of rending an entire ground force or a squadron to shame. It's another to make it look so damn good your enemies would not dare get near it if they had a lick of sense. By purchasing this perk, you can design your equipment to look much more stylish and carry a 'theme' you prefer. This can range from the clothes you wear, to the weapons you wield, to even the vehicles you pilot into battle. It's all about style.
> 
> Alchemist (Secret of Evermore) 200:  
> Considered a lost art, the science of Alchemy has reawakened in Evermore, and you've been trained in its use. By combining ordinary ingredients together using an alchemical formula, you can transform them into effects that can only be described as magic. You know both Light Alchemy, the art of healing or protection, and Dark Alchemy, the art of attacking. While it's theoretically possible to learn Alchemy at a later point in Evermore, this will let you skip the training and get straight to the mixing and casting, and will make you significantly better at it to boot.


	3. 3 First Fight

After another terminally early run I spent the next morning wearing out my shoes and stressing my bank account in an attempt to track down as many reagents as I could. I would have to describe the success of the entire venture as ‘mixed’.

While I could use any item that technically met the description of the reagent the quality of what was used significantly affected the efficiency of the materials. For instance, I could use tap water for any formula that called for water as a reagent, but purified water without the chemical additives required much less, and if I used distilled water I only needed a fraction of the volume. Considering the quantity I would need to carry I grabbed a couple of jugs of distilled water from a pharmacy.

Ethanol was going to be difficult to track down. I could in theory use something like vodka, but with that concentration and the impurities present I’d be using insane quantities for each formula. Something like Everclear would do the trick, but it was illegal in New Hampshire. Without ethanol I was losing access to my strongest healing formula and one of my most powerful blasts. I could work around it and had enough other options that it wasn’t crippling, but it was still disheartening to run into that obstacle.

Of course, I could always order it or pick it up from a specialty store or chemical supplier. Then I would end up on all the tinker lists. Also I was pushing things as much as I could as far as cost was concerned. I just didn’t have the budget for special orders.

A bit of research and a trip to a garden supply store got me a bag of sulfur that would cover enough of my fire formulas to burn down half the city. I stopped by a gas station on the way back and picked up a couple of bottles of motor oil. After that I went straight to the largest grocery store I could find.

Grease and vinegar were easy to find in the volume and quality I needed. I only had one formula that called for mushrooms, so a single carton would hold me for the foreseeable future. I dug through their entire pepper selection but couldn’t find anything that would work with my formula. The produce section did have a lot of roots that would do for my assortment of healing formula, though it wasn’t as simple as just raiding the root vegetables. It would have been great if I could just buy a bag of baby carrots and call it a day. There was a quality requirement that was kind of aggressive with this reagent. The ginger root worked best, but there were some other options amongst the less common produce that would also do the trick. I was able to stock up, but not for the rock bottom price I had been hoping for.

The butcher counter was able to get me some excellent beef bones properly cleaned and everything. I’d have to break them down to formula size, but otherwise it was a perfect source.

Craft stores turned out to be a godsend for the more obscure reagents. They had clay in spades, though I had to spring for the natural stuff rather than the more processed modeling clay. A huge selection of feathers was stocked, which was good considering I needed a specific type and quality for my alchemy. Wax was as simple as finding the cheapest candles in the store. It would take some processing, but nothing too labor intense. They even had a collection of quartz that could function perfectly for formula that called for crystal, and the last store I checked even had bags of acorns for sale. Seriously, god bless crazy craft people.

The last two reagents I needed to track down were limestone and ash. Fortunately a cashier at one of the craft stores was able to direct me to an even more obscure supply store that had bags for sale for the purpose of soap making. I picked up a sack of wood ash that would keep me for months.

Limestone would be tricky. I couldn’t just buy it off the shelf, but a single good sized chunk would cover me for ages. It was part of my best defensive formula, so I didn’t want to abandon it, but I didn’t have a decent source. I decided to sort it out another day considering I’d made more than decent progress. Fifteen out of twenty two wasn’t bad, especially considering two of those didn’t exist and two more were highly obscure.

Ah, yes. Meteorite and dry ice. The combination would let me synthesize a call bead. That thing was pretty much the philosopher’s stone for this system of alchemy. It let you ‘call’ on the supernatural power of other people. In theory I would be able to access the powers of other capes with them. It would be incredible if I could pull it off, but the procedure for making the connection was esoteric and the ingredients for the formula weren’t easy to come by.

I had also given up on gunpowder at this point. I could combine it with grease for my strongest attack formula but I didn’t want the hassle of trying to acquire some without any background in fireworks or explosives. That was just asking for a visit from the police.

If I was going to go on my first patrol tonight I needed to address the pressing problem of how the hell I was going to carry all the reagents I needed for my alchemy to function. There were twenty four formulas I could mix with my current materials. Without a better way of organizing things I’d be lucky to be able to have nine ready to go in the field.

Thus the second half of the day was spent hunting through thrift and army surplus stores for an effective way of managing fifteen different reagents, which had to be grouped into clusters for my available formulas. Not every one of my formulas needed to be on hand, and frankly for most of the dark alchemy I would need to be in a seriously bad spot to break it out. It was a horrifying mix of acid, decay, force, lightning, five flavors of fire and for some reason that I can promise you made perfect sense even if it seemed insane, a summoned swarm of bees. None of those were anything close to non-lethal. I was still going to keep them ready, but they wouldn’t be my quick draw options.

My design ability proved to be at least partially active in the area of selecting items for my costume. There was a limited amount it could do if I wasn’t making the equipment myself, but it did help me arrange the belts, holsters, and pouches in a way that looks planned and professional rather than slapdash.

The fact that I was rushing out my costume during the same shopping trip was the real burden. I had honestly anticipated staying in the workshop for another couple of weeks, but that was because I assumed my early powers would be design and construction based and I would need a serious amount of buildup time. I didn’t imagine I would get immediate defensive powers and a serious array of offence and utility formula so early. If I’m being completely honest I didn’t expect to get powers like this at all.

I was browsing through a thrift store when I felt my passenger’s excitement as another constellation swung close. My power latched on to one of the smaller motes and secured a connection. The constellation was ‘Vehicles’ and the mote was called ‘Black Thumb’. It was a mechanic based power. Mostly the ability provided me with the full skills of an expert mechanic. An entire lifetime’s experience at my fingertips. Not just the abstract or theoretical stuff I’d seen in class, but real world ‘diagnose the problem by the sound of the cylinders’ master level mechanic work.

The ability also allowed me to upgrade vehicles in a lot of crazy ways without adversely affecting performance in the slightest and meant I could repair and tune up engines even as I was operating them, because powers were crazy like that. It was insane, but that seemed to be the standard for cape powers.

It was also useless to me at this point. Even with the master level of skill I had it would take days to get a vehicle together. Less for something like a motorcycle, but the mechanical expertise didn’t come with any improved operational skill. I would be lucky to avoid killing myself if I got on a motorbike. Wait, I had enhanced durability. So I might be fine, providing the effect also stopped my brain from splattering against the inside of my skull during my first collision.

This was a good power, but it was presently badly overshadowed by what Squealer was already churning out on a daily basis. I could guarantee my vehicles would look a lot better than the ones she built, but that was a very low bar. Give me resources and time and I might be able to pull something together that looked like it belonged in the same league as Armsmaster’s bike, though it would be nowhere near that level of efficiency.

On the other hand I might be able to make some money on the side doing off the books car repairs. This ability seemed designed to keep engines operating in horrible conditions with almost no resources. I bet I could patch up most car problems with minimal parts and even less time. That application would actually turn the fact that this was mundane crafting to an advantage. I was capable of good work, but aside from a few eccentric upgrades it was all standard stuff any competent mechanic would be able to do. I should be able to pull off the whole ‘guy who knows about cars’ thing and leverage that to some part time work.

But that was something for later. Still, the prospect of more resources, or at least useful skills helped me justify a bit more splurging than I would have otherwise been comfortable with. I indulged on a longer coat, something with plenty of pockets for reserve storage without being heavy enough to be unbearable once warmer weather sets in. I’d need some kind of head covering and was determined not to start with a hoodie as my only concealment. Hats and helmets could work, but they got expensive and I’d already made a major expenditure with my coat. Instead I picked up a couple of large bandanas that would do the job. Normally that kind of thing would look worse than a hoodie, but I trusted my design ability to pull it together.

The shopping trip was also made easier by my mobile storage. Being able to duck into an alley or side hall and throw all my purchases into the entry room of my workshop made the entire process mostly painless. It would also allow me access to all my alchemy supplies no matter what happened, which was another relief. By mid-afternoon I had accomplished as much as I was likely to without either spending myself into debt or ending up on a series of government watch lists. I headed back to my apartment to prepare for my first night out as a cape.

That night out didn’t begin until after eleven o’clock. I may not have a full suite of tinker powers, but it seemed I had enough that it is disturbingly easy to lose track of time in my workshop. The technical knowledge and machine skills from black thumb allowed me to work to a much higher level of quality, even outside of vehicles. There was enough experience with detailing and body work in that skillset that, when combined with the aesthetic skills from my previous ability, allowed some truly impressive design work.

That was why I had a mask now. In my own opinion it was actually a pretty great mask. It contoured to my face perfectly and matched the vaguely sleek and streamlined theme I had managed with my bracer. The entire thing sat close enough that my vision wasn’t significantly affected and when combined with one bandana tied over my head and another across my nose and mouth it gave me a striking appearance. It was kind of like a modern take on a knight’s visor, though the protection aspect was less important than the ability to conceal my identity.

I’d added a few metal details to my coat as well. Not enough to weigh myself down, just enough to communicate that I was in costume. For some reason the skills from Black Thumb really liked the look of shiny metal, particularly chrome. I’d done the best with what I had in my metal workshop and found a balance. Enough metal to create a distinct look, but not enough to turn me into the walking hood ornament Black Thumb would have wanted.

Walking was an apt word to use here. I had only been out for a few minutes when I decided foot patrols were for chumps. Unfortunately none of my alchemist formulas helped with mobility. Well, one might have, but that was what I needed that weird pepper for.

As bad a reputation as Brockton Bay had for crime it seemed you couldn’t just take an evening walk and hope to stumble across it. After an hour of wandering around I started to wonder what the point of this was. I guess I was showing the flag, so to speak, but other than spooking a few people on the street I hadn’t done much. I could always head into the heart of a gang’s territory and hope that my presence triggered some kind of response, but as good as my defenses were I didn’t want to risk that. I might be highly resistant to damage but I could be captured or locked down fairly easily. If I got swarmed I would have to resort to dark alchemy to get out of it, and that meant a series of maiming at the very least. The kind of energy I could throw out was not something to be used lightly.

So the ‘walk around randomly’ plan was definitely a bust. If I wanted to actually make a difference I’d need to go out with proper objectives. That meant research, scouting, information gathering, and planning. All stuff I didn’t have time for with my work/training/crafting schedule. I see why so many tinkers end up on teams.

Maybe I could get a police radio. If I listened to dispatches I might be able to use that to respond to serious incidents. Were dispatches even sent over open broadcast anymore? It was probably encoded, or at least digital. If I had better tech abilities I could probably crack it, but my current skill set wouldn’t be helpful.

So all I was accomplishing tonight was walking around in costume and feeling like a badass. Frankly I was ok with that. I might not bring down a villain or stop a major crime, but I know that I could have. Being out here was something positive, both for the city and for my cape career.

All that rationalization fell away when the sound of breaking glass reached me. Yes, I was ok with nothing happening, but if something did there was no way I was going to miss it. My coat flew behind me as I broke into a sprint. My belts, bandoleer, and holsters were secured enough that they kept stable while I ran but the reserve reagents in my coat pockets were bouncing uncomfortably with each step. I’d need to scale those down in the future.

I rounded a corner and nearly collided with a man in a black body suit and red demon mask who appeared in front of me. Literally appeared, as in teleportation. Rather than turn to face me he kept his attention on the mass of shadows that concealed a nearby alley mouth and damaged store front. Instead a copy of him appeared facing me as the first kept watch on the shadows.

I could see large shapes moving within the dark mass and hear the scraping of claws on pavement and broken glass. But I could also see the demon ninja in front of me. Oni Lee. I knew how dangerous he was and his reputation for violence. I didn’t know if this was a hero-villain fight or if he was going up against another criminal. Either way he was still a threat, both to me and the city.

Did I want to do this? Was I ready to do this? Probably not, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I stared down the demon mask for a handful of seconds as neither of us made a move. Then I shifted my stance, drew my club, and suddenly it was on.

Oni Lee was a much better fighter than me. It was evident by the way the fight opened with an arm reaching from behind me and drawing a knife across my neck. With the steel hard durability of my bracer extending through my body the blade came away without drawing blood, but the sensation was distinctly unpleasant. I swung my club back and tried to catch the ninja, but he rolled out of the way of my clumsy swipe and lunged forward with repeated strikes. The knife bounced off in every instance without so much as fraying the fabric of my coat and deftly stepped out of the reach of any return blows from my baton. More clones started appearing around me, swinging with different weapons. Stilettos, combat knives, machetes, and a hatchet all bounced or skidded off as I weathered the hail of blades and desperately tried to score a return hit.

On more than one occasion I considered reaching for a prepared mix for my attack formulas. Clones were dissolving as quickly as they were appearing and a single fireball should be able to clear the crowd. Still, I held back. I had no way of knowing which of these was the real Lee and didn’t want to end up with a corpse on my hands.

That conviction was severely tested as a pair of thin knives snaked through the gap of my mask and found my eyes. I don’t care how tough you are, that is not something you can walk off. An attack that would have pierced my brain was no worse than accidently poking yourself in the eye, but it was enough to completely take my mind off the fight. My legs were swept out from under me and four copies of Lee piled on, pinning me to the ground.

I thought that this was just about the worst situation I could be in. Then I heard the pin drop. Pins. All the pins from all the grenades of the clones that were piled on top of me. And the heavy thuds as dozens of small egg shaped metal objects hit the ground around me.

It was simple really. What do you do if you’re an experienced parahuman murderer and you’re fighting someone too tough for conventional weapons? Escalate. Escalate hard. And in Oni Lee’s case that meant grenades. All the grenades. I may have been as tough as steel at the moment but I didn’t like my chances against that much explosive. I don’t think there’s a cape in the city that would be comfortable in my position right now.

I’m rather proud of how I managed to respond to my first legitimately life threatening moment. In the scant few seconds before the grenades fuses triggered I managed to grab one of my prepared formulas from a belt pouch. I spilled every other set of the same formula from said pouch, but I was not worried about the cascade of clay and ash that spread out across the street. I was worried about being able to complete this formula before I got splattered across the entire block.

I mashed the two ingredients together in the precise mixture and channeled the essence of the reagents into the desired effect. The knowledge I had gained from this ability put me on good footing in terms of managing the process under stress. Alchemy was normally a complex art and required careful concentration. I doubt most people would have been able to pull off any result in this situation. What I managed wasn’t my best effort, but the formula combined successfully and settled into my body, reinforcing me against harm. I managed it just before the first explosion triggered.

It’s a unique experience to be in the middle of a pile of grenades as they detonate. Fragmentation grenades combine the fun of a pulverizing shockwave with the effect of dozens of chunks of sharp metal launched at high velocity. Funnily enough I had considered not prepping the Defend formula. I figured my bracer would give enough durability for everything but cape powers and I had Reflect to counter them. I did not see this situation coming, and it made me very grateful that I decided to play completionist in terms of what I carried with me.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. It was like being in a storm of thunder, beatings, and stabs. I could feel the blasts in my ears, my throat, my lungs. Shrapnel pelted me and the fact that it wasn’t penetrating my coat was small comfort when I could feel a bruise bloom with every impact. The fact that my bracer’s durability extended to both my clothes and body was probably the only reason I was able to endure. The reinforcement of my alchemy held off just enough of the damage that I was still conscious and mobile once the series of explosions ended and the smoke cleared, but that was not the same as unharmed.

At this point I was ready to break out the dark alchemy and reduce that bastard to a puddle of smoking flesh, but I held back. I had been playing this stupid and it was time to level the field. In the smoking crater I pulled a prepped formula consisting of a piece of wax and two measures of water, held in a small pouch together. I saw the shadow of Oni Lee approaching through the smoke and mashed together my speed formula as I lunged towards him.

This was one of my stronger enhancement formulas and one I would have preferred to field test before using. It did allow faster movement, but only slightly. Mostly it accelerated perception and reaction. It was essentially a bullet time formula. At my level of proficiency it wasn’t quite enough to dodge bullets, but it provided an overwhelming advantage against a normal human, regardless of the difference in skill.

Oni Lee’s skill level was still damn impressive. Probably the only reason I didn’t end the fight in one swing was his reactions that turned with my strike, resulting in a spider web of cracks across his mask rather than the concussion I’d been going for. I ignored the Oni Lee in front of me as another appeared to my right. My baton came around and swiped a knife out of his hand, then continued past to glance off the chest of another copy. Two more appeared within a fraction of a second of each other and I ignored their attacks, instead spinning and bringing my weapon towards the empty street behind me.

My precaution paid off as the form of Oni Lee flickered into being with a silver and red orb in one hand. I brought my club down onto his forearm with all my strength. The light composite of his wrist guard folded under the heavy impact of my solid steel club. I felt a pair of snaps as the club continued down with all its force and watched in slow motion as the assassin’s lower arm flopped like a strand of overcooked spaghetti.

The metal object fell from his useless fingers and one by one the copies collapsed into dust until even the version of Lee that was cradling his broken arm disappeared. My speed boost wore off and time resumed its normal pace. I was panting hard enough that the bandana around my neck was flaring with every breath and my body felt like a giant bruise. The surge of adrenalin that had carried me through the end of the fight was crashing and every bit of pain, exhaustion, and overexertion was coming to the forefront.

My attention was drawn to the sound of a slow clap in the direction of the dark alley. The ominous black clouds had faded revealing three monstrous creatures of bone and meat pacing back and forth. The clap was coming from one of the riders, a young man in ren-fair clothes with a stylized mask and small crown.

“Nicely fucking done. You really bruted your way through that fight.” He was wearing a slightly sarcastic smirk, but there was a cautious edge to it. “Ten out of ten, full points.”

“Not a brute.” A blond girl in a purple and black outfit with a domino mask chimed in. “More of a tinker really. He buffs himself to fight.”

One of the last two riders, a guy in motorcycle leathers and a skull helmet cleared his throat. “We appreciate the help. Oni Lee is a serious threat and you really helped us out there.” There were clouds of darkness leaking around the seams of his helmet and his voice had a strange echoy resonance.

There was a growl from the last rider, a muscular girl with a cheap dog mask. Her growl was echoed by the three monsters. “We could have taken him.”

“Maybe,” The guy in biker leathers clarified, “but we still appreciate the help.”

I continued to stare at the four capes. The reason I hadn’t replied wasn’t because I recognized them as the Undersiders, a smash and grab villain team so minor I hadn’t even bothered to research them since getting my powers. It wasn’t because I was squaring up for another fight. It wasn’t because of the exhaustion I was feeling. It was because my passenger was basically going nuts.

The emotional link I have with my passenger is complicated. It’s always there, but unless I’m dealing with something cape related it tends to be fairly muted. Cape responses vary considerably, but generally villains trigger some kind of negative emotion. That was most certainly not the case here.

The reactions I was getting were complicated and a lot more nuanced that anything I had picked up before. Mostly the feeling was sympathetic, though in different ways for each Undersider. As I swept my gaze across the four of them I felt spikes of compassion, amusement, admiration, respect, and small levels of caution. Before I could respond or try to parse the information I was getting the girl in purple spoke up.

“Grue, we need to leave.” Her face was ashen.

“Tattletale?” He glanced around as if looking for a threat.

“Full black out. We need to move now.” His body language seemed confused. She spoke again, her voice taking on a desperate edge. “He’s reading us!”

The biker, Grue, went stock still for a fraction of a second, then snapped up both his arms and let out a roiling wave of black mist. As it flowed over me I could hear the sounds of the creatures scrabbling over the pavement, but the noise was delayed and sourceless. The cloud of darkness was pitch black and had a murky feel to it. It also didn’t seem to be dispersing any time soon.

Did that girl know about my passenger? Was that part of her power? Should I be worried about other people picking up on the connection and information I was getting? I focused on Tattletale and gauged the emotions that were being sent to me. There was the sense that she was dangerous. Well, not physically dangerous but still a threat. There was also a certain amount of faith in her, and admiration. It felt like it was both for her abilities and her character. Concern was there as well. She was in a bad spot. I couldn’t pick out what she was being threatened by, but it was something my passenger felt she needed help with.

That was a lot to deal with, and it significantly more detailed than what I’d gotten from any other cape. It felt like other Undersiders had as much information attached to them as well, but this wasn’t the time to place through that. I was currently standing in the middle of the road in a cloud of supernatural darkness. Luckily I had something that might help with that.

I reached into my pouches and started fishing out individual reagents. I hadn’t prepped this formula for obvious reasons. It had no combat utility and I couldn’t imagine a situation where it would be necessary.

Well, that situation was now. I separated out two units of ash and one of wax and combined them in the Revealer formula. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it was my best chance of getting out of here without having to feel my way along the walls of buildings.

It worked. Well, it sort of worked. The darkness didn’t vanish, but I could make out the shape of things. It was like looking at a wireframe model of the world. Not full vision, but immensely better than trying to stumble my way out of this mess.

It also gave me a chance to appreciate the scene of my fight with Oni Lee. The grenade cluster had created an actual crater in the middle of the street and shrapnel had pockmarked the surrounding walls and broken more than a few windows. That was probably why the Undersiders had stayed back. I was in serious discomfort from that mess. Any normal human would have been reduced to a smear. I doubt even the monster dogs they were riding would have been able to stand up to that.

Speaking of which, I was done feeling like I’d been shoved through a meat grinder. I dug out one of my prepared formulas, a feather and a piece of ginger root. It was the most powerful healing formula I had with the only downside being that I could only use it on myself. I combined the ingredients and tossed the reaction into the air. The restorative effects settled over me and instantly I felt the pain vanish. It did nothing to help the frays and tears of my clothing, but that was a lesser concern. I had been at ground zero for dozens of grenades and managed to walk away from it with nothing but a bit of clothing damage. What must Oni Lee have thought after that?

Actually, what was he thinking? A few seconds of searching had me locate the silver sphere he dropped when I broke his arm. It was basic in its design, simple metal with a single seam and an activation switch protected against accidental triggering. You didn’t need mechanical expertise to figure out what this was. When conventional weapons weren’t enough Oni Lee had broken out one of Bakuda’s tinker tech devices. This was almost certainly some horrible kind of bomb.

It was dangerous just to be holding something like this. I didn’t doubt a bomb tinker would have some method of remote detonation. The thing was, how did I dispose of this properly? Tinker tech would be beyond the means of the bomb squad and I didn’t have any way of contacting the Protectorate. Also, it may have been a very bad idea, but I didn’t want to just get rid of it. This was the very first piece of tinker tech I had held in my own hands. The potential that I could learn from this was making me seriously consider the risks of holding on to it.

If there was a remote detonator then it would have a signal to trigger it. There was also the possibility it was on a deadman’s switch and would go off it a signal dropped away, but I doubted that. The chance that Oni Lee could end up somewhere when the signal would drop out and end up at ground zero was too high. It’s possible it was on a timer that would detonate if not reset after a fixed amount of time, but that was less likely than there just being remote detonation built in.

One thing I was certain about was nothing could reach my workshop when the door was closed. That was a piece of absolute knowledge that came when I got the power. I had enough steel in stock to build a container that would block any type of conventional signal. It’s possible Bakuda uses something exotic and tinker based for her triggers, but I doubt it would be universally implemented in handheld grenades. Not with how recently she triggered.

I felt the Celestial Forge move again as a constellation approached. During the fight with Oni Lee my power had failed to latch onto one of the larger motes from the Vehicle constellation. This time it connected with a small mote from what turned out to be the ‘Time’ constellation.

The ability my power got wasn’t specifically connected with time, but the mote had a link to another much larger mote in the same consolation. Whatever that was, the first ability was necessary for whatever time power the second one represented. And I wasn’t exactly disappointed with what I had connected to.

The ability was called ‘Scientist: Machinery’. It represented doctorate level understanding of the actual science behind a specific field, in this case machinery and mechanical applications. It also carried an intelligence increase, though what that meant exactly was difficult to gauge. It would definitely help with my pseudo tinkering, but it wasn’t some kind of serendipitous power that would let me crack the secrets of tinker tech explosives.

Actually, it was possible that whatever caused this darkness to block light also interfered with other signals. That would mean I had a window to lock down the bomb that would last until this cloud dissipated. I just needed to get to my workshop.

I moved into the alley and hunted around until I found a door that would serve my purpose. I fished out my key, opened the way to my workshop, and barred the portal behind me. The inside was still lit, but wisps of eerie darkness slipped through the gap in the door. I ignored that and headed straight for my lab.

Using every ounce of my new skills I started tearing through my stock of materials to cobble together the most secure container I could manage. Multiple redundant faraday cages, thick plates of steel and an extensive grounding system covered it. The resulting structure would have to be disassembled for it to be moved and was wedged in the furthest corner of my workshop to minimize any damage that could be caused. It was absolutely the best containment system capable of being constructed with my skill set and resources. Unless Bakuda uses some trigger mechanism completely removed from electromagnetic communication this would be able to block it.

I still did all the work with my Force Field formula active and elected to not sleep in my usual workshop adjacent bed.

Force Field was seriously powerful for a defensive formula. It would completely block a single attack regardless of strength. The reason I picked Defend over it this evening was once that first attack was blocked it was completely spent. It would have helped me against only one of the dozens of grenades I had been pelted with. Against this bomb it would be able to save me providing the effect didn’t have multiple stages, or a persistent effect, or some kind of environmental change, or a chemical or biological vector. In short it provided some security, but nowhere near enough.

By the time I finished work and changed back to my civilian wear the darkness was fading to occasional wisps of shadow. It was getting to be late enough at night that it could technically count as early in the morning and I had the ill fortune of having to work tomorrow. I trudged back to my apartment in civilian wear, opened my workshop just long enough to grab my blankets and pillow, then collapsed in my apartment in an attempt to get as much sleep as possible before my alarm. I could sort out the rest of this mess tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Black Thumb (Mad Max Gauntlet) 100:  
> You have the skills of an expert mechanic, able to keep vehicles running even in the most inhospitable conditions. Repairing and tuning up engines is your bread and butter, even while they’re still operating. You also have a feel for how to upgrade cars in more esoteric ways; hey, it takes skill to add that many spikes and not hurt the handling!
> 
> Scientist: Machinery (Girl Genius) 100:  
> You have a DOCTORATE! And skill in ACTUAL SCIENCE! That doesn’t need you to go crazy to work! Admittedly, it won’t break the fabric of space and time, but meh. Tradeoffs everywhere you go. You’re highly trained in one field, and can easily apply its principles to your work. After all, building a crazed abomination upon the natural order usually requires at least a smidgen of understanding of which bones are supposed to go where (Even if you end up changing them around a little). At the very least, you’re also in the genius range of standard intelligence.


	4. 3.1 Interlude Brian

Interlude: Brian

Brian climbed the steps to the hideout with the rest of the Undersiders trailing behind him. On paper this looked like a great victory for the team. Lung was captured and Oni Lee had been crippled. Unfortunately circumstances were more complicated than that.

This had been the first major offensive the Undersiders had conducted and it had been a hard sell for the team. Before tonight he would have thought that hitting Lung’s casino was the biggest risk he could live with. The take from that job had been excellent, but it had kicked the hornet’s nest as far as the ABB was concerned. Lung was on the warpath and they’d already had to cancel two jobs because of ABB spotters that Lisa had picked out.

Taking the fight to the gang had been a dicey proposition. Alec was in favor of waiting a few weeks for things to die down. It wasn’t a terrible plan, and honestly Brian probably would have gone along with it in any other circumstances. Unfortunately that just wasn’t an option right now.

He was so close to getting custody of Aisha, but there were expenses that went along with that. He knew his mother was circling and looking for any excuse she could take to contest the case. A drop in income from his ‘job’, a delay on setting up Aisha’s room in his apartment, even extra debt if he tried to use credit cards to bridge the gap, any of those could torpedo his chances of keeping his sister safe. He couldn’t afford to sit back from jobs for weeks. Actually, with how vindictive Lung was known to be those weeks would likely spill into months.

Fortunately Brian wasn’t alone in pushing for the attack. The boss wanted the Undersiders back in the field and Lisa was in his corner on that. Brian knew Rachel was caring for far more dogs than the three she took on jobs. Because of that her expenses well exceeded what their base salary could cover and she was both hungry for work and defensive of her share. She could not afford to sit things out until the ABB decided they weren’t a priority.

They had talked Alec around eventually, but he kept voicing his doubts the whole time. Brian had a sense everyone was feeling the same way, but Alec was the only one complaining about things. Heading out that night had been a terrifying experience. No one was letting their fear show, but the dogs were picking up on it and they were agitated as the team rode out to face the ABB capes.

Brian had planned things out as well as he could with Lisa. No one in the city would have taken the odds for the Undersiders in a fight with the ABB, but he felt they at least had a chance. By striking from ambush and keeping their opponents off balance and separated they could do this. Oni Lee didn’t do well in darkness and Lung was outclassed by Rachel’s dogs for the first few stages of his growth. If everything went well they could get the drop on their opponents and either finish this or make them cautious enough that they wouldn’t risk a confrontation.

Then the night had proven the old adage that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Two new capes in one night. It wasn’t unheard of. Brockton had a larger community of fresh triggers, c-listers, and mercenary capes than anyone really gave it credit for. With Lung, Kaiser, Armsmaster, and Dauntless in the same city it was easy to overlook a guy running around in a budget costume doing work on the periphery of the scene.

Hell, until last year Brian would have met that definition himself.

It would have been unusual to just run into capes by chance but no part of this operation was subtle. The tinker had followed the sound of their fight with Oni Lee and the bug cape had found Lung’s staging point. It could just as easily have been protectorate heroes as that pair of green capes.

What was unusual was how well both of them had faired against the powerhouses of the ABB. The tinker had taken over a fight that was pushing the entire team to their limits and walked out of it with only a frayed coat while Oni Lee slunk off with a broken arm. The bug cape may have been in a bad spot when they arrived but Lung had been worked over on a level that would normally take an entire team of capes to pull off. If he hadn’t been drunk on venom the dogs would have had a serious fight on their hands and Brian couldn’t have guaranteed all the Undersiders would have walked away from it.

In theory things went better than they could have hoped for. In practice things were a lot more complicated. Rather than the elation of a successful job the morale of the group was mixed.

Bitch was in her usual foul mood. This job had been purely defensive. It countered an imminent threat to the team, but didn’t have any pay or loot. Bitch was here out of obligation and to ensure continued work. With the appearance of the two new capes the normally wary girl was on edge.

Alec was as irreverent as ever, heading straight for the couch and grabbing a controller with one hand and some leftover pizza with the other, looking to all the world like he was completely content with how the night turned out. Brian knew better, but the question of just how much of that was an act was something he was never able to nail down.

Lisa was most concerning. She had recovered from what looked like a real moment of panic and settled into her usually smartass role when dealing with the bug controller, but whatever happened with the other cape had clearly shaken her badly. She had been quiet on the way back and Lisa was never quiet unless something was going very wrong.

Alec glanced over from the couch and smirked. “What’s the big deal? Tonight went great. We should have more missions where other capes do all the work for us.”

“We didn’t need their help.” Rachel was in the kitchen getting some food for the patiently waiting Brutus, Judas, and Angelica. Brian knew what she was concerned about. Rachel felt takes were being split too many way already. She would oppose any recruitment attempts, both to protect her share and out of general distrust. The thing was the Undersiders needed new blood. They had reached the limit of what they could handle with four people. Lisa might be spooked, but Brian doubted that would matter as the boss had been pushing for recruitment. A master who could take on Lung was a seriously valuable asset. Whatever the other guy’s deal was he had taken an attack that would have put down any bruiser in the empire and come out swinging.

“Are you kidding? Did you see that first guy at work? Oni Lee’s lucky to still have a hand after that hit.”

“Lucky shot.” She paused. “And Lisa didn’t like him.”

It was rare for Rachel to show any concern for the feelings of another member of the team. Brian wondered if she was actually worried for Lisa or just using it as another excuse to put off recruitment. It could easily be both. The girl was cautious enough regarding candidates everyone supported. Seeing Lisa react like she did probably raised all kinds of fears as far as the tinker cape was concerned.

“Oh yeah. Hey Lisa, what was up with that? Did you start feeling tingly when he looked at you?” Lisa stopped rubbing her temples and shot Alec a seething glare. “That’s perfectly normal for a girl your age. You see, when a man and a woman…” Brian’s thrown cushion hit him hard enough to knock him clean off the sofa. The idiot laid on the ground laughing to himself and Rachel looked on in disgust.

“Lisa, conference. Now.” She gave a quick nod and they headed for the rooms. After a seconds hesitation she went for her own room rather than his. Another bad sign.

Lisa’s room was sparse and felt more like an office than a living space. There was a filing cabinet in one corner and a laptop on her desk. Papers were strewn across the room, some unorganized, some in neat piles. The bed looked as untouched as it had when he helped her move it in here. Lisa took a seat on the edge of the mattress and peeled off her domino mask. Brian considered, then perched on the edge of the desk while facing her.

He took a breath. “I need to know what got you so freaked out back there.”

Lisa seemed to consider her phrasing, then shook her head and remained quiet.

“Ok, what did you mean when you said he was reading us?” He hadn’t wanted to bring this up in front of the others but the possibilities had him in a cold sweat. “Are we compromised?”

“No.” Her voice was nowhere near as confident as Brian had become accustomed to. “I don’t think so.” He took a breath and gestured for her to elaborate. “It wasn’t like what I do. It was like someone was feeding him impressions of us. And they were all accurate. Like someone who knew each of us really well was telling him how to respond.”

Brian’s chest tightened. “How bad is this?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything else like this, ever. And whatever it was is unrelated to his other powers.”

“Do we have to worry about him coming after us? How much does he know?”

“He barely knows anything. That’s not what set me off. All he has is this emotional impression of us. Whoever gave it to him is another story.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean whoever is feeding him this impression knows all about us. Us specifically. The stuff he was getting was nuanced and specific to each of our backgrounds. His source, they know everything.”

Brian let out a slow breath. “You have any idea who they are?”

She shook her head frantically. “Who, what, I have no idea if they even really exist. I’m flying blind here.” He could see how much it pained her to admit that. “It could be some weird thinker power, or it could be someone connected with him, or it could be something even stranger. I can’t get information on them and that frankly terrifies me.”

“Is he being sent against us? Is that it?” This could be bad. They might be able to outmaneuver him, but there was nothing they had that would be able to counter that kind of toughness. Oni Lee had dropped enough explosives to level a building. Without Lisa’s warning to take cover the shrapnel alone would have turned them into Swiss cheese. He was at ground zero and only ended up a little battered.

“No, it’s...” She paused as if considering her words. Then a sour smile crossed her face. “That thing? The person, power, whatever. The thing that’s feeding him information? It likes us.”

“What?” Brian couldn’t keep the shock off his face.

“Yeah. Whoever, whatever this is. It likes us. The Undersiders. It likes us as people, as a team. Even Rachel and Alec.”

Brian blinked. “Alec?”

“Yeah, even knowing everything about him.”

“Well, that’s...” He was at a loss for words. Concerning? Comforting? What the hell was he supposed to make of this?

“Both reassuring and terrifying at the same time?”

“Sounds about right.” He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “You report any of this to the boss yet?”

She shook her head. “Standard mission complete text but no details on the new capes. Though he probably already knows a good chunk of it.”

Here came the hard part. “He going to want us to make a play at recruitment?”

She nodded slowly. “Almost certainly. After we blew it with Spitfire he’s been pushing heavily for it.”

Which meant he wanted bigger jobs. Brian didn’t have Lisa’s level of contact with the man, but he could tell the direction his team was being steered. “What do you think?”

She considered. “Bug girls more likely. We give her some space from Rachel for the introduction and I’m sure I can talk her around. She’s new but she’s powerful. We’d be lucky to land her.”

“After facing down Lung I doubt anyone would argue with that. We’ll have to put it to a vote, but I can’t see there being any issues.” The caveat ‘Except for Rachel’ went unsaid. “What about the other guy?”

“After that performance there’s going to be a big push to get him onboard, if just to keep him from being scooped up by the competition.” Lisa’s voice betrayed how she felt about that idea.

“What did you get from him? I mean beyond all that insight stuff?”

Lisa considered. “New cape. Newer trigger than bug girl. She’s had her powers for months and has been building towards heading out. Getting equipment, costume, that kind of stuff. He’s had his powers for maybe a week. A lot of what he was using was newer than that.”

“You said he was a tinker?”

“Sort of. He made his gear, but it was really low tech stuff. It just looked nice. The way he uses his powers is probably closer to Dauntless than Armsmaster. Totem cape stuff, items as a conduit for his power. What he had works for him but not anyone else.”

“So basically useless for team support?” Not that that would be enough to kill the pressure to recruit. Not with how he fared tonight.

“There was some mechanical knowledge there. You can tell from how his gear was made. Access to a decent machine shop too. But no, he’s not going to be churning out ray guns for anyone.”

“With what he pulled it’s not like he needs to sell himself on the prospect of propping up a team.”

“That was closer than it looked.” Brian raised an eyebrow. “He managed a last minute boost that saved his life. There’s some continuous durability, but not on the level of that many grenades.”

“That what he pulled after the blast? With that weird glow?”

Lisa nodded. “Some kind of enhancement effect. He has the materials for it in those pouches.” She paused to consider something, then shuddered. “Early in the fight he was considering going for one of them that would have ended things.”

“What, he had something that would have put down Oni Lee?”

“Put down as in six feet down.” Lisa’s voice was grave. “He was trying to stay nonlethal, but he had some big guns in reserve.”

That was concerning. Knowing about it was better than going in blind, but if recruitment went badly they would be facing serious firepower as well as someone they couldn’t drop.

“What are we talking about here? How bad could this get.”

“I don’t know.” She waved him off before he could respond. “I don’t know because he doesn’t know. He hasn’t had a chance to test out that stuff. Whatever it is he knows it’s dangerous, but he’s not clear on the specifics.”

Brian winced at that. In terms of ‘how bad’ that was pretty fucking bad. On the cape scene there were few things scarier than a tinker pulling out some device and saying something to the effect of ‘Ok, I’m not sure what this does.’

Then again, he had held back from using them even after Oni Lee dropped an Easter basket worth of grenades on him. That was better restraint than most capes. It was a serious contrast to the bug girl throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Lung in an attempt to bring him down.

Brian had seen the effect of a brown recluse bite once. Once. That was enough for a lifetime.

Still, that was the kind of thing you very much wanted on your side if just to keep it from being directed towards you. Plus that was a significant level of firepower that was precise and tightly controlled.

Brian knew the value of intimidation. He had built his entire reputation around being the monster in the dark. A giant swarm of insects had its own power. It was the kind of thing people would react to before they were consciously aware of what their bodies were doing. Everyone knew the threat of an insect and their minds could easily scale it up. That had a lot more impact than someone who may or may not be carrying around whatever vaguely threatening thing was in his pocket.

“We’ll go forward with the bug girl, take a vote once everyone’s calmed down. The other guy, we’ll play that as it comes.”

Lisa shook her head. “The boss is going to push for him. Hard.”

“I know.” He needed the support to keep Aisha safe, but sometime this whole arrangement was just infuriating. “We see how things progress with the bug girl. We lock her down and maybe we’ll get a bit of breathing room on the grenade sponge.”

She grinned at that. “Your optimism is adorable.”

He winced. “Any chance that this mystery thinker power or whatever he has going on will convince the boss we should stay hands off?”

“No.” Lisa’s answer was immediate and devoid of emotion. “In fact, with that kind of power if we don’t manage to land him the boss will probably make a play of his own.”

As much as Brian hated to admit it that seemed pretty likely. Despite working for the boss since the team was founded he still didn’t have much of a sense of the man or what his long term goals were. One thing he had picked up was there were serious long term plans in the works. Whoever their boss was, he was either a thinker or playing in the same league as one. Few capes were as territorial as those with that classification.

“Can you manage this? It’s going to fall to you to handle the contacts and plan the approaches. With how you were tonight...”

“I’ll be alright. Mainly it just caught me off guard.” She let out a sigh. “I’ll contact the boss and update you when I have a better idea of where this is going.”

Brian nodded. “I’ll head back out, start floating the idea of recruitment. Might go better if I can ease Rachel into it.”

Lisa checked her watch. “Looks like neither of us will be getting much sleep tonight.”

“What’s that they say, no rest for the wicked?”

That got a slight grin from Lisa but Brian could tell this was wearing her down. He didn’t like this. She was right about how hard the boss would push. An unconnected tinker was too tempting a prize and that thinker effect, whatever it was, would push things over the top. They needed to find some way to at least get on good terms with him.

He could leave that to Lisa. In the meantime he gently opened the possibility of recruitment to Alec and Rachel. With Rachel he had to restate every argument they’d used for Spitfire’s recruitment and then some. Alec was less than helpful in that regard, but at least wasn’t trying to actively sabotage anything. By the time he’d gotten her to at least entertain the idea it was too late to even consider going back to his apartment. As he crashed in his room in the hideout he hoped Lisa was having better luck than him.

They’d need it.


	5. 4 Recovery

I woke up on the floor of what used to be my bedroom before I had shifted to sleeping in a pocket dimension. Well, less bedroom and more the bed area of my weirdly shaped studio apartment. It was easy to remember why I had moved as I took in the smells, textures, and general dinginess of my surroundings. I had spent the night with a meager amount of bedding between me and the questionable carpeting of the apartment. It was the best I could do without trying to fit my mattress through the closet door again. That had taken too long the first time and turned into a game of furniture Tetris in my attempts to get the damn thing to fit. Still, with how my back felt right now sleeping one room away from a tinker tech bomb didn’t sound as bad as it had the previous night.

My alarm had sounded, but with my limited sleep I was seriously considering skipping the morning run. I figured frantic melee combat has to count for cardio right? I was probably due for a rest day.

That was when I felt a constellation approach within the Celestial Forge. I still had extra reach from my last connection and it had grown further since then. A link solidified to a small mote in the ‘Knowledge’ constellation.

The ability I latched onto was called ‘Not a Stupid Grunt’. The odd name was kind of appropriate because I definitely was not stupid now. My Scientist ability had boosted me to genius. That was a bit abstract since genius is a pretty broad range and quantifying intelligence is a difficult process. I was more focused on the doctorate level knowledge I had picked up from that ability. This ability didn’t come with any new information. It was just a straight cognitive booster and it was considerably more pronounced than anything I had picked up before.

This ability would let me out strip any non-parahuman scientist in the world with only moderate effort. Combined with the boost I had already received and my mechanical knowledge from Scientist and Black Thumb and I was probably as good at mechanical systems as most tinkers. Certainly better than any who didn’t specialize in the subject.

One thing I had been concerned about was the prospect that this power would alter my mind. My passenger had been open about that. I didn’t have the conflict levers most parahumans did, but there was a certain amount of mental alteration that was necessary if I was going to be able to operate at the level of a tinker. It seemed that this was the first significant step in that direction.

Somehow the idea of going to stock shelves for eight hours seemed laughable. This wasn’t a ‘too good for menial labor’ way of thinking. Over the last day I’d gone from moderate understanding of mechanical engineering to career mechanic to the kind of person who would lead an industrial design team to the kind of person whose research would be distributed to industrial design teams. There was no reason for me to keep my day job at this point. My finances would take a hit, but I was pretty sure I could fish a car out of a river and have it running perfectly within a day. I would be able to find a way to capitalize on my powers if just from highly efficient repairs.

It would result in a short term hit to my savings, but I could endure it for a couple of weeks. Quitting two hours before the start of shift was a dick move, but if they weren’t going to pay for full time employee’s benefits then they shouldn’t expect loyalty.

That phone call was less than polite on my manager’s part, but the deed was done and I had the full day ahead of me. I started it with the absolute best possible use of my time and went back to sleep.

Three hours later I was rested, fed, caffeinated, and ready to try running at a time other than stupid o’clock. Given it was a Monday there was a different tone to the mid-morning foot traffic, but enough people apparently had flexible enough schedules that they were able to exercise at this time. I wonder if there’s ever a time of day when the nice part of the city isn’t beset by joggers. Maybe it’s just the natural background for a place like this. Clean open area means you get joggers. Cramped dirty areas means drug dealers and homeless people. Though it was probably the boardwalk enforcers who maintained that particular balance.

After my run I effectively took it easy for the rest of the day. After lunch I made my way to the library and spent the afternoon reading. I wanted to gauge the effect of whatever my new intelligence was doing. Information was definitely easier to retain and my reading speed had increased substantially. I wasn’t exactly speed reading my way through the entire library but I could see how it would be possible to quickly master a field of study with these abilities. I wouldn’t get there overnight, and an afternoon of browsing various subjects hadn’t resulted in that much improvement, but a few months of dedicated effort would have me outstripping people who devoted years of their life towards a specific field.

When it came to machinery I was already well ahead of what any non-tinker would be able to manage.

The current issue was there was a limit to what I could pull off with the resources I had available. I could work more efficiently, but the time required to fabricate anything from base components, not even considering the comparatively limited tools available, effectively barrd me from anything more advanced. I would need to start hunting down better materials and tools. So far I had been able to hold off tinker scavenging, but unless I got another source of materials and equipment soon that would be my only option.

If I could find work as an auto mechanic, even under the table, that would address my financial and supply problems. I did have some concerns about being able to keep my abilities secret. It would have been hard enough with just Black Thumb on display. Combine that with my Scientist ability and my intelligence booster and I would be setting off every tinker alarm they had. Particularly bad seeing as the only place that would hire someone without experience or credentials would be barely above a chop shop. Get outed as a tinker in one of those places and you’re headed straight for gang recruitment.

Those were problems for later. Right now I had to get to training. Proper training, seeing as I had a boxing lesson with Mr. Laborn.

Mr. Laborn didn’t precisely run the boxing gym, but he was the most respected coach there. He was also a stickler for respect, punctuality, and proper dedication. Thus I showed up half an hour early for stretches and warmup. I didn’t think I was actually going to become a great boxer, but last night proved that without combat buffs I was fresh meat for any decently trained fighter. Oni Lee didn’t have any power that boosted him physically and he would have taken me apart about a dozen times if not for my durability power. Just because I could do some pseudo tinkering now was no reason to neglect my training.

Five minutes before our lesson Mr. Laborn arrived. He was an older black man built like a linebacker with an attitude that demanded respect. Doug is the kind of person who’s on a first name basis with everyone he’s known for more than five minutes. I’m pretty sure Mr. Laborn is still Mr. Laborn to people he’s known since his childhood. I moved to greet him, but he waved me off.

“Finish that warmup. I’ll be with you soon.” It was at that point I noticed the teenage girl trailing behind her with a bored expression on her face. She was wearing work out attire heavily at odds with the rest of the gym. She had on a neon green racerback top that left her stomach exposed and a set of leggings. There was a purple streak in her hair and she had multiple piercings on display. Her attention was mainly focused on the smartphone in her hand with only enough attention paid to the rest of the gym to avoid bumping into anyone. Even when Mr. Laborn went to speak with her she barely raised her head.

The family resemblance was there, if muted. That meant she was his daughter. His teenage daughter. His barely teenage daughter who had apparently started developing very early.

That wasn’t what concerned me. The main thing that had me on edge was that my passenger apparently knew her. He had emotional resonance to that girl that was as strong as anything from the Undersiders. I mean, I could quickly rule out the possibility that she was secretly one of them, not unless there were significant shapeshifting powers at play.

Was she secretly a cape? If my passenger could pick out capes in their civilian identities that was a problem. If it got out the violation of the unwritten rules would effectively make it open season on me. Still, I couldn’t imagine who she could be. There were some independent heroes and villains in the city that I hadn’t read up on, so that was a possibility, but then why was the reaction so close to the Undersiders?

I finished my warmup and cautiously approached them. She looked less than thrilled to be here and Mr. Laborn seemed none too pleased with the arrangement either.

“Joe, I don’t believe you know my daughter Aisha.” He somehow made the statement in a way that implied ‘you will not know my daughter Aisha’ so hard I could almost hear it beneath his words.

“No, I don’t.” I didn’t leave any room for misinterpretation. I stayed focused on Mr. Laborn and ignored the highly amused feelings from my passenger.

He gave a curt nod. “Her brother was going to watch her tonight, but he had a work obligation. She’ll be working out here during your class.”

From the tone of his voice I honestly felt bad for her brother. From everything I’d learned, Mr. Laborn liked order. Mr. Laborn meshed with this gym like they had been made for each other while Aisha could not be doing more to stop from fitting in. I mean, her outfit would maybe have worked in one of those upscale mall fitness centers. Compared to this relic of a building she practically looked like a time traveler, and I’m guessing it was deliberate on her part.

Mr. Laborn seemed perfectly aware of what she was doing and looked about as happy to have her here as she was being stuck in the gym. With the surprise of having this dropped on him I doubted his son was in for a happy reunion the next time Mr. Laborn saw him.

“Hey.” Aisha glanced up at me, then back to her phone, then back up with her eyes lingering. The mess of emotions from my passenger wasn’t helped by the approach of the Knowledge constellation within the Celestial Forge. My power failed to latch onto the nearest mote, but the combined distraction of all of those things happening at once threw me off balance in a way that seemed to entertain Aisha to no end.

Mr. Laborn’s expression was anything but amused. I’m not sure what he saw, or thought he saw, in that exchange but he clearly wasn’t happy about it. “I heard you’ve been training. Let’s see how that’s working out for you. Vince! Joe’s going to need a sparring partner.”

I held off a gulp as Mr. Laborn called over the gym’s top junior heavyweight fighter. Technically we were in the same weight class, but let’s just say Vince wore it better. Vince looked momentarily confused, then spotted Aisha and the penny dropped. He gave me a sympathetic look but proceeded to the ring anyway.

Meanwhile it occurred to me that this was the furthest my power’s reach had ever grown. The next time a constellation came by I might have a chance of landing one of the stronger powers, providing this training session didn’t kill me first.

“So I see you met Aisha.” He started lacing up his gloves. I grabbed one of the well-used sets the gym stocked for newbies and joined him.

“Yeah. So, is she as much trouble as she seems?”

“Worse. She’s smelled the blood in the water now. She’ll be messing with you until you either run off or she finds a more entertaining target.”

I glanced over to see Aisha staring at me. She quirked her lips and her father’s frown deepened.

“Or Mr. Laborn kills me.”

“Oh, he won’t kill you. He has an entire gym full of people ready to do that for him.” He saw my expression. “Look, just tough it out and try not to engage her. If you’re no fun she’ll eventually stop coming around.”

“Speaking from experience?”

He shook his head. “Thankfully I’ve been able to dodge that bullet. Everyone here kind of knows how to manage around her. You’ll be ok.”

“That mean you’re not going to rearrange my face today?”

He looked over at Mr. Laborn, then back to me. “Yeah, that’s not happening. Strap in, this is going to be rough.”

It wasn’t an actual beatdown, but it was probably as close to it as Mr. Laborn could get while still technically being an actual training session. It didn’t help that Aisha kept shirking the workouts her father tried to assign her in order to hang around the ring and try to get my attention. My passenger was just amused by this to no end, which only made things harder to deal with.

It was easy to see why Vince was the star of the gym. The guy hit like a freight train and probably would have put me on the mat after two punches. My slight height advantage was meaningless against someone who moved like lightning and punched like he was trying to blow out the back of your skull. I was saved by my abilities, and fortunately in a way that wasn’t blatantly obvious. I got the defensive properties of the best piece of gear I was wearing. In this case that happened to be my gloves. Now boxing gloves aren’t exactly heavy armor, but they do cushion blunt impacts. Not enough to negate them, just enough that I wasn’t being dropped with every hit.

I’m pretty good at toughing out bad situations. Actually for me that’s probably more of a character flaw than a virtue. It did mean I was able to make it through a full training session of sparing against a rising contender while remaining on my feet. Not unhurt, just still upright. I think I actually impressed Mr. Laborn, though he’s not the kind of person who would typically express that openly. About half way through Aisha transitioned from teasing to cheering on the amount of damage I was taking. By the end of it I was sore as hell, exhausted, but considering the guy who had been using me as a punching bag didn’t look much more energetic I counted it as a win.

“Not bad.” High praise from Mr. Laborn. “I’m glad you’re taking this seriously. Your footwork needs practice. Make sure to work on that before next week.” He paused and looked at my face. “Get some ice on that when you get home. You did good.”

He intercepted his daughter who was heading my way in earnest and half dragged her out of the gym. I let out a long breath and looked over as Vince approached me.

“Here.” He handed me a water bottle which I took gratefully. “Nice work tonight. You’ve got some potential if you stick with this.”

“What, my talent for taking punches?”

“That’s most of what boxing is about. No matter how good you are you need to be able to take a hit. I think we can say you have that down.”

I nodded slowly. “Well, not that this wasn’t great, but I think I’m spent.”

“See you next week.”

I froze. “What, seriously?”

He just shrugged. “Me or another guy. Mr. Laborn isn’t exactly subtle about his daughter.”

“Great. Any idea how long until she loses interest?”

“No idea. That girl is kind of all over the place. Could be a couple of days, could be months.”

“Hey,” This was awkward to ask but I kind of needed to know. “She’s like, really young to be playing at that kind of thing. Is everything alright there?”

He clammed up and the good humor he’d shown earlier faded. He quickly glanced around and his voice dropped as he responded. “Ok, you did not hear this from me. Apparently her mom got custody after the divorce. She’s a complete piece of work, anyone here will tell you that. Nobody knows exactly what went down, but three years ago she lost custody of Aisha to Mr. Laborn. I wouldn’t ask about it, but you should know why Mr. Laborn acts the way he does concerning her.”

“Got it.” I swallowed. “I hope I don’t actually have to say I’ve got no interest in anything regarding her, right?”

“Trust me, if anyone here got that sense you would be in much worse shape and wouldn’t be coming back for another lesson”

That was small comfort. I gave him a nod and he stared off for a bit. “Everyone has stuff they’re dealing with. This is just one of those things.”

“Right.” I climbed to my feet. “Well, I need to get cleaned up and try to sleep this off.”

“Ice is going to be your friend there.”

I nodded and headed off to think. Three years ago Aisha would have been ten, possibly nine depending on how the dates lined up. For a mother to lose custody things would have to have gone seriously bad. There were only a few things that could justify something like that and from Aisha’s behavior it was easy to guess which one was most likely.

I hoped I was wrong. I really hoped I was wrong, but I couldn’t see how. The way she acted, the reactions of everyone in the gym, the hushed tones when Vince talked about it. This put a new and depressing spin on how everyone in the gym was treating this. No wonder Vince had been willing to work me over to squash even the hint of something inappropriate. This wasn’t some comedy situation with a girl teasing someone to make him uncomfortable. This was a god damn tragedy.

And for some reason my passenger found the situation funny. He had been entertained by it from the moment Aisha had walked in. Beyond the surface level what the fuck was supposed to be funny about this?

That’s why I was staring into the locker room mirror trying to dig through every emotional resonance my passenger had associated with her. On the surface it looked really bad. I was standing in a bathroom using what amounted to a thinker power to dig up information on a thirteen year old girl. But fuck it, I had to know. I had to know there was something else there than the irreverent amusement I’d been getting all night.

My body ached and my face was starting to swell, but I wasn’t leaving until I got to the bottom of this. Carefully I considered aspects of Aisha’s life one at a time and felt the reaction from my passenger. The lack of severity from his emotions was shocking. I was horrified by the entire situation. He seemed to feel she was fine. She wasn’t in danger, and he believed she would be safer in the future. Digging back there was serious distaste for Aisha’s mother, but not the level of revulsion I felt at the situation. But at least there was something.

I shook things off and started getting cleaned up. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. Maybe my passenger knew more about the situation than I did, but I couldn’t see any way this could be anything less than appalling. When I had thought about the exact circumstances that led to her father getting custody there had been concern for her, but not on the level that it seemed there should be. It felt like she had some level of protection, or safety, but even if that was true the situation was still a nightmare. I don’t know how you could look at the aftermath of something like that and be amused by the girl’s antics.

Maybe I was biased. It could be it wasn’t as bad as I was assuming, or it could be she really got the help she needed and there wasn’t any trauma tied up in her current actions. It still felt like for the first time since I triggered there was an emotional disconnect between me and my passenger.

There were doubts here that I didn’t like to dwell on. I’d had a sense of the breath of my passenger’s knowledge since my trigger event. Until now I had honestly been fine following his lead. It made sense that he wouldn’t feel as strongly about some things as I did, but I didn’t expect the first divergence to be over something like this.

I had to remember who I was dealing with. What I was dealing with. Thanks to my passenger’s intervention I had managed to avoid being plugged into one of those continent sized extradimensional meat computers with a conflict obsession. As comforting as avoiding that fate was I had to remember the reason it had happened. The point of all of this was building the Celestial Forge. My passenger was concerned about me, sure, and that was comforting, but primarily that was because I was necessary for that project. My passenger’s guidance was great for keeping myself alive, avoiding threats, securing resources, and even predicting disasters. All of those things would impact his primary goal. Moral judgements on the other hand were a bit more suspect.

I was not in a great mood after I showered and trudged back to my apartment. My passenger had been such a source of reassurance that having it called into question risked me falling back into pre-trigger mindsets. The ache of my body didn’t help and frankly all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep until noon the next day.

I felt the gentle prodding concern from my passenger. It was comforting. That was what made it so easy to follow his lead. Reassurance, compassion, and resolve even when I wasn’t able to muster those feelings myself. I was basically a walking bruise right now. I may have felt low enough to leave things like that, but my passenger cared about my health. A part of my mind said that was only because of my work on the Celestial Forge, but that didn’t change the end result. Self-care was important. Leaving these injuries would do no one any good.

I headed for the kitchenette, immensely grateful I had stored extra reagents there. I dug out a feather and chunk of ginger and made sure my windows were covered. As I mixed the formula together the gleaming healing energy suffused me and all my aches and pains vanished. The exhaustion stayed, both physical and mental. For that I needed rest.

I looked over at my pile of blankets disdainfully. I still wasn’t secure enough to open the portal to my workshop in my own apartment. I didn’t know how well the potential signal was blocked and didn’t want any chance of being exposed in my own home. The risk I took last night to grab my bedding still had me on edge. On top of that I also didn’t know if there had been a timed detonation yet, and given some of the more aggressive agents she had used in the attack on Cornell I wasn’t opening that door without the benefit of several layers of concrete and as many protective formulas as I could manage.

So, isolated from my easy storage I instead committed myself to a quiet night of food, recovery and mindless web surfing. Dinner was the same discount muscle building meal I’d been eating for the last week. It was boring but I’d been focused enough on prepping my cape work for it not to matter. It was a rather sad meal while standing at the kitchen counter, but as soon as the food hit my stomach my mood improved and I felt a sense of relief in my body. Afterwards I got as comfortable as I was able given my lack of furniture and settled in with my laptop.

I considered a night of youtube videos and browsing memes, but decided to try to put the evening towards some productive purpose. I had been putting off my examination of the Undersiders. My passenger clearly knew something significant about them and I had to do my best to figure out what.

It was always tricky to translate the mess of emotions into something actionable. Panacea, for example, was a damn mess that I had intentionally put off sorting through after a full evening analyzing New Wave had only made the situation more complicated. After tonight it was also clear that at least the intensity of feelings didn’t always match up to how I would see them. I didn’t get the sense that the information was wrong, just a from a different perspective.

I think the problem was trying for a deep dive. That required trying to parse the information I was getting without context or a real understanding of the perspective they were coming from. Surface level reactions were good for now and I could try to break down the emotions triggered by associating them with certain people or actions at a later time.

I went with Tattletale first. Her wiki page was nearly empty. She clearly had some analysis power, though I wasn’t sure what precise shade of thinker she was. There was a sense of impressiveness connected to her, so she was probably either wielding a very strong power or had a standard one that she utilized to some incredible extent. There was affection in kind of a familial sense, as well as both caution towards her and concern for her. It felt like she was threatened by something. Strangely I didn’t feel that when I thought of any of the other Undersiders.

I moved on to Grue. He had more info, as appropriate for three years in the villain business. His history escalated from petty crime to corporate theft and major robberies. No detail on his power beyond darkness generation. I was really lucky that my Revealer formula let me see through that. Well, sort of see. I would need to refine my use of it before it could be considered able to fully counter that effect.

The emotions connected to Grue was interesting. There was some admiration there, but it felt personal rather than directed at his abilities. There was the same level of sympathy, protectiveness, and affection that seemed to be shared by all the Undersiders. The concern for Grue wasn’t exactly directed at him. Something he was doing was important? Well, at least something my passenger felt was important.

I moved on to Bitch. Or Hellhound. Rachel Lindt. Public identity known after she triggered at age fourteen. She could turn dogs into those monster things, though there weren’t any precise details on how it worked.

Bitch’s reaction had been surprising. Looking at her I’d expect the same level of stuff as Grue, respect for strength and maybe some kind of professional courtesy. What I got was pure affection and sympathy. Given what I knew about trigger events and the fact that she triggered in foster care with a master power there was definitely some level of tragedy there. There was caution, but not any sense of malice with it. She was dangerous but not bad.

I didn’t want to keep dwelling on my passenger’s reaction to Aisha, but it was interesting that there was more sympathy for Bitch than for her. The sense was whatever happened to Bitch was still in play, that she was still struggling with it, while Aisha had the worst of her situation behind her. No trigger came from a good place, but masters needed a special kind of isolation and trauma to come about. I seriously doubted she had gotten the help she needed after her trigger and there was even the possibility that mental effects from her power or passenger had made things worse.

Still, that was my passenger’s judgement. And even with all the sympathy he was feeling there wasn’t any reduction in the sense of danger. She might have come from a bad place, she might not want to hurt people, but she still had a body count attached to her name. 

When I moved on to Regent’s page the reaction brought up all my previous questions regarding my passenger’s perspective. There was some admiration, but it was framed in a way that connected it with some serious levels of disgust, but those in turn were linked to sympathy and anger directed at someone else. Whoever he was he had come from a very bad place, much worse than Bitch. The details of that were a bit too much for a lazy night of websurfing and I was approaching a limit to how much of this I could process. I closed the tab and was ready to switch back to the forums when I felt my power activate.

The Celestial Forge moved and focused on one of the arrays of powers. The Toolkits constellation was swinging towards me and my power latched onto a small mote, securing the connection. It was called Laboratorium. I had a new addition next to my workshop.

Specifically I had a full lab that specialized in the analysis of any technological device. It was practically tailor made for cracking the mystery of tinker tech and in a stroke of serendipity I got it right after I acquired my first tinker tech device.

So to hell with the peaceful night in. I had work to do. Nothing like a clear objective to get rid of those niggling doubts. Of course, I still wasn’t going to open the link in my own apartment. Fortunately Brockton Bay had loads of abandoned buildings. Since I wasn’t looking for comfort I just needed to find the least habitable one I could and open the door in the deepest part of the structure.

The areas of Brockton Bay with those kinds of buildings aren’t exactly safe to travel in the late evening. I headed out while wearing a shin guard under my jeans, but that only provided minimal protection. As I walked the ABB tags had given way to Merchant ones and the concentration of homeless seriously increased. Sticking to dark alleys helped me avoid notice but also put me at risk for anyone who might be lurking in those areas.

Thirty harrowing minutes of walking led me to a boarded up and condemned factory. The place had a severe enough chemical smell to it that I doubted anyone would seriously try to live here. I found an unsecured window and slipped inside. The durability boost from the shin guard was enough to not worry about broken glass or loose nails that jabbed at me as I crawled into the building. Inside was pitch black, but navigating by the light of my cellphone led me to the moldering door of a supply closet. Quickly I slipped my key into the door and opened the link to my workshop. And now my lab.

A new door had been added to the entry room across from the access to the workshop. I quickly secured the main door and walked towards the new addition. Clearing a path to it required shifting my mattress and desk slightly, but once that was done I opened the door and examined my new lab.

It was not what I was expecting. I knew everything that would be inside, the computers, the scanner arrays, the documentation. That information was included when I got the power, and to be fair it was all there. What I didn’t expect was the particular aesthetic of the lab. Cyber-gothic would be one way of putting it. Techno-Catholic would also work. The computers were closer to shrines than workstations. There were engraved icons on the walls, incense burning in small dishes, and a feeling of reverence to the entire place. Anything that wasn’t designed to look like a religious icon was crammed to the gills with technology. Cables, diodes, mechanical arms, tendrils, sensors, optic lenses, and every other piece of exposed machinery imaginable.

Also the place was big. Really big. The church analogy was apt because this was like being inside a cathedral. There had to be two dozen different analysis bays that seemed to be designed to accommodate items ranging from the size of a fingernail to things that would be too big to fit through the door. The largest of them looked like it could hold a small aircraft.

Then there were the skulls. At first I thought they were just part of the décor, an odd and tasteless addition. Then one popped out of a wall as I approached and started chirping at me with a vaguely digital sound. It shifted from one direction to the other, suspended on the trail of cables that linked it to one of the computer stations. At the sound of its keening dozens of other skulls emerged from their resting place. The thing is was they weren’t device designed to look like skulls. There were actual human skulls with attached cybernetics.

Where the hell had they come from? This place had just appeared, like the workshop had when I made my key. None of the machinery in my workshop was connected to any real manufacturing company, so it wasn’t like this effect was grabbing things from the world to populate it. That probably and hopefully meant that I hadn’t just killed several dozen random people for the sake of whatever the purpose of these cyber skulls was.

Actually, taking in the full scale of the place and the number of skulls it was probably a lot more than ‘several dozen’.

So where did they come from? On closer examination this place looked old. There was a sense of the ages to it. The skulls had clearly been skulls for years and years. I would guess decades if not centuries, but that made no sense. There were no parahuman abilities dating back before the early eighties. There had been claims but they had all proven to be either bogus or a hoax. How did you get something this advanced and this old?

The answer was obviously the same as questions like ‘how does my key work’ or ‘what was the mechanism behind my Fashion power’. It just worked. There was a fiat declaration that these abilities would work and these things would exist. I’m not sure why a technology analysis lab required a host of integrated human skulls in order to function, but it did and thus they were here. I would have to deal with it.

Once the initial shock faded they lost most of their creep factor. The skulls didn’t act like some menacing swarm of reanimated human parts, they acted like a bunch of over-eager puppies. I still had my cell phone out with its flashlight active. Three skulls spun around it, the lenses in their eye sockets flashing. A projection of the phone appeared as a hologram above one of the computer altars and the team of human remains gestured towards one of the scanning beds with as much enthusiasm as a skinless severed human head attached to a coil of mechanical cables was capable of displaying.

At their prompting I placed the phone on the scanning bed and it hummed to life. Dozens of tiny arms and tendrils extended around it, glowing, pulsing, or shining strange lights on the phone. A skull directed me to the holographic display as it began to fill in and provide a cut out of the phone’s internal systems. Individual components and their purposes were identified as well as how they fit together.

The language of the system wasn’t English, but it used the same alphabet and for some reason I was able to read it. I don’t know if it was because of my connection to this place, or if my intelligence boosts had helped things along, but in the process of virtually dissecting my cellphone I was able to familiarize myself with the complete workings of this Laboratorium.

Now came the moment of truth. I would need to transport Bakuda’s bomb here. I didn’t have the advantage of any signal blocking Grue’s darkness might have provided and I would have to remove most of the security measures to transport it. Still, I couldn’t have a better opportunity than what was provided by this place. I needed to press forward.

That didn’t mean being stupid. I drenched myself in every defensive formula I knew before I even attempted it, even the redundant ones. Fortunately my workshop was not a smoldering wreck when I opened it, nor was it reduced to one as soon as the containment block was unsealed. I left as much of the blocking material in place as I could while I moved it. That left me lugging about seventy five pounds of metal over to my lab.

If the skulls had been excited over my cellphone then arriving with the tinkertech grenade caused them to reach levels of enthusiasm I didn’t think a mass of bone and cybernetics could convey. The heavy cluster of metal plates and mesh was taken from me immediately and moved to a large and complicated scanning bed. I was led to what can only be described as a throne. It was on a raised dais that overlooked most of the lab and was surrounded by a half ring of computer altars. There were some disturbing looking cable connections on the chair and the skulls seemed slightly disappointed when they found nothing to attach to on my head or back.

Let me assure you that was not a pleasant sensation.

Mechanical limbs carefully stripped away my haphazard shielding, exposing the tiny bomb. A quick analysis revealed its tracking signal and automatically blocked it while the rest of the sensors went to work. Within minutes I had a complete schematic of the device. Then the computers began extrapolating the function and purpose of various components.

It was incredibly complex. Even with my doctorate level mechanical knowledge, enhanced intelligence, and the advantage of this eclectic but ridiculously advanced lab there were levels to this device that I just couldn’t grasp. I wouldn’t be able to get enough information to fully understand it without more intense examination.

That would mean losing access to the one piece of tinker tech in my possession, but it was also the only way to really understand what I was working with. From what I could tell from initial readings this was some kind of plasma emitter, only with complicated functions attached, probably to stop it from just baking everything within a hundred meter radius. If the data I had was accurate I doubt Oni Lee would have been able to reach a safe distance if this didn’t have some means of containing its energy to a finite area.

I made my decision and activated destructive testing. The tiny sphere was carefully transferred to another sensor bed and dozens of tools rose up to meet it. The bomb floated above the bed in some kind of stasis field as small sections of it were removed and held in suspension. In a strange sense the bomb was exploding in slow motion as parts were removed and left floating around it. More and more data came in as the process continued until all the tiny and impossibly complex components were hanging in gravity suspension over the scanning bed.

My guess was right. This bomb wasn’t designed to wipe out a city block, though it had more than enough power for that. Instead there was a mechanism that kept the energy contained to a radius of roughly five meters. Inside that space the conditions would be comparable to the heart of an atomic blast or the inside of a star. Nothing could realistically withstand it without blanket immunity to heat and pressure or some other kind of complex parahuman ability to negate damage.

And I almost had this thing shoved up my ass. Holy crap did I luck out there. I guess Oni Lee must have been getting desperate if he was willing to expend something this valuable to take me down.

Wait.

Oni Lee clones the grenades he holds when he teleports. Is there any reason to think that effect wouldn’t extend to tinker tech? The one limiting factor on Bakuda was the fact that her bombs are expended when used. Oni Lee effectively removes that limitation. She could build a device like this, hand it to him, and have him use it hundreds of times without expending the original.

That was a fucking nightmare. There was a serious shift in power in the works coming as soon as they had enough stock to take the fight to the merchants or empire. The only thing that might hold back the chaos is Lung. It’s well known that he hasn’t pushed as hard as he could have in the past. Part of that is everyone knowing to fall back when he builds up steam to let his power drop, but generally he seems happy with the status quo. He’ll probably use this to aggressively secure territory and most likely come down harshly on anyone who challenges him, but not for a full gang war.

Why was my passenger feeling so nervous?

That did not bode well. As much as I was starting to doubt his perspective on more abstract topics when it came to actual threats I was still more than willing to follow his lead. There was something very bad that was going to happen with Bakuda, and probably fairly soon.

Anyway, since I wasn’t at risk of dying or being exposed I decided to move my workshop link back to my apartment. That was exactly as arduous a process as the first time, only mitigated by the pocket full of reagents I was now holding to stave off any idiot who tried to jump me. If Speed was enough to take down Oni Lee then it would make short work of any junkies or muggers who wanted to try their luck.

It was once again into the morning hours by the time I returned, but without the hassle of a job I was reassured in the fact that I would actually be able to sleep. Nothing today had led to a resolution to my impending financial difficulties, but I was confident I’d be able to sort something out. Worst case I would be able to grab parts from wrecked cars, refurbish them, and sell them. Maybe even get a stall at the Market if I was really desperate.

That throne seat in my Laboratorium was more luxurious than anything in my workshop or apartment and more comfortable too. If not for the smell of incense, the chirping skulls and the ominous atmosphere it would have been a great place to sleep. As it stood I made due with my mattress in the entryway and kept the door to the lab tightly closed.

The next morning I woke up to the feeling of the Knowledge constellation in the Celestial Forge swinging by me. My power’s reach was the strongest it had ever been and was just enough to latch on to a mid-sized mote. The ability was called ‘Grease Monkey’. That was a name that badly underrepresented what the power was capable of. So far I’d been stumbling along with basic technical skills or slight upgrades. The knowledge I did get was barely a refinement of modern technology. Even my crafting skills were limited.

That was not the case anymore. Grease Monkey gave me access to an incredible amount of technical skill and knowledge. Advanced robotics, computers, weaponry, spacecraft, and most importantly power armor. Finally I had the ability to make power armor. And it was good power armor as well, not one of those cliché clunky suits that characterize new tinkers.

It was complicated, resource intensive and would take a good chunk of time but I could build or fix just about anything now. I would need some serious resources and machinery to get this off the ground, but once I did I’d be able to handle things like the best capes out there.

I guess this was where the real tinker limitations kick in. Considering what I had available in my metal shop I could theoretically, with enough time, build what I needed to build what I needed to build what I needed to build my serious technology. Even then there would be components, electronics, power sources, plastics, ceramic components, material treatments, and a dozen other aspects of this technology that I would not be able to fabricate with the restocking materials of my workshop.

What was worse, I was dealing with concepts, not finished blueprints. I understood the principles of the machinery, how to make it, and how it could be used to make all those wonderful advanced devices, but I would still have to work out how to fit things together. There was going to be a long period of research and design in order to get a finished product. That meant even more materials and resources. As much as I hated to admit it, barring some kind of miracle ability from my power I would need outside support.

That was a problem. The Protectorate was out, there were too many bad emotions connected to it. Not just discomfort but glaring alarm bells, particularly with Brockton’s division. New Wave was a mess I couldn’t begin to pick apart. Besides, once the movement for public cape identities fell through they basically became a family team and I didn’t think I was ready to marry in just yet. The Guild had a good reaction from my passenger, but you needed to be an established hero and have recommendations from current members. Other teams were either too small to be of note or didn’t operate in the city.

I guess there was always the Toybox. With that group you were brushing against villainy, but it would be enough to get established as a tinker. It would also mean solely building for other people. I might be feeling sentimental, but I didn’t want my technology to debut in the hands of another organization.

It wasn’t totally hopeless. There had to be something I was able to put together with machine shop metal and salvaged components. Plus with my alchemy and resistance boosts I could operate as a cape even if I couldn’t get any truly advanced technology together.

Before my morning run but after coffee and toast I decided to sit down with my laptop and try to figure out my next step. I hadn’t hit the PHO forums in a while and, while it was mostly speculation, there were some good pieces of advice and information buried there.

Before I checked the tinker boards I decided to skim the Brockton Bay section. Call it pure narcissism if you want, but I kind of wanted to see if there was any comment on my fight with Oni Lee. Honestly even some mention of him running around with a cast would have made my day.

What I found definitely did not make my day.

Lung had been captured. Armsmaster had brought him in after he’d already had a run in with a local gang. The Undersiders? If they were coming from a fight with Lung when I saw them they were in really good shape. Did they run off to face him after I met them? Oni Lee could have fallen back for reinforcements and brought Lung into the fight.

There was also a rumor thread about him apparently being hospitalized. Potential excessive force from Armsmaster. Well, if he’d been weakened already and Armsmaster went in expecting his full strength then it would be easy to overdo it. Still, some of the reports were pretty horrific to the point where I really hoped they were either exaggerations or complete fabrications. Nobody liked the idea of a tinker using bio-weapons.

So Lung was captured and was probably headed for the Birdcage. Did that leave command of the ABB to Oni Lee or to Bakuda? Clearly they would make a play to spring Lung. I wouldn’t have given them much of a chance of pulling that off, but that was before their power synergy gave them a limitless supply of tinker tech bombs. Oni Lee could reduce the Rig to slag in under a minute with nothing more than a version of the grenade I had taken from him. This whole situation had the potential to go very bad.

I had more explosives knowledge now than I had the previous night. Most of it was still conventional, for a strained definition of conventional. I mean massively improved versions of normal munitions. Thinking on it I could probably build some kind of micro-neutron bomb if I had the materials, but that was the upper limit of my technological knowledge. I could handle electronic counter measures better as well. I wouldn’t want to pit that against a tinker who was specialized in bombs since I’m sure she would be able to counter most of my efforts eventually, but as a single shot in the field it could knock out her remote connections and buy some time.

The problem was I had no resources to build any of that. My workshop was basic in the extreme and I didn’t have the finances or supplies to improve anything. Given that I was at least partially responsible for what could happen… wait, my passenger was going a bit crazy. There was a lot of fear and certainty around this. Ok, partially responsible for what was definitely going to happen I needed to take any means available to be able to mitigate it. I didn’t want to see this city turn into a nightmare version of Cornell.

As one last thing I searched for any mention of Oni Lee. This wasn’t just vanity anymore. I needed to find out what the current strength of the ABB’s capes were. A search turned up results that went back years so I limited it to the last few days. Most were mentions in the Brockton discussion boards, comments under the story of Lung’s arrests, and speculation on the potential of a gang war. There was one outlier among the results. The ‘Connections’ section of the board had mentioned him, not in the original message but from the comments on it.

Subject: Stick

Thanks for driving off that black clad ABB guy. Saw you got pretty beat up. Owe you one. Meet?

Message me,

Eye.

The comments had sparked a small debate on whether they were talking about Oni Lee or not and whether it was a fabricated message. That wasn’t helped by people from the roleplaying boards showing up. The whole thing had turned into a flame war until the mods showed up to lock the comments.

It was Tattletale. I could feel my passenger’s reaction to the message. He was absolutely sure it was her and the prospect of taking her up on the meeting was regarded with near boundless enthusiasm.

I considered my options. There was clearly more to the Undersiders than just petty criminals. They hadn’t done anything horrible by the standards of Brockton Bay and from what I’d heard robbed gangs as often as civilians. That said I wasn’t about to buy into the notion of victimless crimes. Even just robbing stores had a ripple effect on the health of the city. Insurance wasn’t a bottomless pot of money to cover instances like that. Premiums would be continually jacked up until the stores couldn’t afford to operate. That was probably why there were so many closed businesses in the bad part of town.

Still, if they wanted to meet I felt I should take them up on it. My passenger was completely in favor of it, but before I knew about Bakuda I probably would have turned them down. The way I saw it there was limited liability with just a meeting, and frankly I needed any help I could get right now, even if it came from questionable sources.

The message was more than a day old. It had been sent on Monday morning from a newly created account. Given the flurry around it that account was probably flooded with messages. Would Tattletale still even be monitoring it? Probably. She was a thinker, and a strong one if my passenger was to be believed. That led to the other concern. I needed to cover myself if I was going to reach out to her. It might not help against a thinker of her level, but I didn’t want to expose myself to anyone else. My options were to use a public computer at a library or somewhere similar or try to obfuscate my location and reply from my home connection.

Previously I wouldn’t even have dreamed of the second option, but with my new technical knowledge and resources I could probably pull it off. The computers in my lab, despite the quirks of their design, were insanely powerful. Still, they were designed for analysis of technology. I could adapt them to another purpose, but not in the window of time I had. That left the library.

At this time of day it was faster to walk than try to finagle the bus schedules and deal with downtown traffic. At least in mid-morning there weren’t too many people crowding the computers. I was able to get access in relatively short order and loaded PHO. I signed in as a guest and drafted a private message. Given the time since the message was posted and the probable number of anonymous replies this could be a dry well. In that case I’d have to create a dummy account and wait to see if she could pick the message out of the mess her inbox had to be. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Waiting for a reply would slow this down to a crawl and I needed resources if I was going to have any hope of countering Bakuda.

Subject: Re:Stick

This is the guy with the metal stick. Pretty sure you’re the girl in purple, but would like confirmation before we go further.

The message was sent and I began wondering how long I should wait for a reply. Thinker was one of the broadest categories of powers and they ranged all over the place. She seemed to have good intuition, but could she predict when someone would reply? If she was serious about this she would have some kind of alert set up on the account. After the thread got locked most of the messages should have dropped off so providing she hadn’t given up on the whole thing the one I sent should have come through fairly clearly.

I considered browsing the other forums while I waited, but decided against it. I wanted as little evidence of this as possible. I could purge my history a lot better than I would have been capable of a couple of days ago, but that only covered this machine. There were mundane ways to data mine someone’s activity, to say nothing of what other tinkers could pull off. That left me waiting and hitting refresh on the same page over and over.

While I was waiting my power completely failed to grab a mote from one of the constellations I had yet to identify. I watched it spin off inside the celestial forge while I kept hitting the F5 key. My reach was weak after landing my last ability, but it was still growing fast. I’d have a better chance the next time a constellation came into reach.

Finally my screen updated with a response.

Subject: Re:Stick

Confirmation? Sunday night you took a beating that would have been for us and sent the guy packing. Ran off when things were getting too personal, but want to make that up to you.

Me and the boys will meet you in the alley where it happened. 2pm should give you time to get prepared, and you won’t need to skip your run. You can dress up if you want but we’ll be informal.

Eye

Well, there was her power at work. It seemed kind of intrusive, but my passenger wasn’t concerned. I swallowed, hoped for the best, and decided to follow his lead.

Subject: Re:Stick

You’re as good as I thought. I’ll see you then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Not A Stupid Grunt (Mass Effect) 100:  
> That you are not. You are smart enough to be the foremost scientist in your field. This doesn't make you so, but you could get there on your own with not a terrible amount of effort. Still not as smart as a drell, but hey, who is?
> 
> Laboratorium (Light of Terra DLC 3 - A Grand Day Out) 100:  
> Ancient cogitators, arrays of auspex systems, and volume upon volume of documentation supply an Adept with the tools and information necessary to capably analyse a recovered technological artefact.
> 
> Grease Monkey (Bubblegum Crisis 2032) 300:  
> What can you fix or build? What CAN'T you fix or build? Nothing, that's what. From hyper-cars to Buma, computers to Hardsuits, with the right tools and enough time and experiments, you can build it all, weaponry included


	6. 5 Negotiation

Once again I was feeling an emotional split between myself and my passenger. The idea of meeting a team of villains led by a powerful thinker should terrify me. My passenger was just ecstatic over the idea and I had to put real effort into not getting caught up in his enthusiasm. It was hard to maintain a sensible level of caution when every thought about how this could go badly was met with overflowing feelings of excitement and enthusiasm.

I did end up going for that run, as much to blow off steam as for the benefits of holding my workout schedule. After all, Tattletale might have been needling me but I still needed to keep up my conditioning. After I grabbed a quick lunch I started preparing for the meeting.

Despite the optimistic feelings from my passenger I was determined to go into this as prepared as possible. The question was what did I want out of this? I didn’t think opening with a prognostication of Bakuda’s imminent attack would go over well, but countering that was my immediate goal. What could I get from the Undersiders that would help with that objective?

Well, money is the obvious answer. I have no idea the legalities of accepting cash, but at this point even a few hundred dollars would make a huge difference to my resources and schedule. Baring that I would take equipment and materials. The thing was I doubted they had access to much on that front. I’d researched their history and their typical job seemed to land in the mid to low four figures. Taking into account a four way split and any group expenses and I’m not sure how much cash they’d have on hand. They were also a contained team, so that meant no territory to draw resources from and no henchmen or businesses under their control.

One thing I could get was information. If Tattletale was as good a thinker as my passenger seemed to regard her as then getting information on Bakuda or the ABB was a real prospect. That was also the kind of thing that I’d be able to get without compromising myself morally, so it would probably be the best thing to push for.

The question was what did they want from me? I knew how vulnerable tinkers were without group support. Thankfully my reinforcement and alchemy powers put me on much better footing than most tech heroes so a team wasn’t absolutely necessary in my case. There was a real possibility I could be looking at recruitment. The idea excited my passenger to no end, but I couldn’t see the logic for it. Given their limited resources I doubted there was much they could offer, not unless they had outside support that I wasn’t aware of.

When prepping for the meeting I decided my full loadout would probably be excessive. I could change in a nearby alley, but the combination of the coat, belts, and bandoleers would be a bit much. If I limited myself to my mask, coat and bracer I would have at least 90% of my combat effectiveness and not need ten minutes to suit up. The coat could hold some essential reagents, enough to get me out of this if things went bad. My passenger was absolutely certain the meeting wouldn’t go that way, but I was determined to be careful.

I headed out early with my jacket, mask, and bracer in a backpack. From what I remembered there was something of a network of alleys in the area that I would be able to hide in. The exact alley was easy to find since there was still the big crater in the middle of the street. The city had put traffic barriers around it but seemed in no hurry to do any actual repair work.

I slipped into an alley that branched off from the meeting place and got into the minimal version of my costume. A bandanna around my head and another over my face, then my mask/visor on top of that. I slipped on my coat and closed it up to cover as much of my t-shirt and jeans as I could. Then I snapped my bracer onto my left wrist and felt the surge of durability. I was still wearing a shin guard as a reserve defensive item, but the security from the heavy steel was massively reassuring. I hadn’t brought my baton as concealing that length of steel would be difficult.

Also I was limited to the collection of reagents I had prepped in the pockets of my coat. It wasn’t the massive loadout I had gotten used to on Sunday night but it was enough for the moment. In addition to a set of buffing and recovery reagents the handful of dark alchemy formulas I had prepped were enough to level a building. It should be overkill in the event this meeting turned sour.

I sulked at the back of the alleyway and waited for the meeting time. My natural nervousness was somewhat countered by reassurance from my passenger. I wasn’t as in sync with him as I had been a few days ago, but I knew he was invested in my wellbeing and if he wasn’t overly concerned then that was at least a good sign.

Just before 2 o’clock four figures darkened the entrance to the alley. All of them were in street clothes making me feel a little self-conscious. Just from their silhouettes I was able to pick out Grue, Regent, and Tattletale. The forth was half hidden behind the others. For a second I wondered if Bitch had come along as well, but the figure was the wrong body shape. Tall, but thin and lanky.

Tattletale was in a denim skirt and long sleeved t-shirt while Regent was sporting a white jacket that looked designer, or at least expensive along with jeans and some fairly flashy sneakers. Grue if anything appeared more impressively built than he looked in costume. He was around my height with his hair in cornrows and wore a basic t-shirt, jeans, and boots. The last member of the group was wearing slightly baggy clothes and had her hair tied in a manner that seemed uncomfortable and designed to conceal her face. She was hanging back, trying to get a look at me without giving herself away.

As they approached I tried to pick out some hints from my passenger, but he was so excited about the meeting it was hard to parse anything specific.

“See, back of the alley behind the crates. Just like I said.”

I took Tattletale’s statement as a signal to step out. There was a ripple of reaction through the group as the light from the alley mouth gleamed off my mask and bracer.

Regent elbowed Grue in the ribs. “In costume too, pay up.”

“Like a tinker was going to show up without gear. I told you, no bet.”

I felt like I needed to take some initiative here. My passenger might be big fans of them for some reason but I was still meeting with a team of villains. It didn’t seem like a good idea to let them completely set the tempo. I gestured towards the new member who was looking seriously uncertain of herself. “You’re a bit over capacity. Care to fill me in?”

Tattletale spoke up. “New recruit. She insisted on coming, wanted to be part of the deal.”

“Ah.” I glanced across the four of them, trying to figure out what I could from my passenger’s emotions. He was still caught up in the excitement of the meeting which meant I wasn’t getting much helpful out of him. Instead I decided to play things casually. I shifted over to one of the crates and gestured to the rest. “Well, welcome to my alley. Pull up a crate and let’s hash this out.”

Regent snickered at that and was the first one to approach, settling onto one of the large boxes. Tattletale was next followed by Grue with the new girl hanging back. Grue extended a hand. “I’m Brian, by the way.”

I was surprised by the gesture, but my passenger wasn’t. Did they do this often, or was it just something he expected of them? I was starting to have serious concerns about the situation, but for the moment decided to follow his reaction and shook the offered hand.

“Lisa.” Tattletale introduced herself. She seemed to be trying to maintain a confident front. Regent had no such issue.

“Alec.”

My passenger was calming down enough that I was able to get some impressions again. I had the sense that Grue was being open here. There was some sense of duplicity on the part of Tattletale and Regent. I didn’t think they were exactly lying, more like were both under new identities. Yeah, from the feeling of my passenger something had definitely happened in both of their civilian lives and they were trying to distance themselves from it.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to this. All my prep and I still didn’t have a cape name ready to hand out. Plus they were clearly trying to build a rapport and not engaging them would put me at a disadvantage. I didn’t like this kind of social manipulation but I also didn’t know how to handle it. Instead I peered around Brian at the half concealed final member of the group, if just to buy a few more seconds before I would be expected to introduce myself.

I thought I had felt the limits of the intensity of emotion my passenger was capable of. The feedback I got ranged significantly from consistent background support to occasional peaks around certain topics that highlighted opportunities or potential threats. There were the odd spike of positive or negative feelings that took me by surprise but I thought I’d gotten a good handle on the range of what to expect.

I was wrong.

I can’t accurately describe the reaction of my passenger upon seeing the final member of the Undersiders. There was a weight, a significance that dwarfed every sense I’d gotten before. There was momentous consequence to the person standing in front of me that I couldn’t even begin to unravel. I was looking at the most important person in the world.

And she was a skinny teenage girl in ill-fitting clothes trying to avoid attention while hiding behind her hair and glasses.

I thought I was prepared for this. I figured my passenger would have some good impressions of the Undersiders that I would be able to filter out to get a decent result from the meeting. Personal affection on his part wasn’t enough for me to compromise myself and I was ready to ignore any good chummy feelings and stay focused on my objectives.

That plan was out the window now. If you looked under the glaring intensity you could see a similar affection for this girl as the other Undersiders, but that wasn’t the driving force behind my passenger’s reaction. Whoever this was she was vital, absolutely vital, to everything.

How do you even begin to parse something like that? How to you deal with the absolute certainty that the person in front of you will save everything in existence? Just trying to feel out the scale of it was incredible. It wasn’t just talking about my life, or the lives of the city, or the future of humanity. She was vital to the continued existence of the actual planet.

My passenger’s capacity for foresight was something I didn’t completely understand. Actually, I wasn’t sure how my passenger arrived at most of his insights. I didn’t know if it was precognition or a good understanding of current conditions that allowed accurate predictions. What I did know is he had a broader perspective from the outside of what normal people could perceive, but my ability to comprehend it was limited. One thing I was certain of is his desire to steer me away from serious threats. He knew how dangerous this world was, he was often frustrated by it, but was still determined to see the Celestial Forge built here.

There were a lot of his reactions I’d started to doubt but his ability to assess threats wasn’t among them. One thing he was absolutely certain of was if anything happened to this girl the world was fucked.

The long period of silence had been getting to the girl and she looked ready to make a break for it. I made a snap decision to keep that from happening.

“You can call me Joe.”

The girl stared at me open mouthed. The reactions of the rest of the Undersiders were a mix of surprise and reassurance, with Lisa defaulting to smug.

“You’re pretty open about that.” Alec inquired.

I just shrugged and tried to play things with an irreverence I didn’t actually feel. “I don’t have a cape name yet and it’s not that much to go on.” I felt a nudge from my passenger and looked at Lisa. “And besides, I’m guessing she could figure it out if she wanted to.”

That got another flicker of emotion from the blond girl that she quickly suppressed. The new girl didn’t look too comfortable with that, but at least wasn’t ready to run off.

“How do you know her power?”

It wasn’t much, but at least she was engaging me. “She was able to pick up some stuff about me from the other night. That and that was that she tracked me down clued me in.” I considered if I was comfortable revealing anything more. It couldn’t so much harm considering Lisa had already screamed it to the world. “Also part of my power kind of gives me hunches about stuff. That helped me fill in the blanks.”

The girl’s eyes darted between Lisa and me. Right, stuck between two thinkers. That can’t be fun.

Alec just laughed. “Lisa screamed and ran away when she figured out someone was giving her a taste of her own medicine.”

The girl seemed shocked at that, but Lisa made a placating gesture. “Just got spooked. It’s part of why we’re here.”

The situation seemed to be weighing heavily on the new girl and I was worried she was going to bolt. Instead she gave me a hard look, then nodded. “I’m Taylor.”

“Nice to meet you.” I did my best to ignore the reaction from my passenger which could best be described as the hallelujah chorus on repeat. Instead I turned back to the rest of the group and did my best to act casual. “So, what’s this you wanted to talk about?”

Tattletale reached into her bag and pulled out a container. It was an old style child’s lunchbox with a picture of Armsmaster on the front. Taylor’s eyebrows rose when she saw it but she kept quiet and watched Lisa. She handed it to me and waited while I opened it.

I stared blankly at the eight stacks of bills inside the box. Two grand in cash. My mind started processing how long that would cover personal expenses, what I could buy with it, sources of equipment and materials, and what it would mean for my tinkering.

For some reason my passenger was particularly, almost insufferably amused by this situation.

“And this is for?” I left the question hanging.

“You took on Oni Lee for us. We owe you for that. So, you can either take that as a lump sum right now, or you can hear us out.”

I considered my options. I’m pretty sure this was stolen money or at least off the books. I wasn’t totally up on the laws regarding something like this, but it was probably illegal to receive gifts if you had probable cause to believe it was connected to a criminal venture. By taking it I could be tainting myself and any plans to be a hero would become a lot more difficult.

If I did what she flippantly suggested I could walk away and report this to the PRT. There might be a way to claim the money as a windfall, or that whole spoils nonsense that people go on about online. If not I could probably leverage the event to a meeting with some heroes who would be willing to help me get support. If you pitched this idea earlier today I probably would have done just that despite the fact that I knew it would go against what my passenger wanted.

That was before meeting Taylor, before feeling my passenger’s reaction to her. I pretended to consider the deal as I picked through the complexities of it and happened upon a detail that was actually terrifying.

The most juvenile level schoolyard element of cape debates is the ‘who would win?’ question. Armsmaster vs Chevalier. Myrddin vs Gavel. Rime vs Cinereal. Whenever a cape debate got going you always had the idiots who would default to the Triumvirate, and if beaten to that would go straight for Eidolon. And if someone else was arguing for Eidolon there was always an asshole who would bring up S-class threats.

Thanks to my power I was able to play ‘who would win?’ with my passenger. He knew the terrifying extent of the power of the Celestial Forge and had a rough idea of how much of it I’d need to counter certain threats. It’s how I learned that eventually I would be able to kill an Endbringer.

I also learned I shouldn’t kill an Endbringer, that killing an Endbringer without dealing with some other aspect first would result in a worse situation than the current one. But that didn’t change the significance of that fact. Eventually. I. Would. Be. Able. To. Kill. An. Endbringer. For me a feat the world had regarded as impossible was just a matter of building enough connections to the forge.

I had been able to evaluate my chances against various other S-class threats. There was always a point where I would eventually be able to handle the challenge. For something like the Three Blasphemies it was actually a lower investment than what I’d need for an Endbringer. To counter Sleeper it was significantly higher, but there was always a point, some level of investment into my power where I could handle things without risk.

So I thought, whatever Taylor will do, whatever she’s meant to counter, I should be able to handle that, right?

Wrong.

Even with the entire forge behind me my passenger was only willing to give me long odds against whatever this threat was. Everything I would be able to build, everything I would be capable of, and he couldn’t’ guarantee I’d be able to handle it. Without Taylor I would be better off fleeing to another solar system then trying to step into her shoes.

Uncertainty is one of the hardest things to deal with. I had come into this meeting with a decent idea of what I was willing to put up with and how I expected it to go, but that was out the window now. I could still walk away from this, but after the bombshell my passenger had dropped that just wasn’t an option. I couldn’t let this go.

“Alright.” I closed the lunchbox. “Let’s hear it.”

For some reason Lisa seemed momentarily surprised by that, but recovered quickly. “Essentially we want to offer you a partnership arrangement.”

That was something I had anticipated, but I didn’t expect them to be so open about it. As usual there was a lack of surprise and the feeling of general amusement from my passenger. This was a lot further than I had considered acceptable. This was working with villains, and that wasn’t something you came back from easily. Still, with Taylor apparently being of paramount importance to the future of existence I had an obligation to at least hear them out.

“What, you want me to join up?” Interestingly Taylor seemed to react badly to that, but did her best to keep it hidden. “You in the middle of a membership drive or something?”

Brian quickly shook his head. “It’s not that. We’re looking to commission you.”

“Bitch voted against recruitment.” Alec ignored the dirty look Brian gave him. “Which is bullshit but the way.”

Lisa cut him off before he could say anything else. “We know you’re still getting set up. That’s a vulnerable position for a tinker to be in.” Behind her back Alec made air quotes and mouthed the word ‘vulnerable’ before rolling his eyes. “We can get you some support without having to stick your neck out there. Not before you’re ready.”

She was framing it as support without obligation which sounded too good to be true and probably was. “What, you’re just going to fund me until I get set up?”

“Not exactly. You agree to this you get two grand a month, no questions asked. That’s the same all of us get.”

They were salaried? How the hell did that work? “Get from who?”

“It’s what the boss pays us to stay active. Take the deal and you get cut in with no obligation for the jobs.”

When Brian said ‘the boss’ alarm bells started ringing from my passenger. Whoever it was they were working for it was bad news. Seriously bad news. A quick glance at Lisa confirmed something. That feeling that she was threatened by someone was registering the same way as the mention of their boss. There was a bad history there. I didn’t think she had gotten into this arrangement under the best conditions.

I glanced over to Taylor. This boss was a threat, a serious threat. And one of the people working under him just happened to be essential to the future of the world. If I walked away and something happened to her we were all fucked.

A worse thought occurred. Publically the Undersiders were regarded as a random gang of petty thieves. The fact that they had a boss wasn’t common knowledge. There had to be something else going on here. The team’s earnings were marginal enough that I couldn’t see them sustaining themselves if they were giving a significant cut to someone above them. Additionally they were all getting monthly payouts. Whatever this arrangement was it wasn’t about the money they were bringing in. If I had to guess I’d say it had something to do with their raids on other gang’s assets.

If I walked away now I would be able to reveal the existence of their boss to the authorities. That would put the actions of the team under greater scrutiny. They wouldn’t be able to be used as a third party agent. Best case scenario he cuts ties and the team withers or falls apart. Worst case he steps in to deal with anyone who might be able to compromise him. That would definitely be Lisa, but I couldn’t guarantee Taylor’s safety either.

I was starting to seriously resent this situation. All I wanted to do was get some information or resources to counter another tinker and suddenly I’m shepherding the hope of the entire world. But what were my other options? Throw Taylor to the wolves and start work on a generation ship and a plotted course to Alpha Centauri?

“So.” I spoke slowly, doing my absolute best to hide my emotions. “What would my obligations be under this arrangement?”

Brian cleared his throat. “We’ve got a big job coming up. High risk, bit of a hard sell, but the idea of some tinker support going in boosts our chances. You agree and we’ll cover the costs of materials and equipment and work out a fair price for anything you make.”

“So you want my tech.” I glanced between them. This was not the worst option. The Toybox managed deals with villains while still holding tenuous rogue status. If I played things carefully I might be able to do the same. There was just one question. “No offence, but do you even know what I can make yet?” I looked at Lisa as I spoke.

Alec cut in. “How about that grenade tanking trick from the other night?” Lisa looked frustrated. I’m guessing she had tried to explain it multiple times already.

“Not going to work.” I shook my head. I didn’t like sharing information and I couldn’t explain how the effect functioned even if I wanted to. Instead I just kept things vague. “I can’t set that up on someone else.”

He looked like he was going to say something, but Brian cut in. “Call it a show of faith. Two grand up front, two grand a month. We’ll work out the details later. If what you do can’t work for us we’ll split ways, but guarantee three months payment right now.”

“You’re willing to offer me eight grand when you don’t even know what you’re getting out of it?”

“That funding’s coming from the boss. He’s doing it to support this job. After the first run we’ll be covering the cost of our own gear.”

The boss. The logic behind it was clear. On the scale tinkering worked at eight grand was nothing. Any major gang would be able to throw out that kind of cash without a second thought. The point wasn’t to secure services, it was to conflict loyalty and create financial entanglements. The deal would be a liability in any interaction with the Protectorate and encourage me to maintain good relations with the Undersiders. It was a not terribly subtle way of nudging me into the boss’s sphere of influence.

On the other hand, if I was a rogue tinker with no aspirations of heroism then this arrangement would basically amount to a hefty down payment and ongoing fee for the privilege of being one of my customers. That’s a level of brutal capitalism that you don’t typically see outside the higher end Boardwalk boutiques.

The objectives I entered this meeting with were completely out the window. Bakuda was still a priority, but to my amazement I actually had bigger problems than a potential city wide tinker tech bombing spree. There was no way out of this without endangering Taylor. And I suppose the rest of the Undersiders as well. I didn’t completely share my passenger’s affection for them but that didn’t mean I wanted a bunch of teenagers to fall to the mercy of a mysterious crime lord.

I felt a familiar shift and closed my eyes, supposedly in consideration, but mostly to focus on the Celestial Forge.

A new constellation approached and my power was latching onto a mote from it. It turned out to be the ‘Crafting’ constellation and the mote was ‘Smithing’. It covered all aspects of metalworking for weapons and armor to a frankly ludicrous level of skill. Before, my knowledge of metal work in other fields could let me muddle through. With this power I could make weapons and armor that are works of art. Combined with my other skills I’d be able to work faster and better than ever before.

I opened my eyes and looked at the Undersiders. I felt trapped by this entire situation and was beginning to resent everyone involved, even Miss Savior-of-the-World over there. But fuck it, I wasn’t going to let loose Armageddon over my own frustrations. Still, I could at least try to mitigate things.

“I’ll have some conditions.”

Brian brightened. “We can probably work with that. What were you thinking?”

First priority was keeping as much of a lid on what I was making as possible. “For one, anything I make is for your use only. No selling it off, and I’m building for you, not your boss.” I definitely wasn’t going to be supplying whoever that was. Not with my technology.

He nodded. “We can agree to that.”

“We work out a price and production schedule ahead of time. I’m not taking this deal if it means putting off all of my own projects. I’ll prioritize your first order, but everything else gets scheduled and negotiated.” Negotiations that would no doubt happen with a person my power was regarding as a terrifyingly powerful thinker. Yeah, those were going to go well. Still, I felt I had to say it.

He looked over at Lisa who nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem. We can come up with a timeline and pay scale we agree to.” I’ll bet you can.

Final point, and the one I was most concerned about. “Lastly, I don’t know what this big job is and I don’t expect you to tell me. But I’m trusting that you’re not going out on some murder or kidnapping spree here. Stay within standard conventions, nothing that breaks the unwritten rules or brushes against a kill order. As long as that’s the case I’m willing to work with you.”

“Excellent.” Lisa stood up. Frankly I had expected more pushback on those points. Either they hadn’t been issues from the start or they had absolutely no intention of following them. “Now, want to get out of this alley so we can talk business?”

Well, that was a transparent move. Obviously I couldn’t walk around the city like this. Everyone else had exposed their faces and was in civilian clothing. I didn’t really have a way to insist on keeping my identity concealed without breaking the momentum of the discussions, which I was absolutely sure Lisa would be able to take advantage of. And if I would be working with them would I actually be able to keep my identity secret from a thinker of Lisa’s caliber?

No, on that my passenger was absolutely certain. If she didn’t already know who I was she would by the end of our next meeting regardless of what steps I took to conceal my identity. Maybe if I limited things to electronic communications and blind drops I’d be able to buy some more time, but that would defeat the entire purpose of this venture. I had to stay close to them and that meant my identity was going to be compromised.

If it was going to happen I might as well do it on my own terms. I looked at the four of them, then reached up and pulled off my mask and bandanas. I watched their reactions while I rolled them up in my coat and shoved it into my bag.

Brian’s entire body language relaxed the moment I took off my mask. He shared a meaningful glance with Lisa who expression had shifted to smug. Given how that seemed to be her default expression I didn’t know how much I should read into it. With her power it was hard to trust any reactions I was getting, but through the conversation it seemed like she had been reacting to my passenger’s emotions as often as to my own. I didn’t know if that meant it was easier or harder for her to get a read on me. Alec seemed largely indifferent to the action and just grinned and hopped off the crate he was perched on. Meanwhile Taylor looked somewhat conflicted by the whole situation.

It was still hard to deal with the intensity of my passenger’s reaction to that girl. I hoped, desperately hoped that he knew what he was doing. Not that it mattered now. I was committed to this path and knowing the potential consequences I didn’t think I would be able to walk away with a clear conscience. I had committed to building tinker tech knowing it would be used in the commission of a major crime, and somehow that had come out as the best option. Or at least the best option I could arrive at under this storm of emotions my passenger was bombarding me with.

It made me wonder if it would really have been so bad to end up with a passenger who just gave you the type of ‘fight the world’ instinct that typically required an inferiority complex and a fifth of rye. I mean, you did essentially end up a combat meat puppet for an alien computer, but had to be less complicated than this mess.

Putting that out of my mind I turned to the group. “So, where to?”

Brian looked to Lisa for conformation and she gave him a slight nod.

“Come on. We’ve got a place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Smithing (Thundercats 2011) 200:  
> The ancient art of working with metal to forge weapons and armor. You know how to make beautiful equipment that can survive countless battles and you could even forge a legendary weapon if you dedicated enough time to it, although it'd probably take at least several years to complete.


	7. 6 Commission

The events of my meeting had led to my current situation, walking through the docks flanked by a team of villains. Well, teenage villains. Brian had to be the oldest of them and I would still put him at least a couple of years younger than myself. Actually it could be more than a couple of years depending on how early he developed. Alec and Taylor looked like they were half way through high school with Lisa barely older than them. Of course Lisa was a serious thinker. That shifted maturity significantly and you’d have to be stupid to assume any level of youthful naiveté.

I had entered into this situation with the grim impression that I was facilitating a parahuman arms deal. The Undersiders had a much different approach to things.

“You want to stop for pizza?” Alec gestured to a corner pizza place at the end of the block.

“Isn’t this a business negotiation?” I get what was happening, it was an attempt to build comradery, but I felt I needed at least a token effort to keep things professional.

Brian just shrugged. “Nothing that formal. We can grab some takeout.”

With no serious objection he and Lisa went inside while I milled on the sidewalk with Taylor and Alec. Conveniently the two Undersiders I knew the least about. I had to wonder if Tattletale had set things up that way. Even if it was part of her plans I was still going to take advantage of the chance to get a better idea of who I was dealing with. The street was empty, but I checked thoroughly before I started talking.

“So, if I’m going to be working for you some background would be helpful. I’ve got an idea of what Brian, Lisa, and Rachel can do, but what about you two?”

Taylor seemed embarrassed by the question. Seriously embarrassed, like borderline mortified. For a moment I wondered if I overstepped. “Um, I can control bugs.”

I raised an eyebrow and she pointed at the wall of the pizza place. A housefly landed on it, then followed where she was pointing exactly as she moved her finger. A few more swooped in to a circle around her head in a halo, then flew off in straight lines without so much as a gesture.

It wasn’t what I was expecting, but unless she was throwing around some S-class level reality revision power there wasn’t much that would fit with my passenger’s reaction. Looking at it objectively it was clearly a higher end master power. She had controlled insects she wasn’t looking at, suggesting that she either had some passive awareness of them or was able to ignore the fine details. She’d been able to create a precise formation with no visible effort. She hadn’t had to check on the positions of the flies at any point either.

From the sense I got from my passenger, which was still blaring whenever I dealt with Taylor, whatever aspect of her saved the world this wasn’t it. That is to say, wasn’t it yet. That meant either a serious development of her power or that she could scale it up to a ridiculous degree. Questions of her range, detail of control, and maximum numbers, and what exactly qualified as a bug could fill in the gaps, but I didn’t want to come off too aggressive and spook her. As much as I wanted to get to the bottom of this I needed a good relationship with these people.

Instead I looked over at Alec.

Rather than say anything he looked through the store window where Brian had just picked up a pair of large pizza boxes. He made a gesture and Brian’s leg twitched, with him barely managing to catch himself before he face planted into the pizza he was holding. He glared through the window and stormed out of the shop while Lisa finished paying.

“Ass.” He spat the word over the boxes. Alec seemed inordinately happy that Brian was currently incapable of more physical, probably fist based, expressions of his frustration.

“Hey, Joe was asking about powers. I was just being a good team member and helping to enlighten him.” His mock innocent tone only seemed to irritate Brian further.

“I see Alec has done his traditional demonstration.” Lisa was grinning as she came out of the pizza parlor and even Taylor seemed entertained.

“Interesting.” I considered how that power could have worked. “Was that nerve manipulation, or did you trigger the reaction in his muscles directly?”

“Nerves. I can kind of feel them out, but it’s a crapshoot on how it’s going to work. Still good for throwing people off.”

“Huh.” That was interesting. “Do you get any feedback from them, or is it broadcast only?”

“Is this important?” Brian cut in sharply.

“Maybe? Still not sure what you’re looking for. Any information could help out.” Apparently I had pushed a bit too far on this topic.

“Save it for the meeting. We’re almost there.”

They led me through some empty lots to an abandoned red brick factory with a faded sign labeling it as ‘Redmond Welding’. This one was in much better shape than what I had used to access my lab the other night but still looked like it had been out of business for at least a decade. Without my passenger’s reassurance I would have been seriously concerned about following a group of villains to a remote and abandoned building, but he was totally confident. In fact there was a sense of anticipation from him. Whatever this was he was looking forward to it.

It turned out the factory was somewhat less than abandoned. Brian let the group in through a side door revealing a lower level that was a mess of old and stripped down machinery. The Undersiders headed for a spiral staircase in the corner. I could tell it had been better maintained than the rested hulks of the rest of the factory’s equipment.

The stairs opened into some kind of open plan loft. The main area had a couple of couches facing an extravagant entertainment center. Split off from that was a kitchen area bigger than my entire apartment. On the opposite side was a cluster of rooms with various pieces of artwork differentiating the doors. Throughout the entire place there were little touches of personalization, from the half full bookcases to the random knickknacks, to the very specific arrangement of old pizza boxes and aluminum cans.

I figured they were bringing me to an empty building where we could have a private discussion. At most I expected a safe house or some kind of temporary set up, something disposable or deniable. Instead they had walked me right into their home. They brought me straight to their secret base.

I was shocked at how brazen they were being, and only Taylor seemed even slightly nervous about it. Everyone else settled in with all the casualness of coming home after a long day. Brian dropped the pizza on the coffee table and headed to the kitchen to grab some drinks. Alec basically flopped on the sofa and started fiddling with the various remotes spread around. Lisa perched on the end of one of the couches and cracked open the first of the pizza boxes.

I knew I should expect social plays and power moves from her, but I just couldn’t figure out the logic behind this. “You guys live here?”

“Part time. We have other places, but this is home away from home.”

“And you’re ok just marching me in here?”

Brian returned from the kitchen with two armfuls of soda bottles. “Lisa cleared you. That’s good enough for us.”

Right. Their terrifyingly powerful thinker. Having someone like that must be as comforting for them as it was nerve-wracking for everyone else. I looked at Lisa, but she was just as smug as ever. There was a note of dread at what else she had been able to divine from me over the earlier conversation, but my passenger’s easy confidence pretty much drowned it out.

Problems for another time. I took a seat on the couch and grabbed a slice of pizza. This was technically a violation of the diet I had committed to and had horrible macros, but mentioning any of that was more than I wanted to share. After ten days of cost efficient precisely nutritionally balanced meals the slab of cheesy bread loaded with pepperoni and sausage tasted like ambrosia. I did my best not to show how much I was enjoying it, but Lisa’s grin widened slightly.

“So Mr. Tinker, give us your sales pitch.” Lisa was looking smug, but shared some of the expectant look I was getting from the rest of the Undersiders.

“Well, what are you looking for?” I didn’t know exactly what I was comfortable building for them, so hopefully they wouldn’t ask for anything too extreme. “Also what kind of timeframe are we under here?”

Brian considered before speaking. “The job is planned for this Thursday.”

“Thursday.” My voice was flat. “Thursday as in the day after tomorrow?”

“Yes?”

I clenched my jaw, then forced myself to relax it. “And I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re looking for delivery at eleven at night?”

“Well need everything by that morning.” He glanced at Lisa.

“8 am should do it, later will cut into our schedule.”

“So that’s...” I checked my watch. “just over forty one hours from now. And you want it made in that time?”

Brian cleared his throat. “We were kind of hoping you had some old stuff you’d be willing to part with, or something you could finish in time.”

I thought back to my early projects and the grand total of what I’d been able to build so far. “Yeah, no luck on any old projects.”

“Is this going to be a problem?”  
  
“Well it definitely takes power armor off the table.” I let my frustration bleed through every word.

The Vehicles constellation swung towards me and my power latched onto a mote from it. I grit my teeth and pretended to contemplate things while I examined my new ability. It was called ‘Aerospace Engineering Makes Things Go Fast’. A rather apt descriptor. The ability was actually closer to what traditional tinker powers provided. It gave an intuitive grasp of a whole range of fields like wind-flow, material sciences, atmospheric drag, tensile strengths, rocketry, and a bunch of similar subjects. It also covered the application of those principles to designing air and even space vehicles.

Combining it with my doctorate level mechanical knowledge, enhanced intelligence and the extreme pools of knowledge I had gotten from my last two abilities turned it into something extraordinary. Grease Monkey gave me the principles for manufacturing a host of flight and rocketry designs. There was already potential for refinement and improvement from my other powers, but this took it to a whole other level. The somewhat janky personal flight system I was able to build could now be upgraded to keep up with the best flying capes in the city. I would be able to push vehicles past the supersonic limits to full space planes. The types of rocketry weapons I’d be able to create would be works of art.

Also, while most of the ability was focused on vehicle application the materials science component had far reaching effects. I already had a lot of technical knowledge and experience. It was hard to explain what the new intuitive grasp was adding, but it was like previously I knew what I was supposed to do and now I FELT what I was supposed to do. The only thing was after I followed my intuition I had the technical knowledge to understand it. That let me refine the materials science aspect of my powers to a frankly insane level. Some of the things I could already pull off in that area with Grease Monkey or Smithing were seriously impressive. This took it into a realm beyond.

I glanced up and found I had the attention of the entire group. Taylor had shed some of her nervousness and Alec dropped his veil of indifference to press me on the topic.

“Wait, power armor’s an option?” I swear his eyes were shining.

“Not in forty one hours it isn’t.”

“But in more than forty one hours it’s a possibility?” Even Taylor looked eager for my response, which was probably the most engagement I’d seen from the reserved girl.

“I’d need to fabricate power sources, most of the mechanics, the materials for the plating, any weapons you’d want attached, program the interfaces, and then design a training process to make sure you know how to not tear apart your arms the first time you use the strength assist. So yeah, longer than forty one hours. Substantially longer than forty one hours”

When I finished my borderline rant I had the rapt attention of the entire group. Meaningful glances were being shared between Brian and Lisa and Alec looked like he’d found out Christmas was coming early this year.

“Hey,” He leaned forward in his seat. “If you can make all that stuff then why were you beating Oni Lee with a metal chair leg the other night?”

And that was probably something I’d never live down. I really thought I had avoided the ‘early tinker embarrassing gear’ problem. Taking a steel club with me my first night may have saved my life, but I had the feeling that Alec would never let me forget it. The fact was that no matter how good my technology got I had started my career bashing villains like a cave man.

The rest of the group seemed interested in that as well. I guess if someone was hawking power armor when the most advanced piece of technology they had used predated the spear it created some understandable doubt. I definitely wasn’t going to explain the way my power grew, and frankly even if I had these abilities sooner I would probably have been in the same spot. Instead I offered the most reasonable excuse I could come up with.

“Lack of time, lack of resources, lack of training. I’ve only had my powers for a week. Barely got a workshop set up. I needed an offensive option that I would be able to use. It’s hard to screw up with a baton.” That at least got a few nods from the others, but Taylor seemed uncertain.

“You went out before you had your equipment ready?” There was an edge of disapproval to her voice.  
  


Hey, I tried. I really tried. How good was your equipment on your first night out?

And why was my passenger laughing at me?

I just tried to brush it off. “I had my defenses taken care of, and was able to get some other stuff ready. I just didn’t have the resources for a full loadout.” She seemed to be somewhat understanding of that.

“The other stuff was that glowy speed boost shit, right? Can we get some of that?” Alec looked at the irritated expressions from Lisa and Brian. “What? That’s what we’re here for, right?”

Right, alchemy formulas. “That stuff is a lot more complicated. I need to set it up myself and unless you have me on site it doesn’t last long enough to be worth it.”

Alec stroked his chin in a contemplative gesture. “You know, we could always revisit that vote.”

“No Alec. We’ve got a deal. We’re going with it.” Brian glanced at me as he spoke.

“Stupid waste.” Alec muttered.

“Um, hey.” I shifted my attention to Taylor and did my best to ignore my passenger’s elation. “Can someone fill me in on the glowy speed thing?”

Lisa was about to speak, then closed her mouth and turned to me with a smug expression. Apparently she liked putting people on the spot more than she liked being a smartass. Well, here goes.

“One of the tinker things I’ve figured out is how to combine formulas, combinations of materials to release energy in certain patterns to trigger particular effects. I can use it to enhance speed, defense, stuff like that.”

That got varied reactions from the Undersiders but Taylor twigged to the implications right away. “Like powers? You can give yourself powers? You’re a tinker who can give yourself powers? You’re a tinker?” She looked to Lisa for conformation. She just shrugged in reply.

“Uh, it’s really more like high energy chemistry than anything parahuman based. There’s a specific mechanism behind the process that my power lets me figure out. Plus some of the materials I need are pretty difficult to find.” And some of them I can get from any grocery store, but I wasn’t about to let that out now.

“You can’t just prep the combinations for us or something?” Alec was keeping cool, but had a hopeful tone to his voice.

“No, there’s a lot more complexity than just mixing the components.” Setting aside the question of whether I was ready to trust this kind of thing to anyone else, much less villains, the mechanics of Evermore Alchemy were within the same fiat backed certainty as my Fashion ability. I knew they would work, but they didn’t fall under any local natural laws. While I could generate the effect I didn’t think anyone else could. Well, except for Call Beads.

“What?” Lisa was suddenly looking interested. What, had I shown some hint of what I was thinking? Actually, she was a high end thinker, but how far did that go? She was clearly extraordinarily observant, but I didn’t know how much of my internal dialogue she was privy to.

“There is one way that I could prep something another person could use.” That got everyone’s attention. Damn it. I didn’t want to get into this.

Call Beads were serious alchemy. Probably the most serious formula there was. It required dry ice and meteorite fragments and generated small round crystals that could provide a link to the power of other creatures. Normally this would channel the energy of powerful people with a conceptual connection to a particular place. The manifested energy, as much as I didn’t like using the word, was basically magic. By making the beads I could create an item that would allow anyone to access that connection by expending them.

The problem was I wasn’t sure what I could make a link with. The only entities strong enough to create those kinds of effects were the other passengers. While that could work, and would be devastatingly powerful, I had no idea what the repercussions would be. Passengers were terrifying and barely understood the world they were interacting with. Giving them a link to the world without a very good idea on how that would manifest seemed like a terrible idea. Handing off the link to someone who didn’t understand the mechanics of it seemed apocalyptic.

Lisa’s eyebrows had climbed into her hair as she watched me consider the problem, and her reaction was starting to make Brian very uneasy.

“Well?” Alec asked, blind to the mood spreading through the group. “What is it?”

I shook my head. “Not a good idea. It needs some really rare materials, so I haven’t been able to do even initial tests of the concept yet.”

Alec deflated, but Brian cut in. “What can you get us before the deadline?”

I considered my options. I would be really happy if I could have limited my support to defensive and utility items. I could make good armor, even the unpowered armor I made would be excellent. Or I could produce gadgets that would be useful in the field, but either of those options would take longer than I had. Maybe I could upgrade what they already had. “What kind of equipment do you currently use?”

“Alec uses a Taser. Rachel and Lisa don’t typically carry weapons. I try to fight unarmed, but I’ve carried a knife as a holdout.” He looked expectantly at Taylor.

“Uh, I was thinking a baton would be good. And maybe a knife, in case of emergencies?”

I hadn’t asked about weapons specifically, but that seemed to be where we were headed. “If all you’re looking for is dressed up conventional weapons then I should be able to pull something together.”

There was a fair bit of disappointment at that. I guess if you’ve had all kinds of shiny tinker possibilities dangled in front of you then dropping to ‘slightly better than normal’ would be a disappointment. I looked at Taylor and felt her significance from my passenger again. This wasn’t actually the limit of what I could do. My latest power would provide enough insight for me to streamline manufacturing of a host of options. The question was what was I comfortable giving them?

I didn’t want to hand out deadly weapons, but they were capes. On an individual basis they were already more dangerous than a lot of what I could make. How much responsibility did I bear if they hurt someone with something I had made? On the other hand, what if I sent them out underequipped and something happened to Taylor?

I considered time, resources, and what I could conceivably make in the next less-that-two days. There was a possibility, and I was just barely comfortable with it. Just.

“Actually...” the entire group turned to me. “if you can get me the materials and equipment I need right away I can probably get a set of monomolecular knives ready in time.”

Lisa’s eyebrows rose but Alec was the first to speak. “Monmo-what cular?”

“Super sharp blades. Like insanely sharp. They’re great if you want to cut through a tank. Significantly less so if you are in any way accident prone.” Grease Monkey gave me multiple methods of creating weapons like this in a huge variety of designs. Normally that would require highly specialized facilities and materials, but I was pretty sure that with the right application of metallurgy I would be able to pull off a basic example within the deadline.

Buried under all my concern there was also a selfish edge to this. If they could get me the equipment I’d need for this it would address huge gaps in my own manufacturing needs. It would open the door to a huge number of projects I had kicked down the road, suspended indefinitely, or just not considered in the first place.

“Fuck, sign me up for that.”

“I really can’t state enough how dangerous these things could be. If you screw around with them you could very easily lose a limb. Using them against someone without a high brute rating or regeneration is full on deadly force attempted murder. I’m not going to even consider this without assurances that you understand what you’re dealing with.

“It’s a sword that cuts through anything. Of course we’ll be careful.”

“Knife, not sword. Unless you have five years of fencing experience I give you a sword and best case scenario we’ll be sewing your leg back on before the end of the day. Worst case we’ll be mopping arterial spray off the celling and sending flowers to your next of kin.”

“Fine, got it. Knife that can cut through anything. Very dangerous. Be very careful. Still want it.”

I looked around and the rest of them nodded their heads. Even Taylor seemed engaged by the idea.

“We’ll go with the knives. Lisa can work out the budget and materials.”

“What are we looking at for durability and maintenance?”

I considered Lisa’s question. There was regular wear on even perfectly made monomolecular weaponry. I had enough additional skill that I would be able to improve the lifespan, but that wasn’t likely with this rush job. I’d have to cheat with amorphous metal and magnetic sharpening, probably particulate hardening for the edge. It wouldn’t hold a candle to the top tier mono-edge weapons I’d be able to make with a proper facility.

But on the other hand those weapons were intended to cut through hyper alloys of hardsuits, combat robots, and mechs. Unless they were going up against tinkers with seriously reinforced materials or very high tier brutes these knives should last exceptionally well.

“That will depend on how heavily they’re used. They should be able to cut through most conventional materials without a problem, but I can’t guarantee their performance against higher level parahuman durability or the work of other tinkers.” A thought occurred. There were factors in this world that this kind of weapon had never been designed to deal with. “Oh, force fields. They’ll be a crap shoot. Too many possible mechanisms to be able to predict how they’ll interact. It might be able to stress some to failure, but others will stop it dead or even cause feedback or damage the weapon.”

“We can take that into account. Anything else?”

“Well, I’ll be making them as strong as I can, but they’re still just knives. If you try to cut through something too thick or dense there’s a chance they could get stuck or break. Like, don’t try to cut down a tree or quarry stone with them. The edge will naturally degrade with use, but it will still be orders of magnitude sharper than a normal knife.”

“Right. And maintenance?”

Well, if I’m making these in my workshop...“If it does break or wear out it will take a couple of days to repair”

Lisa seemed happy with that. “We can talk about that later. How are you for supplies and equipment?”

I ran through what I’d need in my head and a new constellation spun past in the Celestial Forge without my power linking to it. “I’ll need to rig an arc furnace for the metallurgy, that’ll take some creative assembly, plus magnetic suspension, temperature control, a whole host of alloys I’ll need to customize. Most of it should be easy to find, but there are some that I don’t know how to track down in time.”

“I can help you with that. Can you manage if I have everything ready tomorrow morning?”

I grinned. “I guess if sleep is optional.” 

“We do appreciate the rush.”

There was the sound of a door opening on the lower level and someone began climbing the stairs with bunch of smaller someones behind them. I turned to Lisa. “Your other team member?”

Lisa was looking uncomfortable and Taylor was straight up agitated. I could tell why when Rachel Lindt crested the stairs and glared at me. Three dogs fell into position around her.

“What the hell is he doing here? We agreed, no more new people.”

Lisa rose to her feet and made a placating gesture. “He’s not on the team. He’s that tinker. He’ll be working for us, making gear for the next job.”

“And you brought him here? What the hell?” She was betrayed, angry and territorial. Everyone was on edge and the dogs were growling and ready to pounce. The situation should by every metric have been terrifying. That is, unless your passenger was euphoric over seeing the last member of the Undersiders and fawning over the dogs with the kind of emotions normally reserved for cute puppies. They were clearly snarling dogs and not cute puppies, but that was the emotion I was getting. I still had my shin guard under my jeans, reinforcing my entire body with the durability of hard plastic and padding with the protection doubled thanks to my clothes. As such I wasn’t overly concerned and I could entertain my passenger’s perspective.

Unfortunately my lack of a response must have been taken as a challenge. With a whistle the dogs surged forward. The German Shepard latched onto my leg and dragged me off the couch while what looked like a Rottweiler went for my throat. I managed to bring my chin down causing it to bite at my face instead. A one eyed terrier latched onto one wrist and started to grind its teeth together.

Two of these were seriously big dogs, the kind where when they bark you can feel the sound in your guts. They were heavier than they looked too, and the weight of the one on my chest bordered on crushing. On top of that their claws were sharp and they seemed trained on how to use them against their targets. It would have been one of the most physically terrifying moments of my life.

It wasn’t. The pain was nonexistent thanks to my durability boost. Claws slid off my skin without leaving a mark and even the full force of the bites failed to do any damage. At worst I felt a slight dimpling in my skin, the equivalent of a pinch. The terror wasn’t there thanks to my passenger’s overwhelming amusement at the situation. He even found the barking and snarling entertaining.

Recently I had become more than a little frustrated with how my passenger’s regard for these villains was playing out. This wasn’t one of those cases. Probably the reason I leaned on my passenger so much was the level of emotional support he was able to provide. Right now his good humor was stopping me from panicking in a situation that would otherwise have been traumatizing even if it wasn’t actually dangerous. In fact, without the fear, pain, or threat this was just a pile of loud slobbery dogs.

The room had exploded into action with clouds of darkness, the buzz of insects, and a shouting match between Lisa and Rachel. One by one they dropped away as the capes present became aware of lack of concern. My free hand had found the Rottweiler’s stomach and was scratching it even as the dog continued to try to eat my face. “Who’s a good dog? Who’s a good snarly dog?” Whether he was a good dog or not I couldn’t say, but my passenger seemed to think so and this was one case where that was proving to be an asset. Eventually the silence of the room and his own lack of progress caused the Rottweiler’s and the other two dogs to break off and look to Rachel in confusion. I climbed to my feet and extended a hand to her.

“Hey, I’m Joe. Nice to meet you.” She took half a step back and looked at the hand like it might try bite her. Slowly she extended an arm towards one of the dogs, then stopped as Lisa’s expression turned dark.

“Whatever.” She spat the word at me. “Let me know when he’s gone.” She stormed off to one of the rooms with her dogs trailing after and slammed the door behind her.

Alec looked over me and whistled. “Dude, are you sure that thing’s not for sale, because I would pay big bucks for whatever got you through that.”

“Sorry, it’s really specific.” Lisa’s eyes dropped to where the leg of my jeans was covering the shin guard, then back up. She blinked and rubbed her forehead.

I became aware of just how much dog slobber I had accumulated in that brief encounter. Attempts to clean it off just served to move it around. Lisa helpfully handed me a bunch of paper towels.

Brian spoke up. “I’m sorry about that. She’s not good with new people.” Taylor flinched and everyone pretended not to notice. “Maybe we should cut this short? You good to work out the details with Lisa?”

“Sure, of course. I’ll pull together a list of what I need.”

The rest of the Undersiders made a valiant attempt to pretend nothing had happened while I went through a list of equipment and materials with Lisa. She seemed somehow off, but I didn’t know what to make of that. Of course when dealing with a high end thinker who knew if the signals you got were accurate.

As it worked out, providing everything came through I should be able to finish construction by the deadline, though it would violate my policies about sleep, food and exercise. Lisa was arranging delivery of all the materials and equipment I needed for tomorrow morning. The rush cost would be insane, but it also meant I got more and higher end equipment than I would could have scavenged for. I was meeting her at their base and picking up a preloaded van. She didn’t press me on the location of my workshop, which was good because I didn’t want to have to explain that particular detail at the moment.

Before I left Alec showed me the scepter/Taser he used in his cape identity. He wanted to see if I could do anything with it. Initially as a personal request, but Lisa rolled it into the rest of the deal. I had the sense she was happy to shift as much cost onto their boss as possible. Given I wouldn’t be able to start on the rest without the supplies Lisa was tracking down I was willing to at least make an attempt. As it stood the thing was so poorly made I would probably have thrown in the work for free just to avoid being associated with craftsmanship like that. Seriously, parts of it were hot glued together. Apparently Alec was something of an artist, but that meant he was more used to working with craft supplies than metal and electronics.

Once the logistics were down I said my goodbyes and made my way back to my apartment. In the course of a single afternoon I had gone from an aspiring hero to supplying villains with space age weaponry. I had also gone from occasionally worrying about the way my passenger was steering me to having major concerns on almost every level of our relationship.

The thing was, it was easy to like the Undersiders. Just an afternoon with them and the reinforcement of my passenger’s reactions was enough for me to form a connection. They were just a bunch of kids that got hit by powers and wound up in the villain game. I knew how messed up your life had to be to trigger, and how badly triggers could mess up your life. That was evident with Rachel. God, that was a messed up meeting. Did she think I was challenging her? She acted like someone was attacking her territory. I could be sympathetic, but trying what she did on anyone but me would have been a nightmare. It didn’t help that every time I thought about her my passenger was basically going ‘doggy!’ inside my head.

Then there was Taylor. That was a confusing situation. I was getting the sense she wasn’t totally on board with the rest of the group, but that might just be her joining up recently. I was still trying to figure out how to deal with the significance my passenger placed on her. Keeping her as safe as possible was the obvious option, but she was in the highest risk line of work in the world. The idea that I could keep her protected was a pipe dream.

And then there was the boss. The person I was actually getting paid by. He was bad news on every level. I didn’t know what kind of job he had lined up for them, but it couldn’t be good. Best case scenario it was only tangentially related to what his plans were. I knew I would have to confront him at some point, but the question was when and how.

Well, the answer was obviously later and with more powers from the Celestial Forge. I didn’t think I could become invincible through these powers, but I did know I would be able to eclipse every other tinker on the planet. I just had to stay alive until then. If that meant playing along until I could stand on my own that was just a price I’d have to pay.

The prospect that I could potentially end up burning all my bridges on the heroic side was sobering. Not so much with the Protectorate, but there were specific members of the hero community that both I and my passenger admired enough that the idea of losing the chance to work with them was troubling.

Mostly Dragon. I don’t think there’s a tinker alive who wouldn’t want to work with her, and the idea that I would have to give up that chance was devastating.

I decided to stop dwelling on the complete upheaval of my life and expectations and just take things one at a time. On the way back I abused my ill-gotten gains and stopped at a non-budget grocery store where I grabbed all the high protein foods I previously couldn’t afford. You know, the ones that don’t taste like wet cardboard. Well provisioned I headed back to my apartment and dumped everything in my workshop.

Until I got the equipment and materials from the Undersiders tomorrow I was limited in what I could do. I needed some time for planning out the details of my projects. Given the fact that I wouldn’t have a minute of spare time once the equipment arrived I took the opportunity to go to the gym. My workouts were rote enough that I was able to think about my project while I went through the motions. It also helped me work out some of my frustrations at the current situation.

That is until a lithe figure slipped into my field of view as I was working the heavy bag. Aisha was in the same outfit as last time and gave me a look that had no business coming from someone her age. I smelled a rat. There had been no sign of her for the first week when I was at this place on a daily basis and now she shows up right after I start a workout? No way that’s a coincidence.

I scanned the room to see if I could figure out who tipped her off. A couple of the guys gave me sympathetic glances or just averted their eyes, though the expression I got from Doug suggested everything that transpired today would be reported to Mr. Laborn at the very least. I had no doubt Doug would happily step in to protect Aisha from anyone who took her teasing too seriously.

Speaking of which, Aisha had decided to stretch before her workout, though what she was doing was more a demonstration of flexibility than a proper warmup stretch. I stayed rigidly focused on my own workout, but she kept moving around the gym so she was always positioned in the corner of my eye. My responses to attempt to keep my back to her just resulted in more creative placements. I stayed adamantly focused on my work as I would be damned if I even gave the impression that I was perving on a middle schooler.

That proved to be more conviction than some of the guys in attendance were capable of. Particularly when Aisha started on the jump rope and Doug had to go and have a few words with two of the younger members who went a bit slack jawed. Aisha had a malicious gleam in her eyes as she continued her workout while the two of them were chewed out. I almost hoped she had found new targets, but she was right back as soon as Doug finished.

I really thought I would make it without having to deal with her. I had decided to power through partially because I needed the workout for stress relief but mostly because I knew running off would just encourage her. I made it as far as the end of my sets and was heading towards the locker room. That’s when I found Aisha planted squarely in my path. And there was no way past without at least some basic interaction.

“Oh, hey.” She acted like this was the first time she noticed my presence. “You’re Jozef, right?”

I had been ready for any number of jokes, teases, or inappropriate comments. I had not expected that. Nobody here used my full name. I hadn’t gone by my full name since I was in college. As it stood my family were the only people who still called me that. As far as the gym was concerned I’m pretty sure it only showed up on my application paperwork. The way she pronounced it made it clear she had seen the spelling. My eyes darted towards the main office and Aisha smirked slightly.

“Yeah, Aisha? Nice seeing you again.” It wasn’t, but I needed to get past this conversation and out of the gym. Once again I was at odds with my passenger. He was amused by her antics while I still found the whole situation terrible.

“Likewise.” She batted her eyelids in a move that was so blatant and unsubtle that it had to be for the benefit of the people watching. And I had no doubt that I was being watched like a hawk. “You were pretty on point today. Care to give me some tips?”

All I wanted to do was disengage from this situation. As I tried to figure out the best way of shutting her down I felt the Celestial Forge again. My power managed to link to a mote from a new constellation. The ‘Magic’ constellation. Magic. There was an entire constellation full of magic tinker powers.

This was not a distraction I needed right now.

Splitting my focus between Aisha and my power I did my best to deflect her. “I think your father would be a better option for that. I’m just starting out, wouldn’t want to point you wrong.”

This particular ability was called ‘Enchanting’. It let me make actual magic weapons by marking them with runes. The only runes I currently knew would give the weapon various elemental properties, but I could conceivably reverse engineer any other magic or supernatural weapon and be able to recreate the effects.

Aisha was taking my distraction as something else entirely. I really hoped she wasn’t seeing this as interest. Even in the best case she probably figured she was getting to me, which would only draw out this mess even further. She took a step forward. “Oh, I don’t know. I think you could teach me all kinds of things.”

The revelation of how I could alter reality by drawing squiggles was burning in my brain and I did not have time for this. I took a breath and focused on the girl in front of me.

I ignored her outfit, her behavior, her height, and every other aspect and focused on her face. Suddenly I could see it. I could clearly see just how young she was. With everything else filtered out she came across as the child she actually was.

Aisha’s demeanor suddenly changed and she looked uncertain of what to do next. I took the opportunity to capitalize on it.

“Sorry Aisha, I have to go. Why don’t you talk to Doug? He should be able to look after you.”

I stepped around her and into the locker room. I had a blitz of a shower and was out of there within five minutes. Aisha was actually sitting next to Doug and looked at me with a complicated expression. Doug’s gave me a look that was serious but not murderous, so at least he hadn’t gotten the wrong idea from the situation.

That girl was trouble in more than one sense of the word. I hated the situation, but like everyone else in the gym I had kind of wound up in a place where I couldn’t do anything about it except try to keep it from getting worse.

Still, I had other problems at the moment. As I made dinner I contemplated my new ability. This was an incredible revelation. Alchemy had been close to an array of parahuman powers, but still had enough of a grounding in science that it seemed reasonable for a tinker power. This was pure magic. Literal magic. It was only related to tinkering in that it needed an item as a medium. It was closer to Dauntless’s power than Armsmasters.

An image of Dauntless’s Arclance sprang into my head. I realized that I could recreate that. The effect would be easy to figure out if I could get ahold of the item, otherwise it would be a long process of experimentation and checking secondary sources and recordings, but I would get there eventually. Could that work for other cape weapons?

This was a rabbit hole. A fascinating rabbit hole that could change the way I functioned as a cape, but still a rabbit hole. Right now I needed to focus on what I could accomplish without adding research projects.

The elemental properties I could grant actually covered a pretty broad category. Basically, I had to describe both the effect and the element in runes. The mechanics were complicated in the extreme, but the strength of the effect scaled with the detail of the runecraft, the method of etching, and the nature of the weapon. I’d never get as much power from a dagger as I would from a broadsword.

The induced effect could be anything from energy discharge to altering the properties of the weapon to some degree. Wind for faster movement, stone for heavier strikes, that kind of stuff. It was even possible to generate quantities of an element, like have a sword trail a spray of water or shards of earth. More advanced applications could even trigger significant effects directly from the weapons, like earth tremors or blasts of fire.

All that would require more research than I had time for, particularly with my schedule. I would have to stick to basic elemental effects for now. I got my baton and an engraving kit from my workshop. I started work on the most basic of basic effects, standard energy discharge. The lightning rune was carved into the shaft of the baton just above the handle. I would have already been able to manage this, but my Smithing power greatly increased the efficiency and detail I was able to manage.

While I worked my power failed to connect to another mote from the magic constellation. It spun off and my reach continued to build.

When completed the rune activated and arcs of electricity danced across the surface of the weapon. This was an interesting possibility. For there to be visible discharge we would have to be dealing with intense amounts of power. Just how much I wasn’t sure, but I bet I could it figure out.

I was soon sitting in my Laboratorium command throne watching my modified baton float in a gravity field as sensor tendrils rotated around it. The technology in this room had become a lot less imposing since I got my Grease Monkey power. It was still ages beyond what I was capable of, but I was at least familiar with the concepts at work. If I had a surgical team to help me I could probably even install bio-connection jacks that would allow full integration into the throne’s systems.

The knowledge that I was capable of cybernetics and biomechanics was something I would be playing close to the chest. Neither of those fields had a particularly good reputation among capes. I didn’t need the attention that would bring, either from the Protectorate or the rogue tinkers who worked in those fields.

Analyzing the baton in this lab was a difficult process. I had expected some issues with the magical nature of the device. I hadn’t expected multiple warnings about witchcraft and having to constantly override lockdown procedures for containment of potential daemonic artifacts. I was amazed this place even had those kinds of procedures. After I repeatedly convinced the lab that I did not want the baton frozen in a stasis field until the plasma reconstituter could reduce it to base atoms it was able to provide me with an estimate of the device’s power output.

This wasn’t even close to the best I would be able to do with my runecraft and it was still putting out astoundingly high voltages. The power output wasn’t that impressive, mostly because it built a charge on the surface for a single high intensity discharge. I had half hoped I would be able to use this as a power source for other technologies, but it was appeared to be too unstable to consistently channel. If I wanted to direct the power to another purpose then I would need a better handle on the interaction between this kind of effect and conventional technology. As it stood it was easily a brute level Taser and would probably be lethally dangerous to normal humans.

While I was set up in the Laboratorium I started work on my projects for the Undersiders. My lab computers were actually nearly as good for design work as they were for analysis and sped the process up immensely. I had to cut down a lot of the details and additions I would have liked to include in order to keep things on schedule and in budget, but in the end I had a decent plan for the monomolecular knives, Alec’s Taser, and even a baton for Taylor.

The baton was dead easy. With Smithing and my mechanical knowledge I was able to pull together a beautifully made collapsing and expanding baton with an included wrist sheath and a rather clever deployment mechanism if I do say so myself. Still, when your power can cover space age melee weapons and legendary swords a set of collapsing metal tubes isn’t that challenging.

I decided to try to get Regent’s Taser stick out of the way before I got caught up in the high tech work of the knives. I was able to fabricate new versions of his plastic components and build something that didn’t look like it was a Halloween prop. My workshop had plenty of enamel paint in stock, so that was easy enough to deal with. After my Laboratorium scanners broke down the function of his Taser I stripped out every electrical component. As an experiment I tried replacing it with calibrated lightning runes on the inside of the trigger button. Depressing it completed the runic symbol and activated the electrical discharge.

I’d done it. I’d recreated the Taser output without a need for an external power source. Great for Alec, better for the potential of my other projects. If I was going to be working for villains I might as well take it as a chance to refine my technology.

After that I started on the components I could make without advanced materials or equipment. While I was restricted to my machine shop and the basic materials stocked there my new skills more than made up for it. The work I could do was limited to sheaths, casings, some prep work and some detailing. My style ability actually turned out to be immensely helpful. With barely any effort I was able to customize the design of all aspects of the work to the look of each of the Undersiders. Well, except Taylor. I hadn’t seen her in costume yet, so I had no idea what her particular aesthetic should be. It wasn’t an option to hand her a basic utility knife while everyone else got personalized equipment.

I could check the next morning, but I drew up a few examples in the meantime. By the end of the evening I had most of the design components complete. It at least freed me to focus on entirely technical aspects for the next day. That’s where the real blitz of work would start. I ran through the schedule I’d need to follow. Equipment installation and customization, materials testing, fabrication, proving the concept, and then producing all five knives all within a twenty four hour block. Oh God, I had committed to a mad dead line here.

  
I had elected to get some sleep when another constellation swung close in the Celestial Forge. This one was called ‘Size’ and the first power was based around miniaturization of technology. Very miniature. The ability was called ‘Nanite Sciences’ and provided an in-depth understanding of nanite technology. With my current equipment there wasn’t much I could do with it, but some of the principles would be helpful in other endeavors.

Nanites were insanely powerful and versatile, providing I could get the resources needed to start producing them. That comparatively small mote had huge potential, but also potential to go horribly wrong. Not quite gray goo levels of wrong, but still substantial. Like, world altering. I would probably get targeted by the Protectorate if the full potential was known. I’d have to keep that low key until I could make sure I could use that knowledge safely and covertly.

That was a big concern with this kind of technology considering the potential it had to get away from me. The power generation and manufacturing aspects of nanite science were phenomenal, but it was the biomedical uses that really set it apart. Things like instant healing, infinite food generation, and all manner of physical enhancements were on the table.

The thing was this could easily escape beyond the scope of the initial parameters. What was supposed to be a healing booster could end up variegating an organism exponentially. Creating exponentially variegated organisms. This could be worse than the case 53s. The possibilities at that point were, well, exponential. Massive physical mutations, integrated technology, shifts to different phases of matter, even complex microbe symbiosis were all possibilities. As a rule any technology that would cause comparisons to Nilbog should be handled very carefully.

That was a sobering thought. Nilbog. God, there was someone I hadn’t thought about since I learned how my trigger was originally supposed to play out. If I hadn’t been hijacked by the Celestial Forge...

You know what, that’s not worth worrying about. Put it aside and focus on the non-monster applications of your new power. No reason to think about any of that, ever.

Yes, there were advantages here. This information would make blade fabrication substantially easier. I knew how to form amorphous metal into a monomolecular edge, but Nanite Sciences gave me an understanding of atomic level technology like nothing I’d ever imagined before. This would shave a substantial amount of time and effort from the project. My schedule just went from borderline impossible to merely nightmarish. Now I just needed to get some sleep before my 24 hour blitz to make sure a team of criminals had deadly weapons ready for their mystery felony.

You know, I would say fuck my life but I’m pretty sure that’s redundant at this point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Aerospace Engineering Makes Things Go Fast (Kerbal Space Program) 100:  
> You have an intuitive grasp on the mechanics of wind-flow, material sciences, atmospheric drag, tensile strengths, rocketry, so on and so forth, and how it applies to the art of designing vehicles that traverse the sky and space.
> 
> Magic: Enchanting (Samurai Jack) 200:  
> You can grant magical properties to weapons by marking them with ancient runes. Right now you only know how to give weapons elemental properties but you can learn more enchantments by studying other enchanted and magical weapons.
> 
> Nanite Sciences (Generator Rex) 100:  
> You possess in depth knowledge of nanite technologies. With sufficient equipment and resources you could produce and control nanite machines, possibly even recreate the nanite event or maybe figure out how to reverse its effects. But that would take a long time of additional study of nanites out in the world, still you might be one of the few who could attempt this endeavor.  
> You possess no knowledge of the meta-nanites, and understanding how they work is beyond your grasp


	8. 6.1 Interlude Taylor

Interlude: Taylor

Taylor watched the tinker vanish down the stairs as Lisa saw him out of the building. As they left Alec looked up from the game he’d been playing and gave her and Brian a conspiratorial look.

“So, the new guy. You think he’s all there?”

Brain walked back from dumping the pizza boxes in the kitchen. “You mean that thing with Rachel? He did take it pretty well.” Alec raised an eyebrow. “Ok, more than pretty well. Still, Lisa vouched for him.”

The confidence they had in Tattletale’s analysis didn’t sit quite as well with Taylor. “Uh, should we get Rachel?” She looked at the girl’s closed door.

Brian waved her off. “Leave her a bit longer to cool off. I think he spooked her.”

“Yeah, ‘he’ spooked ‘her’.” Alec made exaggerated finger quotes. “Did anyone see it going down that way?”

Taylor cringed as she felt the stitches from her encounter the previous day. “I know you said he was tough, but I didn’t know he could handle that.”

Brian shrugged. “I guess if you’re tough enough that kind of thing doesn’t bother you.”

Alec smirked “Mercy remains the privilege of the most powerful.”

Taylor blinked. “Was that Nietzsche? You read Nietzsche?”

“Na, must have picked it up somewhere. But Brian has a point. You’re strong enough and you can afford to let that stuff slide.”

It sounded like he was giving a sideways compliment about the previous day, but the casual way they were talking about such a serious power had her on edge.

She had felt in over her head since they agreed to this plan. In her efforts to quietly nudge the group away from the bank job she had pointed out they weren’t really equipped for something like that. Lisa had countered by mentioning a new tinker contact. The prospect of tinker tech equipment had been enough to bring Alec around and mitigated the fears the other members had with the heist. They‘d had to plan the job without certainty over what, if any gear could be provided, but with the boss footing the bill everyone was willing to make an attempt.

Lisa had offered to manage the meeting without her but Taylor insisted on coming. She had a chance to gather information on a rogue tinker that was supplying weapons to villains. It would be more information she could turn over to the Protectorate at the end of this.

Only as she learned more the situation turned out to be a little different from that. This guy had jumped in and fought Oni Lee the same night she showed down against Lung. According to Alec he had gear that protected him from explosives and some weapon that let him outfight Oni Lee in the center of a mob of his clones. The assassin had apparently run off with a broken arm at the end of things.

The situation was a little too close to her own for comfort. Alec even suggested recruitment, though Rachel shot that down completely. Lisa didn’t’ seem too keen on it either, and was preparing everyone for the possibility that the deal wouldn’t go through. Still, by lunch they had a solid enough plan for the bank job that there likely wouldn’t be any objections even if they had to go without any high tech gadgets.

Which, Taylor realized, was probably Lisa’s plan from the start.

When they met the tinker it turned out to be less of a situation where she could dig up information on an arms trafficker and more being an accessory to talking someone into what was at best a morally questionable arrangement. He had insisted on more concerns and conditions than she ever thought of asking for. Then again, he wasn’t planning to betray everyone here to the Protectorate.

And even after the entire afternoon she still had only the vaguest idea of what he was capable of.

“How strong would you say he is?”

“The guy took like three dozen grenades at once on Sunday night and came out swinging.”

Taylor froze. “He what?”

“Oh, yeah, didn’t you see the crater?”

“You said he took an explosion. I didn’t know you were talking about something like that.”

“He used his formula thing for that. I don’t think he’s normally that tough.” Brian qualified Alec’s statement.

Alec just shrugged. “The guy was still at ground zero for that blast. We totally should have gone for recruitment.”

Lisa returned from the stairs and shook her head. “He wouldn’t have gone for it. We’re lucky to get what we did.”

Alec set down his controller and turned to face them. “How sure are you about that? Because I think we have someone who could have talked him around.” He waggled his eyebrows at Taylor.

She frowned at the boy. “What do you mean?”

He looked around. “Seriously? Am I the only one who noticed? Brian? Lisa?”

“Alec, leave it alone.” Lisa’s voice was firm but had no effect on him.

“What are you getting at?” Brian sat down next to Taylor on the couch.

He pulled himself up as if making a formal declaration. “What I’m getting at is our new tinker friend has fallen for the bug girl.”

Taylor swore she felt her heart stop. “What?”

“I’m serious. He was all disinterested until he saw you. Every time there was a hard choice or it seemed like he was going to bail on the whole deal he’d just look at Taylor and reassessed things. Face it, he’s got it bad for you.”

“No way.” Taylor couldn’t even process the idea. All her previous concerns were grinding to a halt as she tried to wrap her mind around this concept “It’s just, there’s no way that’s what happened.”

Alec mimed a tear and gave an exaggerated sniffle. “Little Taylor, only a villain for one day and already seducing innocent capes to the side of darkness. I’m so proud.”

Lisa sighed and rubbed her forehead.

“Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just, I saw this coming, or happening. Whatever.”

She nearly went slack jawed at the thinker’s words. “Wait, you mean Alec’s right?”

“Alec is always right. The sooner the rest of you accept that the happier you’ll be.”

“Ass. No, that intuition power he mentioned? It kind of tells him how to feel about stuff. Sort of, it’s complicated.”

“So his power tells him he’s in love with Taylor. Same result really.” He glanced over. “Bit of a cradle robber though. The guy was what, twenty five?”

“Twenty one. College drop out. I think, there was a lot there to read.”

“What does that mean?”

“That power gives him this kind of emotional reaction to things but it also makes him really easy to read.” When Taylor gave her a questioning look she clarified. “I mean for me to read. Some of it is so obvious it’s hard to ignore.”

“The point is he’s here because of you. You should totally use your feminine wiles to get him on the team.”

Taylor glanced at Rachel’s closed door. “I think Bitch might kill him if I tried that.”

“Who cares? The guy’s a tank.” He turned to Lisa. “You sure he’s not a brute? I didn’t see any gear. He have a hidden force field or something?”

“No, it’s not a power. Well, it is a power but not a power.” The rest of the Undersiders stared at her blankly. “Ok, it’s not based on technology, and it’s something only he can do, and it’s supernatural, but it’s not part of his power.”

“So he’s easy to read, huh?” He leaned over and spoke in a stage whisper. “Hey Brian, I think the new guy broke Lisa.”

“Look, I don’t know how it works, or how he’s doing it or how he got it, but he had something on his leg that was making his entire body tough.”

“So it was like a personal force field? If he’s got those we should totally buy one. Or get Taylor to seduce it from him.” Alec suddenly choked as a fly flew directly down his throat.

“So that’s how he did it?” Brian asked from beside her.

“Yeah, it makes his entire body tough. His clothes too for some reason.”

“Sorry,” Taylor interjected “This is fascinating and all, but can we go back to the thing where he might be in love with me?”

“I don’t think it’s exactly love.” 

Lisa ignored Alec as he leaned over and whispered “It’s totally love.”

“He does like you though. He likes all of us, but he’ll probably work with us as long as you’re on the team.”

Taylor felt a pit grow in her stomach. That would be until she learned about the boss and got the info to Armsmaster. Could she get him out too? How bad was it to be supplying tinker tech to criminals? God, she couldn’t believe that someone might have turned to a life of crime for her sake. For HER.

And this was based in a thinker power? How did that work?

“Is that thinker intuition thing something we should be concerned about?” She tried to keep the worry out of her voice as she asked.

“You know, what with you running off screaming the other night.” Alec added with a smirk.

Lisa shot him a sour look before she replied. “No, I’ve got a handle on it now. His actual power or whatever it is works separate from him. He just gets feelings from it about things and people.”

“How the hell is that supposed to be useful?”

“Because the power is actually really good at reading stuff. The emotion link is probably a limiter. A lot of thinkers have something like that to stop them from overstressing their powers.”

“Is it like that for you?” Taylor hoped it didn’t sound like she was fishing for weaknesses in her teammates.

“I can get headaches if I push myself too far. That’s the most common one. Other thinkers have limits on how often they can use their powers, or they start getting less accurate results as time goes on, stuff like that.”

“So he has a super thinker analysis power and we shouldn’t be concerned why?” Alec was acting flippant but Taylor thought she heard a note of concern in his voice.

“Because most of what he’s getting from it is a garbled mess. He’s trying to figure things out by how the power feels about things. Honestly I’m probably picking up on it more clearly than he is.”

“And you didn’t see he was in love with Taylor.”

“Because he isn’t. Look, going into this I would have given maybe a fifty percent chance of landing the commission. Taylor pushed him over the top. I didn’t account for how much of a boost that would be.”

“Because he’s in love with her.” Lisa grabbed a cushion and threatened to throw it at Alec. The boy brought his hands up in surrender and let her continue.

“He leans too much on his power. It’s a common problem with thinkers. His own emotions are kind of muted, so he follows what his powers tell him.”

Taylor felt a pit in her stomach. That intuition power had seen something in her that convinced him to work with villains. She almost wished it was love, as impossible as that seemed. It would be better than her slapdash undercover work dragging someone else into villainy.

Brian didn’t look completely placated yet. “You’re sure about this? No chance you’re missing anything?”

“Please, I’m reading him so clearly it’s like his power wants to be heard. He was upfront about what he could build and he’s going to follow through on it. Trust me, I’ve got this.”

“And you finished the negotiations? What’s the damage look like?” Everyone in the room turned towards Lisa.

“Not nearly as bad as it could have been and if those things work half as well as he advertised then this is an incredible deal.” At Brian’s prompting she elaborated. “About ten grand in materials and machinery. That’s not counting the extra cost for the rush order. Five hundred per knife and another five hundred if they perform as advertised. Extra five hundred up front for Alec’s Taser. The Boss is going to cover everything for this job.”

“That’s not exactly chicken scratch.” Taylor couldn’t help but agree. That was what, fifteen grand for a handful of knives. She couldn’t imagine throwing around that kind of money. Then again a few days ago she couldn’t imagine handing someone two grand in a lunchbox.

“The equipment is a one-time cost so that’s a separate factor. As for the price of the knives, do you have any idea what tinker tech sells for?”

“Uh, no?”

“Exactly. No one does because there’s no set price. Because there’s almost none of it on the market. Everything is bespoke and basically a game of what a tinker is willing to make and what people are willing to pay. He could easily make ten times as much with any other clients, and that’s lowballing it.”

But he’s working here. And trying to keep things contained. And doesn’t want people to get hurt. Great job Taylor. Alec was right, you’ve dragged someone over to the dark side.

“We’re getting our money’s worth?”

“Look, even if the knives don’t work like he claims, judging by what he’s made so far five hundred for a knife of that quality is a bargain. If they do then we just lucked out to a ridiculous degree. The real killer will be the maintenance costs.”

Taylor frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Tinker tech is stupidly complicated. No one knows how to mass produce it and generally only the tinker who made it can maintain it properly. You buy tinker tech without a support commitment and you’re basically running down the clock.”

“So we’re going to have to keep paying him forever? And after this it’s on us for the costs?”

“Unfortunately, but at least he was upfront about how it will last. Dropping performance is better than the catastrophic failure some of that stuff is known for.”

“Hey, you think he was serious about power armor for everyone?”

“No Alec.”

“Come on, It’ll be awesome.”  
  
“Even if he keeps letting us rob him as badly as he did on this deal I don’t want to think about what that will cost. The materials alone.” Brian shuddered.

“But we’re pulling bigger jobs now. That was the whole point of this? Work our way up. Well if were rising I want to do that assisted by a jetpack with like built in lasers or something.”

Lisa just groaned and shook her head. “Enough about Joe. Everybody needs to rest up and get ready for the bank job. And someone let Rachel out before she goes stir-crazy.”

“Joe.” Alec over-pronounced the name. “We need to get a cape name for that guy fast. He’s a tinker, not a fry cook. If I get a sword...”

“Knife.”

“If I get a BLADE that can cut through anything I’m not going around talking about how it was made by the great tinker Joe. All the other sword capes would laugh at me.”

“What other sword capes?”

“Well, there’s Black Kaze.”

“She’s birdcaged.”

“Dauntless”

“That’s a spear.”

“Close enough. What’s his face from Philly.”

“Chevalier. I’ll give you that one.”

“I’m pretty sure Miss Militia’s made a sword before, like one of those marine honor guard things.”

“Fine, there are sword capes. I think I can say with confidence that they’ll still laugh at you regardless of the name of your tinker.”

Alec gave an exaggerated huff and went back to his game.

And just like that everything went back to normal. Petty squabbles, snipes at each other, and lounging in the hideout. Eventually Rachel slipped out of her room and left the building and Alec put on a movie. It was settled. Everyone was still excited about their tinker tech, but there was no more concern. Alec still dropped the occasional joke about her being a heartbreaker, devil woman, man eater, seductress, and any other descriptor he could come up with until she got fed up and sent house flies into both of his eyes. He took it with better grace than she expected and laid off.

The following day she was in no state to handle school. She met Lisa and Brian in the morning to review the last details of the bank job. Lisa was still preparing things in case the knives didn’t come through. As Taylor understood it the most they expected to get out of them was intimidation and maybe cracking a few locks. The thought of actually owning tinker tech was incredible, but it wasn’t exactly something they were building the heist plan around.

Lisa had gotten her a collapsible baton and had a knife in reserve in case there were any delays from Joe, though she was still confident in things working. Later she and Brian helped Taylor clear out the storage room and moved in some loose furniture to give her a space in the hideout. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, not with her planning to leave the group as soon as she got her information.

That led to her sitting at her kitchen table that evening running down a conversation with her father as she prepared to call in the one favor she had in the hero community. She had already shared truncated details of her time with the Undersiders and done her best to cast things in a normal light.

“So what about that last guy?”

“Oh, Joe. He’s not really part of the group. Just someone Brian and Lisa know. Good with machines, and, um...”

Taylor’s stomach churned and she doubted it was the lemon and pepper pork chops she’d made for dinner. And of course her father caught on to that. It was one of the things she hated. He either seemed to be oblivious or watching her like a hawk and she could never tell which one it was.

“What is it?”

Uh, how could she explain this? “He’s into this girl and she’s part of a bad group. I’m kind of worried he’s going to end up in a bad place because of her.” It was a vague statement and in this city could mean anything from a party girl to potential gang recruitment. To her surprise instead of showing concern her father looked almost nostalgic.

“What?”

“Did I tell you about how your mother and I met?”

“You were both in college, right.” Something occurred to Taylor. “You’re talking about Lustrum?”

“Your mother was into that pretty heavily. It wasn’t as bad at the start, and your mother got out before things got out of hand.” He smiled slightly. “I’m sure your friend will be fine.”

Taylor knew it was a borderline random anecdote, just something he happened upon. He probably didn’t mean to say anything insightful, but it gave her a bit of hope. Get out before things get out of hand. That’s what tonight was about.

She wrapped up dinner and her father gave her ten dollars for her ‘coffee with Lisa’. She darted out of the house with her costume in her backpack heading to the Downtown ferry terminal. Heading to meet with Armsmaster.

The man’s demeanor was completely different from the last time she had seen him. She barely made it through explaining why she was there before he threatened to drag her to the PHQ. The conversation was torture. Trying to dance around anything Tattletale would be able to pick up on or trace back to her while dealing with his obstinate attitude was infuriating.

She had to avoid his lie detector and he was still able to figure out Tattletale was spying on the Protectorate.

It was worse when she tried to call in her favor. No protection. No leniency. “A middle schooler with delusions of grandeur”. That’s what he called her. She didn’t even have a chance to bring up Joe, to ask for some accommodation for the person she had dragged into this.

In frustration she tried to throw Lung’s capture in his face, how she gave him the credit, let him take all the glory for that. Then she found out why he’d been at her throat all night.

Lung had almost died. The tinker had dosed him with tranquilizer and knocked out his healing factor. And then blamed her when it almost killed the man. Then he talked about having his equipment checked like it was the worst violation he could possibly imagine. Blaming her for everything.

She barely, just barely, got him to agree to not report the meeting. That was her favor. That was the reward she got for capturing one of the most notorious crime lords in the country. He was willing not to file a report that would get her killed.

She was fuming as she made her way back home. She’d been berated, insulted, and patronized before she could even ask for help. She would have to do this on her own. Get out before things get out of hand. Her mother had done it, so could she.

If Joe was really doing this because he was following his power, because of her, then maybe he’d follow her out. The gear was being delivered tomorrow and if it was good enough, well Lisa had said how valuable tinkers were. The Protectorate would probably take him even if his equipment had helped a bank robbery. After all, she couldn’t imagine Armsmaster walking out of a crater like the one she had seen and still being ready to fight.

So she was going to rob the hell out of that bank. She was going to win the Undersider’s trust, she was going to expose their boss. And she was going to get out. And when it was done she was definitely going to give all the info to Miss Militia, not Armsmaster.


	9. 7 Accessory

7 Accessory

I woke up early once again. This was the level of early I had barely tolerated for my morning runs, but this tinker work necessitated it. I needed to get to the Undersiders base and pick up my equipment and I was already on a crunch schedule. Tattletale had promised to have everything ready at seven and I needed to secure the gear as soon as possible. As soon as I was out of bed I felt the Celestial Forge moving again, with my power connecting onto another mote. It was a hell of a lot to wake up to.

My reach was bigger than before and had enough power to latch onto a mid-sized mote from a new constellation. This one was called “Resources and Durability’ and the power was called ‘Built to Last’. And it was incredible.

I’d gotten some amazing powers from the Celestial Forge, but this was the first one that made me want to laugh maniacally. Its base effect was nice enough as it made anything I personally built pretty much immune to the effects of weather, rust, or time. Without a tornado grinding down on it or some exposure to corrosive chemicals everything I made was going to effectively last forever. This opened up a lot of possibilities for using more reactive metals than were previously available to me since I wouldn’t have to worry about corrosion affecting the items performance or lifespan.

The aspect of the power that really, truly thrilled me was an almost unrelated aspect that was seemingly tagged on to the end of it. That aspect perfectly addressed some of my most serious concerns with working for the Undersiders. With this power I could feel out the location of anything I made. No matter if it was lost, buried, gifted, or stolen I would have a vague idea of where it was and would be able to track it down. It wasn’t as good as having a GPS tracker on everything I made, but there was no chance anything I built could truly get away from me.

I can’t really state how big a relief that was. Being able to track and retrieve everything I made resolved one of my biggest concerns with the kinds of technology I would be able to produce. I might be handing off deadly weapons but I was also handing off a way to monitor the people who were using them. What’s more, since this worked on the same mystery principle as my reinforcement power or workshop key there was no way to detect or disrupt it. It would take some effort to keep track of things, but it was a level of security that made me much more comfortable about this entire endeavor.

Speaking of which I needed to get moving. I had just enough time for a slice toast and some reheated coffee from the previous day before I needed to head to the Undersider’s base.

It was weird seeing the early morning city again after I had effectively sworn it off. I was on a different route than my usual running trail, but the city still had the same odd ‘not quite all there’ feeling. It at least meant I made it to the abandoned factory without attracting any attention. While I’m pretty that sure so far I’d only broken tax laws regarding undeclared income, I was still a little afraid of having the Protectorate swoop in at any minute.

Fortunately my paranoia was not validated and I completed the walk to the factory without being swarmed by PRT agents. There was an unmarked van parked in front of the heavily chained doors of the main entrance. I would make a joke about vans like that and their criminal associations, but this one actually managed to look legitimate. It gave off more of a plumbing services vive than that sketchy ‘free candy’ feeling usually associated with those kind of vehicles. Lisa and a sleepy looking Alec were waiting for me next to it.

“Hey.” Lisa waved me over. “Got all the machinery you asked for. Also threw in a few extras as a signing bonus.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “Server components, some modern ceramics, a 3D printer, laptops, spare electronics, that kind of stuff.”

I looked into the back of the van and saw the piles and piles of boxes neatly arranged. The equipment and materials I had asked for took up maybe half of the space with the rest devoted to the eclectic collection of supplies. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“We had the space to spare and were already paying for rush delivery. I figured if you’re still getting set up then this could help.”

I wasn’t sure if this was a bribe, a social dynamics ploy, or just her taking the chance to charge more to her boss. Whatever her motives it would still be helpful. I wasn’t going to turn down free anything right now and though I had padded my requests a bit to get some non-essentials and my remaining alchemy reagents I hadn’t tried to go this far.

“Thanks, I appreciate this.”

“Hey, you’re doing us a favor. This is the least I can do.” There seemed to be more meaning to that, but I couldn’t parse it before Alec broke in.

“So, with the stuff you were talking about last night. Any chance of getting a lightsaber?”

I looked at the bags under his eyes, and the moderately irritated girl standing beside him. “Wait, did you wake up this early just to try to get a laser sword?”

He suppressed a yawn as he replied. “Hey, hey. That’s not what we’re discussing here. Lightsaber. Yes or no?”

I thought about it. The actual composition of a lightsaber wasn’t clear. There were no details on how they worked or what they were made of. So strictly speaking, no I couldn’t build a lightsaber.

However if all you were looking for was some kind of area of extremely high temperature contained in a roughly sword like shape, then that was another matter. Bakuda’s bomb was an example of how to confine frankly insane levels of energy to a finite area. Scaling that down to a blade shape would be difficult, particularly since I was still not completely clear on a lot of the principles of that device. A nanite cloud could manage that kind of effect, but the control system would be intensely complicated and frankly you’d be better off just using the nanites to tear apart whatever you hit than relying on heat from short periods of contact.

“I knew it!” Alec’s shout broke my train of thought. I looked at him in confusion.

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, but Lisa wouldn’t look so annoyed if you weren’t thinking about how to do it.” He turned towards the scowling thinker. “And you said I shouldn’t ask.”

“Yes, you shouldn’t ask because you shouldn’t have one. I barely trust you with the knife he’s making, and even then I’ve been reading up on reattaching fingers.”

“Honestly, arms are a lot more likely.”

Her expression suggested she did not appreciate my clarification.

I cleared my throat. “Let’s hold off on any energy based weapons for the moment.”

“Whatever.” Lisa gave me a faint grin. "You good now?”

I checked inside the van. “Yeah, this should do it.” I looked at the vehicle with some apprehension. “So, about this van?”

“Listed as belonging to a shell company. Registration’s in the glove compartment, but it’s probably best if you try not to get pulled over. You can hold on to it for the duration of the job. Another signing bonus.”

Well, that was both generous and incredibly suspect. Still, at least they provided a way I could move the stuff without having it delivered to my apartment. I took the keys and made my way to the driver’s seat.

Before I left I turned to the two of them. “Oh, I wanted to ask. What’s Taylor’s costume like?”

Alec gave Lisa a sidelong glance “Why?” He asked, drawing out the word.

“I don’t want to make something that will horribly clash with it. I know what the rest of you look like in character, I don’t want her stuff to stand out.”

Lisa cleared her throat. “Aesthetics aren’t really that important for this...”

“Black and gray bodysuit with yellow lenses. Insect theme, including this mandible thing on the mask. Very intimidating, no soft edges at all.” Lisa looked irate at being cut off, but let it slide.

“Remember, Thursday morning, 8am. If you’re late we’ll have to go without you.”

To go to their job. The mystery crime. Still, I wasn’t going to let them run into danger without some support. Lisa gave me a knowing grin as I climbed into the driver’s seat.

  
“Don’t’ worry. I’ll be there.”

“Hold up.” She reached into a pocket and handed me a cheap disposable cellphone. “This has the work numbers for both Brian and me programed into it. Check the message once a day and before you make the drop, in case anything changes.”

I nodded, checked the phone, then powered it down and pulled the battery. Lisa just smiled when she saw that.

I pulled the van out of the factory’s side street and into the Docks proper. I didn’t know for sure if I was being tracked, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I had come up with a plan the previous night on how to handle this, which was made much easier by the handoff of the vehicle. If one of them had been driving for me this would have been a lot more difficult.

It was funny, before I got my powers I’d only ever driven with an automatic transmission. Now, after a second to familiarize myself with the controls I was handling everything like a pro. None of my powers gave me enhanced driving ability but I had a thorough understanding of engines. In fact I was probably one of the top experts on the subject in the world. I could tell all kinds of little details about the van by the sound of its engine, the grip of its wheels, and even how the weight shifted. Just from the feel of shifting gears I could map out the entire transmission system in my mind. I knew exactly how much acceleration to expect, where my sightlines and blind spots were, and after a few turns all the details of the handling and what that said about the steering system. It was an unusual but highly appreciated aspect of my power.

I had no intention of going to my apartment. A determined person might still be able to track me there, but that was no reason to make it easy for them. Instead I made my way to an underground parking complex roughly where the Docks and Downtown met. It was one of a few such places I was familiar with since it was convenient for a nearby shopping center, basically as close to a mall as you could get in the middle of the city, that had a movie theater in it. Back when I was in college I would head out here every now and then with people from my class.

The thought brought back a load of emotions that I pushed away with help from my passenger. He was still excited about my first serious crafting job and the prospect of working with the Undersiders. I tried to focus on that and not get caught up in the past.

The reason I had come here was the complex was oversized even when it was at peak hours. Right now the lower levels would be nearly abandoned. I drove the van to the deepest floor of the garage and found a maintenance closet near one of the parking spaces. I backed in as close to the door as possible and used my workshop key. The janitor’s closet opened to the entry room of my workshop and lab and I started unloading the van.

Rather than pile everything into the entry hall I moved it into the Laboratorium. I didn’t have time for a full scan on everything in the shipment, but the scanners were good enough that they would be able to detect any tracking signals or bugs in what had been supplied. I didn’t think most people would be dumb enough to try to sneak listening or tracking devices into a tinker’s gear, but you should never underestimate the resourcefulness of fools.

Fortunately nothing came up. I sealed off the door and left the van where it was. It could sit here for a couple of days and I didn’t trust anything registered to their boss anywhere near my home. Once again, I’m not saying I couldn’t be tracked, I just didn’t want to make it blindingly easy.

My knowledge of the garage was an asset when it came to sneaking out. I changed clothes with a set from the entry hall and took a side route out. I snuck through one of the underground accesses to the shopping center, then through a large department store that had an exit on the other side of the block. By the time I was on the street I was three blocks from where I had parked and taking a roundabout route back to my apartment.

It was a time sink that I wasn’t sure I could afford, but I wasn’t willing to take that risk just to save a bit of time. On the way home my power failed to make a connection to one of the largest motes of the Vehicles constellation, but that just meant my reach would continue to grow.

But none of that would help me with my current project. As soon as I got home I piled into my lab and started setting things up. My workshop didn’t have a fixed size, instead being as big as it needed to be for its work. It was kind of freaky how adaptive it was. Just entering with a new piece of equipment resulted in the layout having shifted to allow a place for it. Even for the stuff that was still being figured out or designed there was enough room to accommodate.

Most of what I needed to do involved setup. Thankfully the machinery I’d been provided with was as close as possible to what I needed for this application. At most I’d need to do some basic prep work. No, the real difficulty would be the construction of a prototype metallic glass with store bought components and the shaping of said material to a functional monomolecular blade.

I was doing work that the world had never seen before and I was doing it with cobbled together chains of equipment barely adequate for my needs. I’d never felt more like a real tinker.

My rigged up arc smelter would have blown out my entire building’s power grid but fortunately my workshop seemed to have a policy that as long as it was for metalwork there were no limits on power consumption. I was actually doing a proper test batch before risking everything falling apart by rushing to the final product as soon as the machinery was ready.

The metallic glass was tricky. I had enough liquid nitrogen for rapid cooling to ensure amorphous formation, but I could decrease the need for that by precise matching of atomic sizes in the alloy. I could understand the science behind it, but without my innate sense of materials science I doubt I would be able to pull it off in these conditions. Likewise the magnetic suspension system to facilitate formation into the blade shape took just about every ounce of knowledge my power had granted me in order to pull it off with the parts I’d been given. The hardest part was maintaining the magnetic shear long enough for both edge formation and reinforcement.

To say it was nightmarish would be an understatement. I was sweating bullets the entire time. Finally, after hours of setup and an arduous amount of tension I had a tiny sliver of dull gray material with an edge theoretically fine enough to cut anything.

I secured it in a vice and tested it on a piece of barstock. The steel went past the two inch blade without the slightest resistance and suddenly I was holding two pieces of steel neatly split apart.

I had done it. I was a proper tinker. This wasn’t some tinkerish power or a boosted mundane skill or access to facilities. This was proper, impossible for normal people, tinker tech.

I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream. I wanted to get drunk and party. My excitement was amplified by my passenger. I was a God damn tinker. This piece alone was enough to get me respect on any level of parahuman society. I had always known I was building towards something great, but with the slow burn of my power and the scattered applications I never quite dispelled my doubts. Even with the highs of my reinforcement power, my alchemy, my runecraft, I always doubted a little bit. Not anymore. I was a tinker.

And as a tinker I had massive time commitments that I had stupidly agreed to for a price that was probably a brutal rip off. I currently had eighteen hours to do what I just did, only on a bigger scale and five times over. Also precisely following designs I’d prepared the previous night because I’m too proud to churn out standardized equipment.

I am such a fucking idiot. Why did I agree to this again? Oh, right. Passenger wanted to look after Taylor. Savior of the world and all that. Well, hopefully this helps.

All I can say is thank God for the work I did the previous evening. Without that prep I would probably have gone insane.

I started working my way through manufacturing the Undersiders knives. Because I had to be all stylistic none of them had the same blade profile, so there was custom setup needed for each one. Still, after the prototype proved the concept I was able to build momentum and got into a routine. Smelt, mix, suspend, edge, treat, finish, store. There were a couple of mistakes on the early runs, but I was able to salvage the material and reset. By my third blade I had things going smoothly.

It was still pushing my skills to the limit. I was a master smith with intuitive grasp of materials science and knowledge of a plethora of future weapons and nano-scale engineering. Without any one of those pieces this could have fallen apart or taken ten times as long. As it was I was able to keep a decent pace, drawing from experience I didn’t have, knowledge of things I’d never studied, and leveraging laws of physics that I’m not even sure really existed.

Because I wasn’t a conventional tinker I didn’t have the full benefit of that state of high focus where the world falls away and you lose yourself in your work while basically on auto pilot. There was some investment but it was the normal level of getting caught up in your work. I still had to stay focused and on task through the entire process, checking dozens of aspects of the crafting process and making sure procedures were followed precisely.

The most frustrating thing about the whole thing was my constant realizations of how I could have done things better. Better placement of the machines, refinement of the alloying process, more efficient use of magnetic suspension, and full automation of at least half of the steps. Because of my deadline I didn’t have the time to implement any of them. I kept a close eye on the clock as the night ticked on. I was managing to keep my schedule and would have enough time to finish and make it to the Undersiders.

As I was finishing the blade for Lisa’s knife I felt my power move again and connect to a small mote from the Quality constellation. This one was called Decadence and was essentially Bling of War taken up to eleven. While Bling of War allowed stylish design and matching themes this ability allowed a level of detail in aesthetic craftsmanship that bordered on the absurd. With barely any additional effort I could make things that would put imperial courts to shame

It was also a lot further reaching than Bling of War. That ability only applied to equipment while this one worked on every possible application of manufacturing from vehicles to architecture and beyond. There was also an interior design aspect of the ability that let me tailor décor for any purpose or environment, including surveillance. Outside of the appearance and efficient use of space that part of the power would let me both locate and place surveillance devices with near perfection.

None of these items were exactly going to look bad, not with my previous style perk guiding the design, but with my new ability I was able to refine my plans for the weapons to works I could be truly proud of without compromising any of their utility.

At six o’clock in the morning I was doing the final touch ups. Most of the items were packed in an oversized Halliburton briefcase that had been included with my supplies. I was just doing the last of the design work for Taylor’s knife and baton. I’m rather proud that despite the early hour and the fact that I was being kept upright with caffeine the quality of my work never suffered. I had put extra effort into Taylor’s knife and I hoped to God it was enough to keep her safe.

From the way she stood and behaved I doubted she had that much combat experience. I looked at her baton. She didn’t seem to have that much upper body strength either, and the question of how well she could handle either of these items was unlikely to have a comforting answer. I looked down at the blade I was working a pattern into. I could help with that. Even in my sleep addled state, with my level of skill it would be trivial to add an enhancement.

I made my decision and started to integrate wind runes into the design. With the advantages of my Decadence ability they blended in seamlessly to the pattern I had started. They would make the weapon lighter, faster, and easier to handle. It should make up for any lack of skill.

While touching up the baton I worked a few earth runes into it, just enough to enhance the force of the swing. More energy transferred on impact. I hoped it would help.

In the end I was just far enough ahead of schedule to make a small item for myself. I had taken apart a keychain sized Swiss army knife and replaced the blade with my prototype from the monomolecular edge work. It was tiny compared to what I had made for the Undersiders, but having an item that could slice through chains or deadbolts like they weren’t there was exhilarating. Also it was subtle enough that I could carry it anywhere, unlike the rest of the knives.

At seven o’clock in the morning I packed everything into the briefcase and got ready to make my way to the Undersiders’ base. Rather than carry a case full of extremely dangerous tinkertech weapons across a quarter of the city I left it in my workshop. I could duck into an alley near my destination and grab it without attracting attention or risking anything happening in route. Once I was a good distance from my apartment I reconnected the phones battery and checked for messages. Only a text confirming the delivery time. I let Lisa know I was on my way, then powered it down again.

After a full day and night of work I was seriously wondering if leaving the van was worth it. I was tired enough that I felt I would totally be ok with exposing my secret identity to an unnamed crime lord if it meant not having to make this walk. To make matters worse about two blocks from the Undersider’s base and just after I had retrieved the case from my workshop the sky, which had been threatening rain all morning, decided to cut out any buildup and jumped directly to a torrential downpour. It served to properly amplify the foul mood that had been cultivated by a combination of sleep deprivation and early morning exercise. I was grateful my decision to leave early prevented me from having to march the entire distance in this soup. When I reached the factory my overly aggressive knock on the door was answered by Alec who greeted me with some encouraging words.

“You look like shit.”

“Fuck you. And fuck your schedule. Where is everyone?”

“Upstairs. Come on, Lisa got you a coffee.”

I trudged up the metal stairs to find the Undersiders assembled around their coffee table with paper cups and various breakfast items scattered across it. Upon seeing me Lisa approached with a Starbucks cup and a warm towel that I accepted without comment. At this point it wasn’t even unusual that she had guessed the way I liked my coffee and timed it to my arrival so it was at just the right temperature. Though if she knew in advance I was going to be walking through that rainstorm I had a few concerns about her willingness to share information.

Rachel eyed me warily as Brian cleared space for my case. Taylor was in the back picking at a scone and glancing at me nervously. The rush of positivity from my passenger upon seeing her banished the worst of the cobwebs from my brain and cleared my head well enough to get through the presentation.

“As promised.” I laid the case on the table and flipped it open. “One set of tinker tech weapons, ready to go.”

I was proud of the work I had done and was looking forward to showing them off to the Undersiders. Yes, these were weapons and criminals respectively, but this was my first serious tinkering and I was excited to see their reaction. I’m not sure what I expected from my reveal, but dead silence and vacant stares wasn’t it. Alec was the first to respond, letting out a long whistle.

“Uh, we asked for knives.”

I looked blankly at Brian. “These are knives. And Alec’s scepter. And Taylor’s baton.”

Taylor looked at a metal cylinder in her hand, then at the device in the case. Lisa was rubbing her forehead. Out of all of them only Rachel looked interested.

“There’s one for me.” It was as much of a statement as a question.

“That was the deal. Everyone gets a knife. What’s the problem?”

Rachel had gotten up from her seat and picked up the bowie knife in its rugged sheath. I had designed it off the very rough color scheme that she wore in her cape persona. The hilt had a subtle hint of the shape of a leaping dog while still being as ergonomic for her hand as I could make it. The hilt’s design continued onto the sheath in tooled leather, creating the impression of a pack when the blade was in place.

She gripped the handle and pulled the blade free. It was as heavy a knife as I could make without sacrificing its ability to cut through dense material. There was a single gleaming edge and the back had light serrations to provide some utility, but was mostly to fit the aesthetic.

She looked at the edge. “Is it sharp?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s sharp. It’s very, very sharp. Seriously, did no one fill her in?”

“We weren’t expecting you to make her one.”

I gave Brian a flat look. “The deal was one knife for each of the Undersiders.”

“For each of us. She wasn’t there, and we didn’t think, after what happened...”

There was a sound of rasping metal from the stairs followed by a thunk sound as a piece of cast iron railing hit the floor. Rachel was looking at her large knife with a mixture of admiration and respect. “They’re sharp.”

The entire group was staring at the girl and the large knife she was holding. On one hand I had just given a space age melee weapon to a girl who assaulted me the last time we met. On the other the group was apparently alright with her sitting there while everyone else got shiny toys and she came up short like the least favorite child on Christmas morning. That didn’t sit right with me but I would have felt a lot better about this if they had at least clued her in before she picked up the thing.

I cleared my throat. “The sheaths aren’t monomolecular proof.” Rachel glanced over at me. “They’re designed to hold the blade in place without contact on the edge, so there’s no risk once they’re sheathed, but if you’re not careful you could cut them apart when you return the blade.”

She looked down at the dogs tooled into the surface of the sheath, then nodded slightly. With exaggerated care she slowly returned the blade.

I looked to Lisa. “Can you fill her in on the rest?”

“Sure. No problem.”

I turned to the rest of the group. “So what is the issue here?”

Alec was the one to speak up. “It’s just we were kind of expecting some kind of tinker looking stuff, not customized museum pieces.”

That was what they were having trouble with? “We didn’t talk about design so I tried to fit it to theme.” I glanced at Lisa. “Is this going to be a problem?”

“More of a surprise really. I don’t think anyone was expecting bespoke tinker tech tailored to their personal look.” She picked up the purple and black sheath of the long stiletto dagger. I had worked the cross guard to roughly matched the letters she had hidden in the design of her costume. She pulled it free and looked at the gleaming edge of the thin knife.

“I said I was making these to match your costumes. What exactly were you expecting?”

Brian shook his head. “Honestly I figured it would be standard knives with maybe a coat of paint, not this craziness.”

Lisa’s action seemed to have allowed Alec to overcome his reservations and he snapped up the small parrying dagger. He admired the luxury styled design of the handle and sheath before pulling the blade free. His eyes gleamed as he settled his hand into the grip. I had built a serious cross guard and thumb ring to improve control and protect his hand, hopefully reducing the chance of accidents.

“No Alec.”

“What?” He asked innocently?

“You’re not testing that on everything in the hideout. Put it down.”

But apparently not reducing the chance of ‘intentionals’.

He grumbled but carefully sheathed the knife. “Here.” I took the rebuilt scepter from the case and handed it to him.

Alec gave it some experimental swings. “It’s less bulky. Did you tinker it up?”

“Yeah. The Taser’s a bit more powerful and you don’t have to worry about charging it anymore.”

He examined it and noted the lack of a charging wire for the battery as well as the lack of space to hide a Taser inside the object. He triggered the activation button and watched sparks jump continuously between the prongs of the scepter’s crown.

“Put it down Alec.” Lisa shook her head. “How long will that last without maintenance?”

It was fairly durable, but it could still end up damaged in combat, especially if they went against higher tier opponents. “That depends on how roughly he treats it.”

“So to the end of the day at most.”

“Hey!”

“Were you not just considering sticking that in the power outlet to ‘see what would happen’?” He scoffed but let the sparks dissipate. “So when you say ‘a bit more powerful’ what are you talking about?”

“Mostly faster charge. It’s not going to bring down serious brutes, and I’d be careful with anyone with a heart condition, but it should do the job.”

“Uh, question.” I turned to Brian who had pulled his knife from the case. “What the hell is this?”

“That’s a karambit.”

“Right.” He looked at the curved blade in his hand. “And why does it look like this?”

“I tried to match it to your costume. What’s the problem?”

Alec seemed to be enjoying Brian’s discomfort. “I’m guessing it’s that the knife looks like it should be fighting Éowyn from the back of a fellbeast on the fields of Gondor.”

Ok, maybe the knife did come off a bit dark and edgy, but this was a guy who went out in a skull mask. What was he expecting?

Brian gave the knife some careful swings. “The grips a bit loose.”

“I scaled it for your gloves. Should be fine in costume.”

“Relax Brian. Our new tinker friend likes us so much he put all this extra work into our stuff. I wonder why that is? Oh look, Taylor has the biggest knife in the case. Taylor, why don’t you go look at what the nice tinker made for you.”

Ok, Taylor’s knife did kind of boarder on the size of a short sword. She got up from her seat and gingerly took it from the case. When she pulled it from the sheath the room went silent.

It was an 18 inch blade with mono-edges on both sides. The stylized curve gave the vague impression of an insect claw or pincer and the cross guard had a spider web pattern that extended down to the hilt. I had tooled the grip as close to Taylor’s hand as I could get it. The blade itself had a similar web engraving that contained the wind runes I had etched onto it.

It may be a bit apparent that it was the first thing I had made after getting my Decadence power.

“It’s light.”

I nodded. “I tried out some new technology. Should be lighter, faster, and easier to use.”

“Hey, Taylor. He made you a special sword Taylor. New technology Taylor. Isn’t that nice Taylor? Don’t you think...”

Alec cut himself off as Taylor made some experimental swings. The blade sang as it sliced through the air almost too fast to see. There was a flutter from its passing as the scattered wrappers from the forgotten breakfast items flew off the table. When she stopped it the blade’s edge was blurred and humming. Everyone watched as it slowly settled back to its normal appearance.

Alec swallowed. “Yeah. Nice knife.” Taylor nodded and sheathed the blade with intense caution.

“So, last item. Collapsible baton with wrist sheath.” I held up the final piece from the case. “Straps on to your right forearm.” She took it and looked questioningly before setting down the knife and attaching the straps to her wrist. “Ok, cock your wrist and flick your arm out like this.”

Taylor mimicked my motion and the baton sprang out from the sheath to her hand fully extended. She looked at the weapon questioningly. “There’s no seams.”

There were, but I’m managed to reduce the appearance of them, especially with the refinements of Decadence. “They’re hidden. It’s a precise fit.” That meant it had more of the appearance of an insect stinger than the staged tubes of a conventional collapsible baton. You could see the connection points if you looked very closely, but mostly it seemed like she had grown a barb from her wrist.

She gave it some swings. “It’s too light.”

“It amplifies impacts.” She looked doubtful. Ok, earth runes for higher striking force would be a bit of a weird concept. Best to just do a demonstration. “Here.” I closed the case and set it upright on the table. “Try it against that.”

Taylor looked doubtful, but consented when I made a supporting gesture. She wound up with her whole body and stepped into a heavy swing with the thin stick of metal. It impacted the thick aluminum side of the case with a slam and the sound of warping metal. The case launched off the coffee table, hit the railing, and flipped over the side in an unsteady arc before crashing onto the factory floor below.

The room was dead silent as the last echoes of crashing metal died away. Taylor looked at her hand like she was holding a live bomb and the rest of the group was leaning slightly away from her. I cleared my throat. “Ok, full body strikes might be a little much. I’d recommend wrist flicks. Save hits like that for if you run into a brute.”

“Or need to breach a door, or cause a seismic event, or” Alec stopped muttering under his breath when Brian and Lisa gave him a warning look.

“Right.” She shifted her grip. “Uh, how do I put this away?”

“Flick your wrist like this.” She copied my gesture and the baton collapsed back into the wrist sheath. I was pretty proud of that. It had taken a lot of work to make sure the weapon was solid enough while extended but still able to quickly retract.

“Thanks. Thanks.” She muttered. It wasn’t quite the level of enthusiasm I had hoped for, but I was still happy with the quality of my work.

“So are we good?”

Lisa looked at her knife again, then nodded. “Yeah. Not that I doubt your claims, but second payment after the mission, as agreed.”

She fished out an envelope and added the charge for Rachel’s knife before handing it over. I hope they didn’t think I was doing that just to upsell them. I looked at the girl who was still running her fingers over the surface of the sheath. I also hoped Lisa could covey how to use that safely. I trusted she didn’t want to kill people, but she regularly brushed closer than I was completely comfortable with.

Right, I was facilitating a major crime here. Comfortable didn’t really come into it. As much as my passenger liked these people I needed to keep some level of emotional distance. It would be easy to get sucked in and I couldn’t lose sight of what was happening. Spending time with them it was easy to end up part of their world and suddenly heading out for a felony on a Thursday morning was just a thing you did.

“Well, if that’s settled I’ve been up and working for like twenty six hours. Glad you sort of liked the knives, but I need to get going.” Everyone turned towards the window where the rain was coming down in biblical volumes. There was a rumble of thunder that shook the loft slightly and I couldn’t hold back a sigh.

“Hey,” I turned to Alec. “You want to crash here?” Everyone looked at him like he’d grown a second head. He just shrugged. “If this job goes well we’re going to celebrate after. You should join us. No point in running across the city just for us to track you down this afternoon. And it’s not like you’re any more of a risk staying here.”

There were some meaningful looks between the Undersiders that one by one slowly shifted over to Rachel. She unsheathed her knife again, looked at it for a few seconds, then shrugged.

“Fine with me. Do what you want.”

Brian shared a look with Lisa, then cleared his throat. “Yeah, that works. We really appreciate the rush job. Least we can do is let you rest on the couch.”

There were probably all kinds of good reasons to avoid a villain’s hideout, but the exhaustion was catching up with me. Even with the caffeine in my system I wasn’t looking forward to the walk back to my apartment. Frankly I was probably going to find a quiet door nearby, access my workshop, and crash for a good six hours minimum. If I was just going to have to head out again after that I might as well stay here. “Uh, yeah, thanks. That sounds good.”

I lounged on the couch as the Undersiders did their final prep work. It would have been fascinating and informative but I was too tired to care. I was half asleep during the entire process and by the time they were getting ready to load themselves into vans downstairs I was completely out. I didn’t even register their departure before sleep took me.

I really envy noctus capes. They have a general advantage, but noctus tinkers in particular are broken. I’m pretty sure the extra tinkering hours from not needing sleep would be enough to boost anyone’s PRT threat rating by at least a point.

Despite how tired I was my sleep wasn’t totally peaceful. This was due to my passenger’s agitation. Normally he clamped down on his reactions when I was trying to rest. I had the sense that he knew how important sleep was to make sure I stayed functional and didn’t want to disturb that. In fact, initially he had even prodded me to ensure I was resting properly. Not directly, just growing concern for my wellbeing if I was pushing myself too long in my workshop. Once I settled into my workout routine with decent sleep hours he backed off, but it was nice having someone concerned about me.

That was why it was so strange to have him disturbing me now. Shortly before noon it reached strong enough levels to wake me up. The driving force was definitely concern over the Undersider’s job. Not dread, just eagerness about it. Eventually a failed link to the Vehicle constellation in the Celestial Forge drove me completely awake.

I was still exhausted, but sleep was off the table. I pondered the ethics of raiding a villain’s fridge before hunger overrode the moral quandary and I fished out a plate of cold pizza and a bottle of sprite. With my half-asleep brain I elected to try channel surfing, and activity I hadn’t engaged in since shortly after I moved out of dorms and didn’t bother with cable. It was kind of impressive that the Undersiders had managed to get a connection here, and with this good of a package of channels. Tinker knowledge made it easy to figure out. Bill it to a nearby address, run connections yourself, and you have a huge selection of media with no threat of discovery. No doubt the bill was funneled through the same mess of shell companies that their boss used for the van I had been gifted.

Channel surfing was not as relaxing as I had hoped. Once again this was due to my passenger. Every time I would settle on something that seemed like a decent time killer he would start getting agitated until I started changing the channels again. It was fifteen minutes of cycling through channels before I found out why.

I had looped past the movie stations back to the low numbers. It was here I hit one of the local stations. Honestly I probably would have stopped even without the reaction from my passenger. The subtitle plastered across the live news broadcast was more than enough to grab my attention.

“Live Report: Hostage Crisis at Brockton Bay Central Bank - Wards in Combat with Undersiders”

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Built to Last (Assassin's Creed) 300:  
> Whatever you personally build, be it handheld or architectural, becomes nigh-impervious to weather, rust and time. If it gets lost or buried, you can 'feel' it out too! 
> 
> Decadence (Dune) 100:  
> You have the skills to sacrifice neither form nor function when you design, create, or arrange things, which is especially important in a society whose upper crust values opulence the way this society does -- after all, the Emperor's throne is carved out of a single massive gemstone. Whether it's interior decorating, crafting a knife or sword, building furniture or a vehicle... you can make it appeal perfectly to the most crass or the upper crust. You can also figure out the optimal decor for any purpose or environment, which includes the best places to hide discreet surveillance devices.


	10. 8 Aftermath

8 Aftermath

It wasn’t the fact that they were committing a robbery that shocked me. Through all the buildup I had steeled myself for a much more serious job than this. Honestly I assumed it was going to be a heist, probably against a harder target than they usually hit. Maybe some tinker tech, maybe corporate secrets, possibly even some kind of art theft. If I had accepted all of those possibilities then a bank robbery should be fine.

But it wasn’t. This made no sense at all. This was hitting a bank during the middle of its operating hours. That was just asking for the job to go wrong, and seemingly the hero community of Brockton Bay had answered that request. I didn’t know exactly how much criminals walked away with from a job like this but I had heard it was much less than people thought. Honestly the take couldn’t be that much better than their other jobs. Given they were doing a five way split now and had dropped over twenty thousand on my services this was the kind of thing that was going to cost them money even if they were able to get away scot-free.

This had to be the boss, and my passenger agreed between his insufferable feelings of amusement at watching the felony in progress. What the hell was this about? It’s possible the bank was a front for some other organization, but this was Brockton Bay Central. I really doubted it was a secret Empire mob bank. It could be there was something more valuable on site, some critical item being stored there of key information being kept on the bank’s systems. If that was the case then attacking at any time other than lunch hour, you know when banks are at their most crowded, would be a better plan. There was an outside chance that this was just a vanity project. Bank robberies were a terrible idea but they were iconic. If you wanted to build reputation as a villain group then a flashy daylight robbery at an iconic location would do it. It would attract a lot more attention than you would get in reward, so I would still say that was unlikely.

The Undersiders were being funded by someone else. Someone who had been willing to throw huge amounts of money at a very public spectacle of a crime. A crime that by the looks of things had attracted a superhero turnout that exceeded most of Lung’s rampages. There was only one explanation that made sense. This was a distraction.

My passenger’s feelings confirmed it. That meant I had actually facilitated two major crimes instead of just one. And the first of them had devolved into a parahuman street brawl that was tearing up the center of the city.

That was probably what was really bothering me about this. I had accepted the possibility that they were going to end up against other capes on this job. I had kind of hoped it would be villains, maybe one of the gangs. If they were going to face heroes I assumed it would be someone from the Protectorate or one of the independent teams. I didn’t expect that my work would lead to a super powered brawl between a bunch of children in the middle of the city.

The area around the bank looked like a war zone. None of the Undersiders had the ability to cause that kind of damage, and I wouldn’t have thought the Wards did either, but the floating artillery cannon in what was clearly Kid Win’s design style begged to differ. Said tinker was collapsed in a moaning heap on the street beneath it while Regent rode his flying skateboard unsteadily towards the howitzer sized ray gun.

I was coming in half way through this mess, and figuring out what was going on was an exercise in frustration. For some reason Clockblocker was flying around in a bloody costume harrying Bitch’s dogs with help from Glory Girl. Grue was sending up waves of darkness into the air with his clouds already covering half of the street. Regent would occasionally pause his progress towards the cannon to wave at one of the flying capes and send them off course.

The feed shifted to shots of the other wards. Vista was unconscious and Gallant was struggling to move in a collapsed wreck of his armor. It looked like the dogs had used him as a chew toy, but I could recognize some of the damage as being due to one of my monomolecular blades. Probably the Bowie knife I had made for Rachel going by the size of the cuts. That could have gone very badly. A single overeager cut and he’d be lucky to still have his limbs. I was genuinely impressed Rachel would have enough restraint to go for disabling strikes.

It looked like Aegis was frozen under a pile of bugs, but the reporter clarified he had changed costumes with Clockblocker, which also solved the mystery of why Clockblocker appeared to be suddenly able to fly. So it was Clockblocker frozen under a pile of bugs. The high detail of that close-up showed his panicked eyes with time frozen bugs wedged in his nostrils and eyelids.

You know, I’m still not seeing how that power was ‘save the world’ level but after that image I doubt anyone is going to seriously underestimate Taylor. ‘Bug Control’ only sounds like a joke power until you see something like that.

Despite being outnumbered things seemed to be shifting in the hero’s favor. It was the advantage of having multiple high level flying brutes on your side. Grue was on the ground providing cover with waves of darkness, but it was only doing so much good. The dogs were clearly a threat and Bitch was coordinating them expertly but they were still land bound and their opponents could just swoop out of their reach. Regent had to regularly pause his ascent to throw off attacks headed his way or save his teammates. There was no sign of Taylor or Lisa anywhere.

Glory Girl suddenly broke off from the fight and smashed through the front doors of the bank. Without her interference Regent was able to reach the cannon and start pinning down Aegis with explosive blasts. The output of that cannon was clearly excessive, and not just for a Ward. A core tenant of the unwritten rules is ‘try to keep things nonlethal’. A weapon like that might be an appropriate response to Lung, Hook wolf, Fenja or Menja, and maybe Mush when he got a large construct together. Against the Undersiders it was brutal and borderline illegal escalation.

Unless they had opened the fight using my knives. In that case the gloves were off and everything was on the table. I was worried about that, but those weapons weren’t exactly subtle in their operation. There would be a lot more body parts lying around if they had decided to use them on the Wards. Even now none of them were holding their weapons, not even Bitch who’d had to roll away from repeated lunges as Aegis tried to pick her off of her seat on one of the dog’s back.

Props needed to be given to Aegis. Even with the odds at three to one, six to one counting the dogs, he was holding his own. I didn’t know much about his powers other than he had the Alexandria package flying brick thing, but he seemed to be racking up physical damage without letting it bother him. One of the bites on his chest was exposing lung, but he seemed perfectly fine. Functionally fine. He looked like a flying accident victim. If that’s the way his ‘durability’ worked then it cast a dark explanation for why his normal costume was red. Somehow I don’t think Clockblocker’s going to want that suit back at the end of this. The white plating really made the bloods splatters stand out clearly.

The back and forth continued for a while, but the balance had shifted in the Undersider’s favor. The rain was still coming down, but nowhere near as heavy as it had been this morning. Mainly it served to dramatically highlight the cannon’s shots or the impact of Bitch’s dogs when they launched themselves to crazy heights then slammed into the wet ground. It was an elaborate game of keep away that even the reporter was having trouble dressing up.

The shot suddenly shifted to the bank entrance where Grue was supporting Tattletale and a person who had to be Taylor was striding out in full costume. She struck an imposing figure in her black and gray bodysuit with her yellow lenses gleaming and my blade at her hip. The hair that she’d tried to hide behind was flaring like a mane and she walked with a confidence that I never would have thought her capable of. She seemed like a completely different person from the girl I’d met two days ago.

Regent drove Aegis back with a chain of blasts from the cannon and Grue buried him and most of the street in darkness. Regent lowered himself to the street and the Team clustered for some conference. He then drew my parrying dagger and sliced apart the flying skateboard.

Ok, this was a mess of a situation and I couldn’t help but hate myself for the feeling, but my gut wrenched at seeing that. All the technology I had was still based on somewhat conventional physics. I had flight systems I could build but they used thrust. Lift, and aerodynamics. That was a proper antigravity system and I would have loved to have gotten my hands on it. I really hoped that was my tinker powers talking because while watching a major crime and the destruction of a teenager’s personal property my thoughts really shouldn’t have been ‘No! Don’t break that! Steal it! Steal it for me!’.

Multiple cameras were focused on the Undersiders as one by one they climbed up and secured themselves to the dogs. Suddenly Taylor froze and lurched to the side. The darkness behind her exploded as Aegis surged out past her. Taylor had sidestepped what must have been his blind charge but he pulled himself into a tight circle and shot at her before any of the mounted Undersiders could react.

I hadn’t noticed her hand drop to the hilt of the blade in the excitement of Aegis’s mad charge. The aftermath was another matter. Apparently he didn’t notice it either as he made his flying grab at Taylor. Her action was barely visible on the news cameras. The aftermath was another story. Aegis continued forward on pure momentum as his body flew apart, pieces detaching and dropping off as he moved through the air. It looked like he’d been sliced into at least half a dozen pieces. His head was severed, but not cleanly. Most of his neck and one shoulder was still attached. Likewise both arms flew off, cut at different points. Additional slashes had split his lower torso and taken off both his legs. In the end the only thing left was a somehow confused looking half-torso with one shoulder and a bit of arm hanging in the air. It bobbed back and forth seemingly at a loss at what to do.

Taylor stood in the aftermath of her act, hair billowing around her and raindrops bouncing off the humming blade of my knife. She looked down at the mess with cold resolve, then sheathed the weapon and swung up onto the dog. That was the last image before the entire street was covered in inky black darkness.

The news broadcast cut back to the studio where the anchor frantically apologized for what they had just shown. He also assured the viewers that Aegis would be fine once he received medical attention, though that seemed to be read from a teleprompter with a less than convincing tone of voice.

I can’t fully express the storm of emotions I was struggling with at that moment. Anger. Yes, anger was a prominent one. Anger at this whole situation. Anger at Tattletale for dragging me into this. Anger at the Undersiders’ boss for setting this up. Anger at the stupidity of agreeing to rob a bank in the middle of the day. Anger at Tattletale for pushing everyone towards it. Anger at the Wards for their stupid tactics and escalation. Anger at Aegis for not taking the loss and instead deciding to make that one last stupid charge. Anger at Taylor for using the knife when she had a perfectly serviceable baton that would have ended things without a pile of body parts on the local news. Anger at the world for just being this stupid.

And if I focused on how angry I was with everyone else maybe it would let me ignore how much I hated myself for getting into this mess. Yes, all that stupidity on other people’s part had led to this but I was a completely willing participant in it. I had agreed to this. I didn’t know it would end like this, but I knew what the world was like. I had been so stupid. I had trusted that things would work out. I should have known better.

Now the very first appearance of my technology had it shredding a Ward. Aegis was the kind of popular kid hero who gave safety speeches to kindergarteners and had his face on posters for the Wards program. He had an image the PRT put front and center. It didn’t matter if he would be fine ‘eventually’ because now, thanks to me, that image was a charnel mound. If I hadn’t destroyed his future as a cape then I had at least completely rewritten the public perception of it.

God damn it. This was entirely my fault. When I was in college, when I had friends, we would game on Saturday nights. Sometimes Dungeons and Dragons, sometimes various cape RPGs. It was easy to get caught up in the games and a lot of times they went into the early morning. One thing that became clear is no good ideas happened after 3 am. Seriously, some of the stupidest actions you’d ever seen came out around that time. People would forget their abilities, try ridiculous plans, or just make the worst decisions possible. In gaming it was a joke. When outfitting villains with weapons it was a disaster.

That blade was fully enchanted. I had worked wind runes into the entire design, from the cross guard to the tip. Decadence had made engraving the runes easy and apparently a lot more effective than I anticipated. I wanted to blame Taylor for this, but I was the one that handed her a magic sword and hoped for the best. Oh, and I’d basically done the same thing with her baton as well.

“Fuck.”

My word echoed around the empty factory loft as the full weight of all of my decisions settled onto my shoulders.

“Fuck!”

All of this wasn’t helped by my passenger’s continued irreverence at the entire situation. I had facilitated a major cape fight and he didn’t care. I had built the weapon that reduced the leader of the Wards to a pile of bloody chunks and he didn’t care. I had made Taylor, that shy quiet girl, appear as a ruthless and terrifyingly dangerous villain and for some reason he felt that was appropriate.

“Fuck you!”

In frustration I hurled my half eaten slice of villain pizza across the room where it hit the kitchen wall with a wet smack. I had trusted my passenger. I had followed his lead and this is what it got me? You’re supposed to know what’s going to happen, to be able to look out for danger. Is this what you wanted? After all of that you don’t feel any regrets?

Nothing, just the same irrelevant confidence as before, like this was supposed to happen. I grit my teeth and focused on keeping my breathing calm. The newscaster was going on about the attack. No more clips were being shown, probably because of how the encounter finished. I focused on my passenger’s feelings, trying to find something, anything that expressed any level of concern over this situation.

The newscast cut away from the bank story and suddenly I felt it. A spike of concern, worry, even terror.

“Now? Seriously, fucking now is when you think something is wrong?”

I was shouting myself horse to the empty hideout, but it was making me feel just the slightest bit better. Finally, after all of that my passenger finally felt something approaching concern for the situation. I ignored the TV droning on about an amber alert and focused on my passenger. There was actually a sense of urgency and borderline regret. Good. Fucking good that you finally are willing to acknowledge that there might be something less than ideal happening here.

I couldn’t figure out what part of this he was so concerned about. I had been given no hint of this coming and suddenly he realized something was wrong. I was too angry to be able to figure out what the associations were. To be perfectly honest I was taking some dark satisfaction from how agitated he was becoming. Suddenly there was something about the situation he had a problem with. I couldn’t tell what it was so I sat fuming on the couch and watched my passenger cycle through various shades of panic and anxiety as the news played in the background.

Eventually the news changed over from the story of the missing girl to a report on how traffic was being held up through all of downtown thanks to Grue’s darkness choking the streets. My passenger’s frantic panic slowly melted down to despair and then reservation. My own enjoyment at his distress was also giving way to the gaping question of what to do next.

I could cut ties with the Undersiders. I mean, technically they hadn’t broken the conventions I’d given them. Thanks to the bullshit that was Aegis’s powers what Taylor had done was technically nonlethal force. I kind of hated the Wards and PRT for that. They put out a cape that could only be stopped by recreating a seventies slasher movie and bet that no villain would be willing to go that far.

But none of the problems I’d signed up to deal with had been addressed in any way. In fact after that performance Taylor was probably in even more danger. She had just upped her threat profile massively, and thus made keeping her safe that much harder.

Walking away might make me feel better for a moment, but in the end I’d just be piling one failure on top of another.

My power activated again as I felt the Forge move. The Time constellation was approaching again and my power connected to a mote called ‘Machinist’.

Damn it, I wish I had this power a day ago. No, I wish I had this power a week ago. The first power I’d gotten from the Time constellation was not actually helpful in reducing crafting time. It was connected to a serious power, but ultimately was just an intelligence booster with decent mechanical knowledge. This power actually sped up my work.

When I say sped up what I mean is to a degree that is truly ludicrous. Twelve hours would be more than enough time to rebuild and upgrade and entire aircraft. This would be powerful on its own, but combined with my other abilities it approached the absurd. What’s more it came with even more technical knowledge. New methods of robotics, flight systems, vehicle designs, weapons, power armor, and more. Even high level experimental technology was now on the table.

Remember when I said I couldn’t build gray goo? That’s not the case anymore. My nanomachine projects just got accelerated from needing years and millions in resources with team support to something I can do on my own in a few months. That can cover everything from instant fabrication of machinery to personal enhancements that outstrip most superpowers to a full on apocalypse if I wanted it.

I took a breath. This is what I had to remember. This is what I was working towards. Every step forward, no matter how ignoble, would bring me closer to the Celestial Forge. I just had to hold out until then. I had to manage until I had enough power. Machinist wasn’t even a particularly powerful mote and it had brought me closer to my goals than I could have imagined.

So rather than storm out I stayed in the villains’ hideout. They were coming to celebrate and as much as that didn’t sit well with me I needed details on what had happened. I needed to start taking more agency in my life and this would be the first step towards that.

I did my best to get some more rest, but I was too wound up for proper sleep. Eventually my passenger pulled himself out of his funk, but seemed a bit more reserved than before. Whatever blind enthusiasm he had felt for the Undersiders was either diminished or he was keeping a lid on it for my sake. Either way I appreciated the gesture. It would take a lot before I would be ready to trust his opinion on any villain again, but it was a step in the right direction.

It was much later in the afternoon when the Undersiders returned. They were out of costume and uniformly looked worn out, but mostly in good spirits. That is, except for Taylor. With the cold indifference she had displayed to her act on the news broadcast I was worried about her, about the kind of person I had given those weapons too. Instead of the conquering hero she looked shell shocked. She was pale and Tattletale was clearly supporting the girl. The thinker was also sporting a clearly injured shoulder, but was mobile enough that it was either a sprain or a dislocation that had been reset. The groups eyes fell on me as they crested the stairs.

I drew my gaze across them, making eye contact with each one in turn. “So, I caught an interesting news story while you were out.”

Brian nodded slowly. Tattletale’s eyes jumped over to the kitchen where my hurled pizza had left a stain of sauce on the wall. “Anything you have a problem with?”

Yes, several. But that doesn’t matter now. “I’d be lying if I said everything sat right, but it’s nothing I didn’t sign up for.”

Brian nodded and a note of concern left the group. “Glad to hear that.”

“So, care to fill me in on the details the news left out?” I hoped I didn’t come across to obvious.

That broke the tension enough for everyone to settle back into their usual roles. Alec grabbed a laptop and lounged on the corner of the sofa. Brian gathered a pile of leftover takeout and drinks for everyone. Taylor held back and seemed to make herself invisible, but this time with a whole new tone to her apprehension, and Tattletale ran around managing things while also getting me the second half of my blood money.

Their recap of the robbery took the place of our celebration. Everyone was too sore and worn out to want to go anywhere in this weather. Instead it turned into a group story session with details being offered, corrected, commented on, and joked about. That’s how I learned about Taylor’s idea to keep the customers from doing anything dangerous.

“Black widow spiders?”

The girl nodded. She had slowly opened up over the course of the conversation. Without asking Tattletale had brought her a cup of tea that she was sipping while barely seeming to register its presence.

“I thought it would keep them calm, stop anyone from doing something that would get themselves hurt.”

I suppose from an external perspective ‘calm’ and ‘scared shitless’ look largely the same. “Then what happened?”

“Everything went fine until the Wards showed up.”

“You weren’t expecting a response? Isn’t Arcadia like right around the corner?” Arcadia is known as the Wards school even outside the city. They are frankly ridiculously well-funded on every level to the point where I’m pretty sure every other school in the city and surrounding area hates them on principle. I know that was the attitude in Captain’s Hill and we only saw them when the school teams would play each other. 

Tattletale shook her head. “I was expecting a few of them, but we got pretty much the whole team. Everyone but Shadow Stalker.”

My passenger was a lot less overwhelming now, but still had his distaste for that cape. I was so focused on keeping my other feelings in line that that reaction must have shown.  
  
“You have a history with her?” Brian looked interested.

“No, it’s my power, kind of gives me a bad feeling about her.”

Alec snorted. “Makes sense. She’s a psycho. Shot Brian in the stomach with a real crossbow bolt. After she was a ward and was supposed to be avoiding that shit. And then he blead all over...”

“Your new couch. We know, you never stop talking about it. Next time I get impaled I’ll make sure to avoid your favorite furniture.”

I kept my reaction muted, but that was actually another point for my passenger. That was a sign there was something seriously dangerous about that cape, and it was comforting to know at least some of his instincts could be relied upon.

“So did they negotiate for the hostages?”

“No, they just lined up ready to jump us if we made a break for it.”

“Seriously? That was lunch hour. There would have to have been dozens of people in there.” I didn’t mention how stupid it was to pick that time for a robbery.

“Forty counting tellers and staff.”

“So did the police contact you?” I needed to figure out how this went so wrong.

“Parahuman crime gets handed over to the PRT. The cops were there but they stayed back.”

“So it was a PRT negotiator?”

“Nope.” Tattletale popped the word. “Just the Wards. And Glory Girl.”

I knew she was needling me, but that was insane. The city left the safety of everyone in the bank in the hands of a bunch of teenagers. Teenagers were idiots. Teenagers were idiots well beyond the point when they were teenagers, I was living proof of that. I’m pretty sure the stupid doesn’t drain out until age twenty five, at least if auto insurance rates are anything to go by.

Hell, I’m pretty sure Vista isn’t even a teenager yet. Why the hell were they making calls around something like this? Did the PRT seriously think the ability to punch good gave you proficiency in defusing hostage situations? I may be frustrated with the Undersiders and this city in general, but this was demonstrating a level of stupid that made my passenger’s aversion to the PRT seemed to have something of a reasonable foundation.

So they were boxed in and between Vista and Glory girl had no hope of escape even with Brian’s cover. Clockblocker would have been able to lock down any of them with one hit, and the tinkers had them covered with ranged firepower. With the lack of negotiation they probably expected the Undersiders to either give up or make a desperate run where they could be picked off. That is if they didn’t charge in. That would have been a stupid decision for the Wards, but I wasn’t thinking very highly of their tactical acumen at the moment.

“Then what happened?”

Alec looked up from his laptop. “That’s when Taylor suggested we take the fight to them.”

I turned towards the girl and she shrugged slightly. “We had to do something they wouldn’t expect the Undersiders to do, and we didn’t really have any other options.”

I felt a bit of guilt at that. I was a tinker. I was all about options. But short of outfitting everyone with jetpacks there was nothing I could make that wouldn’t have defaulted the situation to another flavor of combat. There was also irritation at the Wards. If you want to trap a villain that’s one thing, but they set it up in a way that encouraged fight over flight and just trusted it would work because ‘the Undersiders run, they don’t fight’.

I wondered if the weapons I made pushed them over the edge on that decision, but realistically speaking they would have tried to fight their way out regardless. As depressing as it was the cost/benefit relationship worked out in favor of at least trying to make a go of it.

After that I got details of the early part of the battle. Tattletale had seen through the costume change which would have let them freeze at least one of the dogs. That would effectively have ended the fight since there was no way I could see Rachel abandoning one of her animals. Tattletale filled me in on Aegis’s ‘invulnerability’ which was of such middling nature he would probably have been better named Zombie Boy. Trust the PRT to obscure things through appearances.

Taylor was light on the details of how she brought down Clockblocker, which I was fine with. That close-up on the news had been enough. Alec took credit for dropping ‘Browbeat’ who had apparently been giving Brian some trouble.

“New cape.” Tattletale explained. “Biomancy to bulk up and tactile telekinesis.”

“Didn’t help him against this baby.” Alec spun his Taser around and rested it on his shoulder and action that drew eye rolls from the other Undersiders.

That triggered an accounting of how the other Wards were taken out one by one like a PG-13 slasher film. Brian had tricked Vista to get close to her by obscuring himself with darkness, then punched a pre-teen girl’s lights out. Kid Win had apparently been able to teleport his cannon into the battle, just in case my tech envy wasn’t strong enough already, but Alec had caused him to fall off. Twenty feet, onto asphalt. That was potentially very lethal. I would feel worse for him, but he was the one who defaulted to deadly force first. As for the other tinker that was Rachel’s story.

The big girl was unusually engaged while telling it, and her dogs were picking up on her excitement. “So after that girl made the street trip Judas Gallant hit me with one of his fucking mind blasts.” She grit her teeth, but there was a vindictive edge to it. “Pissed me off so much. Probably thought it would make me stupid. People think that.” She gave me an accusatory look, but I just gestured for her to go on.

“Didn’t go straight for him, got Angelica to take him by surprise, then I got him once he was down.” Her hand dropped to the handle of the knife I gave her.

I tried not to look overly concerned. “Is he alright.”

She smirked. “I cut all the moving bits and pistons and stuff for his armor. He’s fine, but that suit’s trash now.”

That was a huge relief. It also demonstrated a lot more control and foresight that anyone would have given her credit for. I could tell Rachel wasn’t dumb. I doubted her formal education even finished middle school, but she had been looking after herself for a long time. I would be willing to bet that her power came with some understanding of anatomy and biomechanics. She had been able to hit systems on the armor without killing Gallant and with a weapon she’d only had for a few hours.

Alec suddenly chortled. “You guys have to see this.”

He spun the laptop around and showed us the gif displayed on the screen. It was a looped clip from the fight of Bitch taking down Gallant. I could tell she was cutting into his armor, but because of the angle of the shot, a partial obscuring of both capes, and the particular movement it looked like something else entirely. There was no nice way of putting it, it looked like an intimate act with Gallant as a less than willing participant.

“Wow. That’s really something.”

“Hold on, there’s more. He scrolled down the page past more variations of same gif and a few captioned pictures of either cape. He stopped on one that had Rachel’s masked face photo shopped over the head of a woman in a rather famous seen, captioned “Welcome gentle Sir Gallant. Welcome to the Castle Anthrax.”

“I don’t get it.” Rachel was looking quizzically at the picture.

“You, uh, you don’t see memes like that too often.” I tried to put aside the fact that I may have destroyed another hero’s reputation.

Tattletale clarified. “That’s because people posting anything like that about a Ward on PHO get banned rather quickly.”

“Spoilsports.” Alec turned the laptop around and kept browsing.

“So when all that was going on what was happening in the bank?”

“Panacea tried to kill Taylor with a fire extinguisher.” Alec quipped without looking up from his laptop.

I blinked at that. “Sorry, what? What? When did she get there?”

“From the start. Turns out Lisa was prancing around five feet from the most famous healer on the east coast and didn’t notice a thing.”

“Fuck off Alec, there was a lot going on.”

Great. Panacea. Because this wasn’t complicated enough both in terms of the local cape scene and my passenger’s insight to specific capes. I could tell he was holding back his reactions because I wasn’t getting the confusing mess she normally brought on. That said he still didn’t feel good about this. “So what, did you swarm her with bugs?” I tried not to imagine the city and probably country’s top healer enduring the Clockblocker special.

Taylor shook her head. “No, she did something to my bugs that interfered with my powers, some kind of feedback thing. It didn’t end until Lisa pointed it out and I killed the bugs she modified.”

That was bad. And unexpected. Panacea’s capacity beyond healing was unknown, but the theories got kind of wild. The problem was that disruption of master control was incredibly dangerous. Taylor had enough confidence in her power that she was able to plant deadly spiders on everyone in a building without the slightest concern that one would get away from her. I knew she was towards the higher end of master power, but that was fine and consistent control. Messing with that without understanding it could have resulted in a corpse pile. It seemed recklessness in the city’s heroes wasn’t limited to the Wards.

“I didn’t know she could do that.”

Taylor shuddered. “That and more. She was threatening to give me cancer or a heart attack, or just screw with my weight and taste buds.”

I tried not to react to that, but it was bad. There was the fact that it confirmed some of the theories about her power’s reach, but mostly it was the blatant escalation. When I had watched this on the news I figured the Undersiders had gone off the rails somewhere during the robbery, but this clusterfuck was clearly a team effort. Those threats easily constituted maiming, which is part of the unwritten rules. Though given how much actual crimefighting that girl did compared to her charity work, did she even know about those conventions?

One thing that was clear was that Amy Dallon was a mess. I had actively been avoiding picking through my passenger’s reactions to her because there was a huge amount and so much of it was bad. I did know there was concern, and concern on a timeline. That girl was close to the edge and without much support. From what I was hearing this situation was the last thing she needed.

“What happened next?”

Taylor seemed reluctant to talk about this. “I was really out of it because she was messing with me through my bugs. She was calling someone, so I got my baton out and tried to knock the phone away.”

“The phone. With that baton.” Oh dear God. “Does she still have a hand?”

“She tried to block it with the fire extinguisher.” Taylor had used the word ‘tried’. I considered what I had built into that baton and what would likely have happened. “It kind of exploded when I hit it.” Yep, that sounds about right. Taylor looked absolutely mortified by her next statement. “I may have broken her wrist as well.”

“Compound fracture, four places and a sprain on the other hand. She was pissed.”

“I didn’t know she could swear like that.” There was no humor in Taylor’s tone.

“It’s always the nice ones.”

Taylor swallowed. “That’s when Glory Girl smashed in.”

I nodded “I saw that happen.” They had been the ones to walk out of the bank, not the city’s top Alexandria package. Whatever they did I really hoped it wasn’t a warmup for what happened with Aegis. “How did you get out of that?”  
  
“She held Panacea at knifepoint.”

I looked at Taylor who seemed to be fluctuating between shame and determination. “What, with my knife?”

“I don’t think she knew what she was dealing with, and I wasn’t about to demonstrate it. We kind of stared each other down until Lisa got back.”

“Back from where?”

She just smiled at me. “Secrets of the craft.”

So potentially the real reason for this entire endeavor. Or a target of opportunity, or she’s just messing with me. God I hate this.

My power moved again and made another connection to the Resources and Durability constellation. The ability was called ‘Rationing’. It essentially let me take the ‘every part of the buffalo’ approach to my work. Nothing was wasted anymore. Every scrap of metal, every cast off screw, I could find a use for all of it. Nothing was ever going to be overlooked or wasted again. Effectively it let me push my resources to the absolute maximum value I could possibly extract from them.

It provided a great way to stretch my limited resources. I would now be buying my own supplies, and this would let me get the most I could from them. It would also reduce the amount I’d have to purchase. I could do my best to keep my purchases innocuous, but there was always the chance something would set off an alert. Minimizing the volume would be really helpful with that.

“She tipped me off about the bugs and managed to needle them long enough for us to get an opening.”

I didn’t like the way she said needle. I doubted it was as simple as teasing the sisters about their fashion sense, and with how far Tattletale could conceivably dig that could have gotten really bad. I didn’t think Taylor was in the mood to go into anymore details and doubted asking Tattletale directly would yield any results. I pushed that aside and moved on. “How’d you manage Glory Girl? The blades aren’t good against force fields and I doubt even a full power swing from the baton could punch through her defenses.”

Lisa looked particularly smug. “Not exactly. Her force field shorts out after each major hit. Gives a few seconds of vulnerability, so Taylor was able to swarm her.” That was interesting. That meant it functioned basically the same way my Force Field formula did, only without the auto restore function she was blessed with. “After that we headed outside and well, I’m sure you saw her performance.”

Taylor looked like she wanted to crawl into her clothes and disappear. I felt largely the same way and found myself leaning into my passenger’s reactions to avoid showing it. He still didn’t have the level of discomfort with what happened to Aegis that I did. Tattletale smiled at me and I had to wonder how much she was reading.

“He saw it, the news saw it. And by the looks of things half the internet will have seen it.” Alec kept scrolling through a page on his laptop.

“Yeah, that was a striking scene.” I kept my tone neutral.

“You think it was excessive?” Taylor asked the room in general, as if slapchopping a hero was something that happened every day.

“It was probably the only way to have stopped him. If Aegis won’t back down when outmatched then he can’t complain about people escalating against him.”

Tattletale was probably right but I doubt the public will see it like that. I decided I needed to change the subject. “How did you break the field?”

“Lisa shot her.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, it was enough to bring down her defenses.”

“You didn’t mention you carried a gun.”

“It’s a hold out.” It’s also against the spirit of the unwritten rules unless it’s tinker tech. You can get away with it against brutes, but knowing a cape carries one puts them on shaky ground. You found behavior like that in the Empire, and considering some of the powers capes threw around it was largely a stylistic choice rather than a force limiter.

Was the problem that I felt left out? I knew so damn much about firearms that I could have managed all kinds of modifications in the time allowed. I mean, giving out more weapons didn’t sound like it would have made things better, but I could have added some reduced lethality options to it.

This was a tinker rabbit hole that I couldn’t get stuck in. We had covered the entire fight up to Taylor’s dramatic finish and no one was that keen to make the girl re-live that. There hadn’t been any comments on it, but Taylor was still clearly on edge. An afternoon of conversation, tea, and friends had helped her relax to some extent, but it obviously bothered her.

That was a big relief for me. There was actually someone else here that was treating this even like it was serious. I couldn’t expect much from Rachel, Brian, or Tattletale, but it looked like Taylor was grounded enough to recognize the significance of what happened. Maybe there was something to my passenger’s regard for her.

“Everyone, you’re not going to believe this.” Alec looked positively ecstatic. “PHO has threads about the Undersider’s new tinker, including pictures of him.”

My blood ran cold and my mind spun. How? There was no way I could conceive of this happening, not unless we were totally compromised. How could this possibly happen? I had only been around the Undersiders in costume twice. If there were any cameras the first time I would have heard about it by now and the second time I had unmasked. There was no way this made any sense.

There was a ripple of panic and concern through the Undersiders except for Tattletale who just looked frustrated with Alec. He let the confusion build before turning the laptop around.

“Behold, the Undersider’s new tinker, named by his fans. Presenting Lord Khepri.”

The screen showed a picture of Taylor standing in the rain in front of the bank holding my knife. Beneath it was a list of details including descriptors of the Undersiders’ new equipment, the items ‘Lord Khepri’ was confirmed to carry, theories about the composition of ‘his’ costume, notes about ‘his’ capabilities, and a note that an official statement from the PRT was pending.

“They think I’m a tinker? They think I’m a guy?” I couldn’t tell which of those statements bothered her more.

“Yeah, I wonder why.” Alec drawled. “I mean, this new cape in a professionally made costume shows up in the group at the same time they all get new tinker tech equipment, and that cape uses equipment that’s like what the rest of the team uses only better. Why would they think the new cape is a tinker? I can’t imagine.”

“But I control bugs. How can they think I’m a tinker?”

“There are like five theories being argued about over how you control insects, what kind of technology you use, how you interface with it. Fascinating stuff if you’re boring and have no life.”

“Tinkers can do that?”

“Controller tinkers trigger from long term isolation, detachment, and depression. It normally results in some kind of drone or minion based technology, but outlier cases can result in specializations that influence living creatures.”

The entire room turned to look at me and I realized I had spoken without thinking. That was not a good topic for me and I immediately regretted opening my mouth. Almost instinctively I connected myself up to my passenger and felt the support and compassion that had kept me going since my trigger. With everything else that link entailed I kind of hated myself for leaning on it, but I couldn’t afford to deal with that right now.

“I researched that stuff pretty heavily around after my trigger.” Which was a more believable explanation than how I had actually gotten that information. I left it at that and the group seemed to understand and back off. Alec as ever was a helpful diversion.

“Taylor, you have fan art! And fangirls!”

He showed off a new thread that had various drawings of Taylor in her costume, though the proportions were clearly leaning towards more of a male body type than she had. Taylor didn’t exactly have a curvaceous figure but it seemed one picture with an unflattering angle from the news footage had been enough for the forum community to run with. And they were running pretty hard considering the handful of entries that were just red boxes with the words ‘This image removed for violating community guidelines.” in them.

“Any idea what Khepri means?”

Tattletale turned to Brian. “Egyptian scarab god.”

I whistled. “That’s the big leagues.”

“What do you mean?”

Tattletale jumped in before I could reply. “Mythology based cape names go almost exclusively to villains. Anyone named after a God is particularly significant. This is actually a huge deal in the villain community, particularly because you didn’t pick it yourself.”

Taylor looked incredibly conflicted at that.

“When the truth comes out you’re going to break all these poor girl’s hearts. Well, eighty five to ninety percent of their hearts.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but it shook off some of the dower mood that had settled over us. I could tell Taylor was still concerned and frankly so was I, The ‘keep Taylor safe’ objective would not be helped in the slightest by people thinking she was also the most valuable and exploitable type of cape in the world.

I had gotten the information I’d been looking for and the day was winding down. Rachel was the first to leave shortly after and Alec dove into a video game to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Taylor said her goodbyes and slipped downstairs. I made to follow shortly after her, but Brian intercepted me on my way out.

“I wanted to ask something. You know how you mentioned repair times?”

“Yeah?” Tattletale was hanging back watching our conversation.

He pulled out his karambit. There was a fracture that snapped off the blade right at the point where it curved. “Faced down against Browbeat. Lisa said his biomancy would stand up to normal blows but the knife would be enough to cause him some trouble without killing him.” His face turned grim. “You were right about them not being good against force fields. He was able to catch the knife and break it.”

“Tactile telekinesis. Pure luck, really. They were fighting in Grue’s darkness.” Tattletale chimed in.

I looked at the torn metal. That was cape powers at work, low end hypermaterials weren’t enough to hold out against the variety of abilities you’d see in this business. I focused on the knife with my detection power. Part of it was here and part was somewhere towards the bay. Whatever broke off didn’t stay at the bank. I could get a better feeling if I got closer, but it was a safe bet to say it was at the PHQ probably in either an evidence locker or a lab. Unfortunate, but it would sort itself out.

“The Taser did the trick though.” Alec called from the couch without looking up from his game.

“This thing, it’s actually a really good weapon. I hate to bring this up so soon, but do you think it can be repaired?”

I nodded. “No problem. It’ll just take a couple of days.”

He looked relieved. “Sorry to dump the work on you right after a rush job. I can pay you out of my share. When can you get started?”

“Started on what?”

He looked confused. “The repair. When can you start?”

“There’s no reason for me to take it. Just stick it in a drawer or something.”

“What?”

That had everyone’s attention. Alec was looking at me from the couch.

What was this about? I made these things in my workshop. They had fiat backing. “I told you, they break and it will take two days to repair. Just put it aside and wait it out. There’s no reason for me to take it off your hands.”

“Hold on.” Tattletale had a pained expression on her face. “Are you telling me this stuff is self-repairing?”

“Yes?” I looked around at their faces. “Was I not clear about that?”  
  


“No!” her voice pitched up sharply. “No you weren’t because that is not possible.”

I reviewed my interactions with them. Ok, I hadn’t spelled this out, but between my passenger and the rush order I’d been pretty distracted and damn it if I wasn’t still exhausted from this morning and the emotional rollercoaster of this day hadn’t made things any better. I didn’t need to deal with this now. “All the parahuman powers on the planet and there’s not one person who can make something that repairs itself?”

“There might be, but this isn’t it.” She pointed at the broken weapon. “It’s a good knife, and nicely designed knife, but it’s not going to fix itself.”

“How do you know? I thought I was the tinker here.” I had a lot of pent up resentment at this situation I was ready to lay on Tattletale regardless of how much she deserved it. Fortunately my passenger seemed to find a frustrated Tattletale somewhat amusing, so for once we were in alignment.

“Half of it’s gone. If anything was happening I’d be able to pick up on it.”

How much confidence did she have in her power? “Like you could pick up on Panacea being inside the bank?”

She ground her teeth together. “I wasn’t looking specifically for her. I am at this, and that thing is not repairing itself.”

The other Undersiders were watching this display. I could lay off, but that wouldn’t resolve things and would just cause more problems when it repaired. I needed to explain this away.

“I told you, it takes two days.”

“You expect me to believe you sold us self-repairing tinker tech? The only self-repairing tinker tech in the world?”

“It’s a chunk of metal, not some finely calibrated power armor. And I know that you know that’s crap. There’s a bunch of tinker tech that sustains itself.”

“Not outside of containment zones!”

“Sure, if you want to take the worst examples.” I could demonstrate this with my key, but I want didn’t shine any light on that. “Tell you what, that things still broken in two days and I’ll make you enough knives to supply a kitchen, no questions asked.”

Tattletale gaped at me. Brian and Alec gave her a questioning look. She rubbed her forehead and gave me a dismissive gesture. “He believes it, so maybe? I don’t know. Fuck it, I’m going to bed.” Before she left she turned and gave them a hard look. “Everyone, seriously, look after that stuff.” She stormed off and slammed her door behind her.

“Easy to read, Huh?” Alec called after her.

“You know, you should probably have led your sales pitch with that.”

“And you should probably give more than forty one hours lead time when you have a project like this.” I sighed. I would probably be facing some repercussions for this. Depending on how Tattletale played it I could be getting some less than welcome attention. I would have to be a lot more careful, but at least now I had the capacity to look after myself. I was done being a passive player in this arrangement.

Sleep deprivation did not lead to the best decision making. Unfortunately I wasn’t done with the day yet and would have a busy couple of days ahead of me. When I said my token goodbyes and slipped outside it seemed the day wasn’t done with me either.

“Uh, hey.” Taylor had been waiting in the shadows near the side door of the factory. The girl was a far cry from the terrifying figure she had struck during the bank heist as she stooped in the alley holding a bundle in front of her.

“Hi Taylor.” She was clearly working up to something and I decided to give her the time she needed to find her feet. When I watched the broadcast I had been furious at her, but that was mostly a screen for how angry I was for creating the situation. She was the only one who seemed seriously upset by what happened. Maybe everyone else was much better actors than I gave them credit for, but I think it was more likely that the other Undersiders had something of a stronger commitment to the villain lifestyle than Taylor did.

The girl straightened her back and thrust the bundle forward. “I wanted to return these.”

It was an old sweatshirt wrapped around my knife and baton, including the wrist sheath. There was a lot of intensity in the act and I couldn’t imagine what was going through her head. Seeing as she was probably the only person on this team who might give me a straight answer I decided to see if I could find out what.

“Can I ask why?”

She took a moment to steel herself. “You, you gave us conditions for working with the team. I broke those today. You deserve to have these back.”

Well this wasn’t something I expected. My passenger still liked Taylor, but since the heist he was at least clamping down on the angelic choir nonsense. I took a breath and considered how to approach this.

“Actually you didn’t.” She gave me a confused look. “Technically.”

“Technically?”

“Technically is a dicey space with the unwritten rules, but what you did was technically a nonlethal act. What happened today, there’s a lot of blame to go around and I share a good chunk of that.”

She gave me a questioning look. “I shouldn’t have given you that sword, or that baton without making sure you knew what you were doing. All of this has been a lot to deal with, I was rushed and sleep deprived and I’ve been dealing with...” I cut myself off.

“Your thinker power?”

That was something I wanted to dance around. “Yeah, I’ve been having some problems with it. I’m not sure everything I get from it is as accurate as I thought.”

She looked distinctly uncomfortable. “If it’s any consolation I don’t think Lisa’s works as well as she thinks it does either.”

“Maybe.” I hope. “Anyway, you need to hold on to those.” She looked at me, then at the bundle of items in her hands. “I hate to say this, but there’s no going back.” For either of us. “Everyone you run into from now on is going to assume you have that equipment. You’re going to need it just to manage what’s coming.”

She looked practically ill at the concept.

“Take it, practice, get a better handle on how to use it.”

She nodded. “Are you alright with what happened today?”

That was a hell of a question. No, I wasn’t, but I was going forward regardless. “I’ll find a way to deal with it.”

That seemed to be enough for her. We went our separate ways with her heading deeper into the Docks while I looped towards downtown. I would find a way to deal with it, but I was planning to handle that in a distinctly more direct way.

I had important work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Machinist (Gargoyles) 200:  
> You are an expert mechanic. You can rebuild and improve a helicopter in 12 hours or create a functional motorcycle from spare parts. If honed, this ability will let you make nearly anything from incredibly advanced robots to nanite swarms in only a few months time. 
> 
> Rationing (Mad Max Gauntlet) 100:  
> When you don’t have much, it’s important to be careful with what you’ve got. You’re very good at saving supplies, ensuring that anything you find of use stays found and that it doesn’t get wasted by accident. You’ll get every last drop of fuel from a can, and never drop some plastic tubing just because you can’t think of a use at the moment.


	11. 8.1 Interlude Amy

Interlude: Amy

Amy Dallon was in agony. Once the adrenalin had worn off the true extent of her injuries became brutally clear. She had refused painkillers until after the Wards were treated. She couldn’t afford to have her focus compromised. She couldn’t afford to make a mistake. As soon as the cast was on she was healing people again. Even an injury this severe wasn’t enough to let her stop.

Her wrist was a mess. Both of them were damaged, but the sprain was so overshadowed by the compound fracture that she barely noticed it. She’d seen the x-rays. It was an odd feeling looking at something she would have been able to fix in minutes and knowing how long and painful the recovery process would be. There might have to be surgeries. She could even need an internal fixation plate before this was over.

The pain and worry had taken her normal healing from tedious to insufferable. After treating her sister the first Ward she had to deal with was Carlos. She hated working on Carlos. The way his body shifted function in response to every change made healing him like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. This was worse than all the previous times put together. After what the bug girl had done to him.

She shuddered when she remembered that knife at her own throat. Knife? It was practically a sword. In her mind it kept getting bigger and bigger until the image of a woman in insect armor carrying a sword that dwarfed Chevalier’s cannon blade loomed over her.

She shook off the thought. Carlos had been divided into seven pieces with a few swings of that weapon. Nobody else could have lived through that attack, and even his miraculous survival brought unique challenges. Every piece of his body was trying to turn itself into something that could be self-sufficient without the other parts. That meant they would fight attempts to be combined into one person. Unlike the times he had lost an arm or leg every piece needed to be prepped at the same time or the entire mass would pull itself apart. Worse only the chest-torso piece still had his consciousness in it. Dealing with that dead stare and lolling tongue from his face while trying to wrangle his body together would have been hellish on her best day, much less with a broken wrist.

The visit to the Wards headquarters hadn’t gone much better. No-one had escaped without some injury. Blake had at least been able to patch himself up with his biokinesis and despite being tased had the closest thing to a victory in this whole mess when he broke Grue’s knife. Chris was being chewed out by the director but apparently had taken a bad fall that put him out of the fight. Missy had been knocked unconscious and hearing what happened to Dennis would give her a whole new set of nightmares.

Then there was Dean. His armor might have been able to endure the attack from Hellound’s dogs, but the villain had gotten her hands on one of those super knives as well. Once he was pinned she went to town on him. The suit was a complete write off. Every system was shredded and he’d had to be cut out of it while she’d been dealing with Carlos. Insufferably he tried to keep in good spirits about the whole thing, which ruined any satisfaction she might have been able to feel at his defeat. Hellhound had clearly been going for the suit, not him, but he had still picked up a handful of shallow cuts. They were so impossibly finely made that she could seal them with barely any effort. That said actually feeling the layers of cells that had been sliced in half rather than torn apart like what happened in a normal cut was harrowing.

Miss Militia had called off the other Wards when they pressed for information about Tattletale. That was the last thing she wanted to re-live right now. Instead she was sulking through the basement of the PRT building’s attached hospital. It had been built to stop capes with injuries from being photographed when they were discharged. There were high security areas connected directly to the PRT headquarters, but the rest of it was a conventional downtown hospital.

And like a coward she was sneaking through back routes to the exit so she wouldn’t see any patients. Patients she’d feel compelled to heal. She hated herself for it, but she knew even a broken wrist wasn’t enough excuse to withhold treatment from someone dying of a terminal illness. Too much, it was all too much.

She had turned into a side hallway when a cape stepped out into her path. It was unusual to see one here, but they weren’t actually confined to the high security wing. She didn’t recognize his costume, but there were about a dozen minor heroes in the city and she hadn’t kept track of all of them.

The man was tall but not particularly muscular. He had broad shoulders that were amplified by his long wool coat. Engraved metal panels decorated the coat, gloves, and parts of the rest of the costume. His left wrist had an elaborate and heavy bracer clasped to it that rested over the sleeve of his coat. He wore belts of pouches around his waist and a bandoleer across his chest. His mask was a well-made and stylish steel visor, but the rest of his head and face were covered by tied bandannas. That combination should have looked sloppy, but the whole design came together with a level of style and elegance she rarely saw even in Protectorate capes.

“Hi?” She asked. “Can I help you?”

“Yes actually. I was looking for you.”

Amy’s heart sank. She had a policy to not take requests, but could she refuse a hero? Not if it was for himself, but if he was asking for a friend or family member she would have to hold to her policy. She looked around. Why had she taken this deserted route? If he got upset about being turned down there was no one around to step in.

“What do you want?”

“There’s something I need to resolve.” She gave him a confused look. “I made the weapon that did that.” He pointed at her wrist.

Amy froze. Tinker. She should have seen it, the metal, the pouches, the mask design. This was the new weapon tinker that had supplied the Undersiders. She had told the PRT that the bug girl wasn’t a tinker. There were hints from how the Undersiders had talked about things, slight references, the way no one deferred to the bug girl regarding those weapons or anything technical. Even with all that it wasn’t enough for them to make a definite judgement.

But Amy knew. She knew from how she had jammed the girl’s power, the feedback connecting directly to her mind. But she couldn’t explain that. It would reveal too much about her capabilities. So she put the city at risk and left an unknown villain tinker running unchecked all because she was too ashamed to come clean about her abilities.

Her eyes darted over the capes equipment. He didn’t look like he was carrying weapons, but that meant nothing. She remembered her terror as the bug cape sprouted that damn baton from her hand and swung it at her. The thing was so thin it looked like it wouldn’t trouble a fly, but it hit the extinguisher like one of Vicky’s punches. The sensations came back to her in a flash. The metal crumpling. The foam exploding over her. The snap of the bones in her wrist.

Bones that still throbbed hours later.

“My sister’s in the building. If I scream she’ll hear me.” It was a bluff, and a terrible one at that. They were in a nearly abandoned corner of the basement. The best she could hope for was some janitor or technician stumbling across them.

“Then I guess I’ll have to do this quickly.” He reached into one of his pouches and Amy flinched back, her mind running through a thousand horrible possibilities. Like that bug girl his costume completely covered him. The only skin she could see was his eyes. There was no chance she would be able to touch him before he unleashed whatever he was planning.

Instead of a weapon he pulled out a tiny plastic container of liquid and what looked like a piece of some root vegetable. He crushed them in his gloved hand and she could smell vinegar and... ginger? The mass in his hand suddenly started to shine and he casually tossed it into the air.

Light burst out from the mixture and washed over her. She flinched and covered her face with her hands, but the energy didn’t hurt. In fact it did just the opposite.

She felt the bones in her wrist move back into place. The horrible pain was gone along with the sense of the injuries themselves. This hadn’t just accelerated the healing, it erased the injuries completely, either making them never happen or healing so well there was no sign of damage. Her sprained wrist was feeling perfect as well, and every minor scrape and bruise she’d picked up through the fight in the bank was gone.

Better than that she felt refreshed. The slow buildup of stress and tension from too many long nights washed out of her as the light hit her and she felt calmer and more focused than she had in months, maybe even years.

All the work and suffering she’d been preparing herself for, the weeks of pain, the surgeries, the physio therapy, it was all washed away in an instant. Was this what the people she healed felt? Suddenly Amy understood their gratitude a little better. It was even enough to overwhelm the innate dread at the fact that she had just been hit by an unknown tinker tech medical treatment.

Looking at the tinker she felt that gratitude, but it clashed violently with every emotion she been seething in this afternoon.

“So are you still going to scream?” He asked tilting his head. She hated how she couldn’t see any of his expressions. All she had to go on were his eyes, which had the gall to look amused.

“I should.” She rolled her left wrist, enjoying the range of movement. With the fingers that were free of the cast on her right hand she picked at the cloth brace wrapped around it until it fell to the floor. “You supplied weapons to villains. I should get the PRT here to arrest you.”

He let out a sigh. “I’d really prefer a chance to talk.”

She didn’t want to engage him. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. She wanted to engage him in a very specific way. She wanted to grab him and scream at him to go upstairs and clear out the damn ICU. She wanted to pin him down and show him pictures of children’s cancer wards until he committed himself to emptying them. She wanted him to not be a villain.

But if he wanted to talk then maybe she could get some information out of him. Maybe enough to send the Protectorate after the Undersiders. Her mind spun off an image of Protectorate heroes raiding the Undersiders base, probably in a stinking sewer somewhere. Along with the pleasant thoughts of Miss Militia unloading a machine gun into the bug cape, using what were definitely rubber bullets and not high explosive rounds, and Tattletale being carted off to the Birdcage while gagged and hogtied she imagined this tinker. He was captured and offered a plea deal. Yes, that would work. Make your stupid terrifying weapons for the Protectorate and spend nights and weekends clearing out hospitals. And lunch hours. And if he was a villain he didn’t really need coffee breaks, right?

Amy realized she had been lost in thought and quickly tried to cover for herself.

“What, are you a member of the Undersiders?”

“No, I actually didn’t make it past the membership vote.” She gave him a horrified look. “And I wouldn’t have signed up anyway.” He qualified.

Wait, they didn’t want him on the team? Who would turn down a tinker? If it was a vote he could have been blocked by someone. A conflict with someone on the team? It was an avenue that she might be able to exploit. If she could split them apart then at least they wouldn’t be able to get any more of those weapons. “Then how’d you end up working with them.”

He considered this. “I saved them from Oni Lee. They wanted to make it up to me.”

“What?” She sputtered. “How did that lead to you giving them weapons?”

“They needed some gear and I agreed to sell it to them.” He kept his tone level during the confession.

Money. God damn it always came down to money. Stupid greedy capes taking shortsighted cash grabs and ruining everyone else’s life.

“Was it worth it?” She spat the words at him. “Was what they paid you worth all of this?”

There was a pause before he answered. “I don’t know.”

“What, is your conscience catching up with you?”

“No,” He looked at her. “It depends on whether it’s enough for me to stop Bakuda.”

Amy had gotten a good head of steam going and with one comment he completely derailed it.  
  


“What? Sorry, what?”

“Bakuda? Bomb tinker? She just joined the ABB and attacked Cornell before that.”

“I know who she is. What does she have to do with this?”

He suddenly turned very serious. “She’s going to go off the rails. Lung would have been able to keep her in line, but with him locked up we’re looking at a city wide bombing spree.”

This was insane. It figures, she finally finds another healer cape and he’s completely off his rocker. “You’re saying you sold tinker tech weapons to supervillains so that you could get money to stop a hypothetical bombing spree from someone who hasn’t even done anything in this city yet?”

She could see his jaw clench under his mask. There was part of this he wasn’t telling her. “Have you seen the video of Cornell? The effects of those bombs?”

She hadn’t. Amy had enough stress in her life without seeking out cape horror stories from other cities. But she wasn’t going to let this person use some other tragedy to excuse his stupidity and greed. “It doesn’t matter. She’ll run out of whatever stock of explosives she’s built before it can get out of hand.” Her family had come to that conclusion during one of the rare team meetings she was able to attend.

“I used to think that before I fought Oni Lee.”

“What does he have to do with anything?”

“You know how when he copies himself he duplicates all the grenades and equipment he carries?”

She vaguely remembered her family talking about something like that. “So what?”

“That works on Bakuda’s bombs. As long as Oni Lee’s around she has infinite copies of everything she builds and he goes from an annoyance to being able to put out firepower that would rival The Triumvirate.”

Amy’s mouth went dry and she felt sweat begin to bead on her forehead. “You can’t know that.”

“When I fought Oni Lee he tried to get me with a localized plasma grenade. It exposes everything within five meters to heat levels you only see inside of large stars.”

She swallowed nervously. “Bullshit. I would have heard about it if something like that went off. The news would be all over the city.”

“I broke his arm before he could use it and took it after he ran off.”

Her eyes darted across his costume. He had been so distracting, so disarming that she nearly forgot who she was talking to. Oni Lee was a difficult opponent even for her family or experienced Protectorate capes. She wouldn’t normally take a claim like that on faith but with what he could make she could see him besting the assassin. Still, that didn’t mean she was going to buy the rest of his story. “So what, you can heal, make super knives, and analyze other tinker tech.”

“Yes, actually.” His answer was quick and flippant.

“Not buying it.” In response he let out a chuckle. A fucking chuckle. “What?” Amy spat.

“It’s that I just had pretty much this exact conversation with Tattletale.”

The mention of that woman made Amy’s gust wrench. She cursed herself for warming up to him. This was the kind of horrible slime that got chummy with supervillains.

“What, you two are close?”

“Actually I annoyed the hell out of her. I don’t’ think she likes me very much.”

Or maybe he wasn’t that bad. “What did you mean by the same conversation?”

“When I tried to explain my tinkering she was screaming about how it wasn’t possible, then she slunk off with a headache.”

The news lifted Amy’s spirits more than was probably strictly appropriate. One of the worst parts of the whole ordeal was the thought of that bitch laughing at the fact that she almost destroyed Amy’s life all while probably perched on top of a pile of money and caviar and fur coats that were probably made out of baby seal skin and endangered species. Her crawling off with a thinker headache felt like pure karma and Amy couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

“Assume I believe you about being able to figure out her bombs. Why does that make you sure she’s going to attach the city?”

He let out a breath. “I have a thinker power.” From his posture and tone it was more like he was confessing to a sin than bragging about an ability.

God damn it. First Tattletale, then Dean, and now this guy. Why was she surrounded by fucking thinkers? That was of course assuming he was telling the truth and not just crazy.

“What, that lets you get inside her head? Tells you what she’s planning?”

“No, it doesn’t work that way.” He paused as if considering what to say. “I get hunches about things, like how to feel about stuff. I can piece that together into hints about what I should do.”

“So what are you getting about Bakuda?”

“Dread.” His voice was dead serious. “Whatever she’s planning it’s horrible on the level of the worst capes. And I mean the worst worst capes, the ones no one likes to talk about. Given what I know about her and what she’s capable of the potential scale of this is as bad as it can get.”

At that moment Amy at least was convinced that he believed his own story. That was a big step up from her initial fears. Crazy and well-meaning was a lot better than strait up villainous.

“So what are you planning to do about it?” She could at least try to nail down his intentions.

He took a slow breath and starting listing things. “Build up my lab. Improve my equipment. See if I can crack her ECCM. Build counters for as many types of bombs as I can. Help the city prepare.” The prospect seemed to exhaust him.

“How do you plan to do that?”

“Well, for one make sure their best healer is in top form.”

Amy flushed at that. “I’d thank you, but you caused this mess in the first place.”

“And now I fixed it. Problem solved.” His tone wasn’t as flippant as the words suggested. This seemed to be wearing on him and Amy took some satisfaction in that.

She was still frustrated, but at least she didn’t feel threatened anymore. If she could talk this guy around they might be able to get him to turn on the Undersiders, or at least expose them.

“Hey,” She shifted to a slightly friendlier tone of voice. “What should I call you?”

He gave her a tired shrug. “Haven’t got a cape name yet.”

Amy gaped. “You seriously put all that together without a cape name? You fought Oni Lee without a cape name?”

“Branding is for public relations. I’ve had tinker stuff to do.”

Something occurred to her. “What about the bug girl?”

“She didn’t have one, but I’m guessing you haven’t seen the online reaction?”

She shook her head and felt a note of dread. She hated dealing with the internet community. Setting aside the fact that people couldn’t understand her ‘no requests’ policy no matter how many times she explained it the other interactions were just exhausting. She avoided it as much as she could.

“What’s happened?”

“It looks like they’re going with Khepri.” She gave him a questioning look. “Egyptian bug God.”

Amy would have preferred the girl getting stuck with something like Warf Roach, but she knew how those things got out of hand. She’d have to check PHO later to see how this came about.

She put that aside and steeled herself for a question she’d been dreading. “That thing you used to heal me? What was it? Is it safe?” She was terrified of the answer. There weren’t that many types of technology that she could imagine being able to heal a person the way he just had. All of them were incredibly dangerous. More than a few of them were grounds for a kill order. Worst case he’d admit to the kind of technology that gets you on the S-class lists.

“It’s fine. There’s no risk.” She gave him a questioning look hoping he’d go on. “The mechanics are complicated, but it’s perfectly safe.”

She grit her teeth at the non-answer. “If it’s so safe you should be out healing people.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what I was just doing.”

She glared at him. “I mean really healing. There’s a city full of people who need your help as much as I did. If you care about the city what’s stopping you?” Hopefully she could get some details on how his healing worked. She desperately hoped it wasn’t based on one of the technologies the PRT banned outright.

“Well, first my healing doesn’t work for free. If I go all out I’m going to run out of resources eventually, which will just leave everyone screwed when a serious disaster happens.”

Amy’s heart dropped at that, but she couldn’t argue with it. Too many people with healing abilities were limited either in scope or endurance. She hated the algebra of it, but he had probably done more good by saving his resources for her than if he had healed freely. Of course it was his fault she was injured in the first place, so that was all crap.

“The Protectorate could get you all the resources you’d need. If you joined they’d be able to set you up with facilities, materials, support, everything.” Unless time was the limiting factor. Or he was working with some technology that was under a blanket ban.

“I’m not joining the Protectorate.” There was no uncertainty in his tone.

“Why not?” Amy was dreading the answer to this. If his tech was an S-class threat waiting to happen them forget him helping her heal, the PRT would be hunting him down for a trip to the Birdcage or a kill order.

He sighed. “My power warned me against it.”

“What?” Once again he managed to jump the rails of this conversation.

“My thinker power? It told me joining the Protectorate was a bad idea.”

Amy was really starting to hate thinkers. “So you got a bad feeling and decided working with villains would be better?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Then explain it to me.” Amy was frustrated, but if she could leverage that into getting more information out of him then so much the better.

He considered for a moment. “Ok, my power? It doesn’t give me clear answers, just kind of feelings about things, but feelings about enough things in enough detail can let me figure stuff out. There are some bad things about the Protectorate as a whole, not unforgivable, just the level of corruption you’d probably find in any group that size. If it were Boston or New York I might be ok signing up, but not in here.”

“Why? What’s different about Brockton Bay?”  
  


He was reluctant to get into this, but at her unflinching stare he relented. “Well, everything my power tells me says I wouldn’t get along with Armsmaster. Not to the point of violence, just that it would be a bad relationship.”

Amy could admit the man was somewhat intense. This tinker was frustrating enough for her. She could easily see him being at odds with the Protectorate leader. “Is that it?” If he was basing his decisions on something as minor as that she had probably given him too much credit.

“No.” He was looking distinctly uncomfortable and Amy was taking no small pleasure in putting him on the spot. There was a pause before he continued. “Have you met the local PRT director?”

She nodded. The woman could be a terror but was unquestioningly devoted to her job. “Yea. What about her?”

He looked dower as he replied. “I’m pretty sure Director Piggot is insane.”

Amy bit down at her natural reaction to this cape calling anyone else’s sanity into question. Instead she switched to a placating tone of voice.

“Really? What makes you say that?”

The tinker started making abstract gestures. “There’s a general feeling that it would be dangerous to work under her. Also some sense of instability around her, kind of tied to something in her past. I don’t’ think she likes capes, at least that’s the impression my power gives me. I haven’t dug into it enough to piece anything else together, but there are major red flags connected to the Protectorate ENE. More than I’m willing to risk.”

“So you decided joining a gang would be better?”

“I haven’t joined any gang. I have a single business relationship with the smallest group in the city.”

“But you still expect me to believe you care about the city? You couldn’t find anyone else to work with.”

He muttered something. “What was that?” With a pained look he repeated himself.

“I did think about approaching New Wave.”

Amy tensed but was angry enough to not get sidetracked. “Oh, really? Did you get some bad feelings about my Aunt Sarah as well?”

“No, she was fine.” He answered so naturally that Amy couldn’t see any duplicity there.

“So what was it?”

“Look, I don’t know if you want to get into this.”

Amy looked at the man. There was very little chance anything good was going to come from this, but she wasn’t backing down now. “No, I want you to tell me what was so bad it made working with villains the better option.”

“It’s actually...” He stopped and considered things, then took a breath and pressed forward. “Well, sorry to say this about your mother, but it was pretty much Brandish that kept me from trying.”

Carol? He had a problem with Carol? This seemed like a cheap psychological trick, trying to drive a wedge between Amy and her family. But as far as the public was concerned their relationship was fine. Did he actually have a thinker power? More likely Tattletale had sent him here to needle her some more. She didn’t want to deal with this. The last thing in the world she wanted was some outsider’s thoughts on her relationship with Carol.

But Amy had to admit there was some part of her that wanted to hear someone try to tear down the woman. Just to see what they had to say. “What about Brandish?”

The tinker let out a slow breath. “Look, there’s a lot to unpack here. I have to sort this stuff out from emotional reactions, so it’s not precise. It’s a lot of work to figure out where the bad is coming from.”

“So my mom is giving you bad feelings?” He made an exasperated gesture. She just waited for him to elaborate.

“Ok, none of this is totally solid, it’s just warnings from my power.” Amy nodded and made a ‘get on with it’ gesture. “The sense I get is she’s been messed up for a long time. Like, long enough that I can’t get a reading where that isn’t the case. It could go back to her trigger event. Considering the nature of her powers that probably means there was some pretty bad physical trauma that was never dealt with.”

She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean by that?”

“Breaker means there was probably a threat, or something she wanted to escape. The striker power means it was probably direct and physical, likely with a threat of injury.”

Amy blinked. “You’re using trigger theory to analyze my family?”

“Yeah?” He answered like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“That stuff isn’t proven! There are all kinds of contradictions.”

“Right, but there aren’t any in New Wave.”

How could he tell? “So you think Carol is messed up because of her trigger event?”

“I think she’s messed up and has been for a long time. I think it could be her trigger event. From what I’m getting I think she has a mountain of trust and control issues and what feels like an unhealthy obsession with your sister.”

The mention of Vicky brought up a surge of emotions that Amy hadn’t realized she’d been keeping buried. “What, do you have a problem with her too?” He did that damn awkward contemplation thing again. “Why do you keep doing that?”

He sighed. “There’s a lot to sort through here. I get different levels of details on different topics. The more there is the harder it is to figure out.” He shook his head. “There’s nothing that bad for Glory Girl.” Amy didn’t like the way he said ‘that bad’. “There’s some feeling of concern around her. Not malicious, just like there’s not enough control. Maybe a lack of restraint?”

Amy remembered less than a week ago, the call from Vicky, the sixth time she had to save her sister from what would probably be at minimum aggravated assault if not a manslaughter charge. Still, it didn’t prove anything. Anyone could make that kind of guess by watching her behavior in cape fights.

“Is that the limit of your prognosticating?”

Rather than take the insult at face value he stood there and looked contemplative. “There’s also some level of concern connected to... proximity? Like being around her for long periods is a bad thing. That might be her aura. That messes with emotions right?”

“What of it?” Amy didn’t like the way this was headed.

“I guess if it’s on long enough it could change the way your brain responds to things. Emotions affect neurochemistry and neurons that fire together wire together, that kind of thing.”

“You can’t know that.” Amy’s tone was more defensive than she intended.

“No, it’s just a theory.” He concentrated again. “My power’s telling me that staying close to Glory Girl for long periods would be bad, so I’m going with that. For all I know it could be a specific power interaction that would be a problem for me and everyone else could be fine. The idea that it could cause emotional disorders is just a theory.”

Amy clenched her jaw. She hated anyone talking about Vicky that way, but details from his ramblings were jumping out at her. Had Mark’s depression been as bad before Vicky triggered? Did Carol get more distant? And her own feelings...

No, it was too convenient an explanation. She was being handed a way to shift the blame for all of her failings onto someone who did nothing but try to be a hero. Who was a proper hero, unlike her. She hated him for giving her hope. You couldn’t trust thinkers. Even if he wasn’t getting inside her head Tattletale could have sent him here with a list of things to say to break her down even more.

“Anything else?”

“Uh, maybe?”

“What?” She asked, more harshly than she meant too.

“I was just thinking about your sister’s powers. They don’t really make sense.”

Amy rallied at this. “So you admit your trigger theory is crap?”

“No, I mean they don’t make sense as coming from Brandish and Flashbang. There’s no basis for the emotional component. Unless... was your sister dating Gallant before she triggered?”

Amy froze. She didn’t like Dean, but she wasn’t going to give away his secret identity to some mentally unstable thinker/tinker. “What makes you think that?”

“There aren’t a lot of other emotion based powers in the city, and he was active before she triggered. It seemed like a probable source for her aura. Maybe. I don’t have a good handle on Gallant’s power.”

The dread she’d been feeling dropped to a manageable level. Unlike that other bitch at least he could admit he wasn’t perfect. As frustrating as he was to deal with it was a million times better than the feeling that all your secrets were being dragged out of your brain.

“You know that stupid knife you gave Hellhound wrecked his armor.” She sneered. “If you were worried about the safety of the city maybe you should be more concerned about that.”

Annoyingly he just waved her off. “Tinker’s shouldn’t take anything into the field they’re not prepared to loose. He’ll have to use an older suit, or spend some time getting the next one ready.”

Right, the public fiction that Dean was a tinker rather than a blaster/thinker. Of course he would think the armor could just be rebuilt or replaced. In reality Chris would have to put days, maybe weeks of work into getting the suit back together. And no wonder he didn’t understand Dean’s power if he was working from the wrong starting point.

She must have shown some of that concern on her face, because he picked up something was wrong.

“Wait, I thought he was a Focal tinker. Is there something else going on?”

And once again Amy was lost. This conversation was becoming infuriating. She honestly didn’t know if she was dealing with mad ramblings or some kind of high level thinker insight.

“Sorry, what?”

“Focal tinkers concentrate on only one item, they just rebuild and refine it. They’re even more restrictive than hyperspecialists. They don’t have any specialization beyond the one thing they can make. I figured Gallant was like that, just rebuilding that power armor with emotion blasts over and over. But there are some tinkers that have some serious drawbacks to what they make, like a physical or mental cost. Is that what we’re talking about here?”

Amy blanched. This was deeper stuff than had been covered in her parahuman studies courses. She wanted to dismiss it as nonsense, but enough of it sounded familiar that there had to be some grounding.

“How do you know about that stuff? Is it your thinker power?”

“Not exactly. Or sort of? I have a pretty good understanding of how powers work, especially tinkers. Look, if Gallant is going to go off the deep end if he has to keep rebuilding his armor then the Protectorate should probably hold him back from frontline work. You don’t want to take risks with that kind of thing.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Amy hated absolving him for his responsibility in wrecking the armor, but if he kept picking at this there was a real chance that Dean’s identity could get exposed. She needed to change the subject. “You were saying something about my sister’s power.”

“Oh, yeah.” Amy wasn’t thrilled talking about this, but if he was able to identify a Ward thanks to information she gave there would be hell to pay. “About her powers, how close is Brandish to Manpower?”  
  


And once again she was thrown for a loop. “What? Why?”

“Your sister’s powers suggest a link to him rather than to Flashbang. Usually that means there’s something of an emotional connection.”

“Are you saying my mom and Uncle Neil had an affair?”

He looked almost as uncomfortable with the subject as she was. “It could be she built up a trusting relationship with Manpower that facilitated the kind of connection that allowed second generation powers. Just, what I’m getting about her from my power says that’s not too likely. I guess an affair between them could explain it.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She drew herself up. “I can sense genetics when I heal someone. Vicky is not Uncle Neil’s daughter.”

“It doesn’t have to be genetic. You just need an emotional link. Even uncertainty over her parentage would have done the trick.”

“I’m not listening to this. You’re just spouting crazy image board conspiracy theories.”

“Maybe I’m wrong. My power’s not precise and I’ve had to reevaluate a lot of stuff from it.” That was what was so annoying. He was loose enough in his predictions that there was room for all kinds of errors without disproving his overall outlook. If he had absolute confidence in his guesses then she would be able to bring them down by refuting one aspect of them. Instead the best she could do was get him to admit some aspect of his theories was less likely than he previously thought.

“You wanted to know why I stayed away from New Wave. Well, I kept getting stuff like this from my power. I didn’t want to get caught up in someone else’s family drama.” She still wasn’t sure she believed him, but it was a harrowing idea that her family dysfunction was enough that someone would rather deal with villains than get involved with it.

And that brought up some dark thoughts. “Well what about me then? What does your power tell you about me? How do my powers make sense in your whole trigger theory model?”

From the way he looked at her Amy immediately regretted the question. She actually took a half step back, as if his answer was going to be a physical blow.

“My power is telling me that answering that question is not a good idea.”

Amy felt a surge of relief and hated herself for it. She knew there was something terrible waiting for her, but she didn’t want to face it. Just a little more time where she could pretend. Where she could pretend Carol wasn’t right about her. Pretend that she could make up for her past, for what a horrible person she was if she tried hard enough.

And she hated that all her feelings were on display for a half mad tinker who worked with villains and might just be following one of Tattletale’s scripts to set her up for another fall.

“I’m sorry.”

Amy snapped up to face him. Well, face him as well as she could through his stupid bandannas and visor mask. “You’re sorry? What are you sorry for? Supplying deadly weapons to villains? Breaking my wrist? Injuring and traumatizing the Wards? For digging into my life? Huh? What exactly are you sorry for?”

He stood stock still as she hurled abuse at him. She was red faced and near tears, but the bastard was just standing there and taking it.

Finally, after she caught her breath, he spoke. “Just so you know, I’m not happy with how this turned out. It was a mess.”

“A mess that you caused.” Her voice was bitter.

He gave her a look that made her feel uncomfortable. “I’m taking responsibility for my part in this.”

“What exactly? The attack on the bank? The injured wards? The Undersiders getting away?”

“I don’t think you would have been able to beat the Undersiders even if I hadn’t made anything for them.”

“What?” Amy felt indignant at the suggestion. “They...”

“They were holding back. Massively. If they didn’t have my weapons they may have done something desperate. They were in a building full of civilians. They didn’t want to hurt them, but the Wards were putting that to the test.”

“You’re making excuses for villains.”

“Yes I am.” His lack of denial cut the legs out from under her. “I accepted what I was getting into when I made my deal. But there are conventions that are designed to limit damage, to keep normal people safe when capes start to throw down. Those were broken today, and not by the Undersiders.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked frustrated. “The heroes were the ones who decided to escalate. They assumed the Undersiders would rather be captured than end up being seen as a more serious threat. Every villain holds themselves back and each time they go further than their limit the limit moves. Before this the Undersiders were restricting themselves to smash and grab jobs. If the Wards had let them run for it they might have gotten away or they might have been captured, but they would have had incentive to stay at that level of restraint. Instead they created a situation where they had to fight. Now people know they’re willing to take thing that far. Going back to their previous level of restraint is just not possible.”

The way he talked about limits, restrictions villains placed on themselves, how if you went past them there was no turning back. Did he know? Did he know why she was restraining herself? She looked at him, but there was no hint he was talking about her. It could be a coincidence, but could she trust that? He was a thinker, or very good at pretending to be one. Was he seeing inside her head, or was she just being paranoid?

“So they should have done nothing? Just let them get away?”

“There’s such a thing as a measured response and it’s a very important concept for capes.”

This was insane. The Wards were heroes and this was a villain, or at best an arms dealer who thought he could pass judgement. “Where do you get off criticizing them?”

He took a slow breath before continuing. “Tell me, you know these people. Did any of them look at this situation and think it was serious, or did they come figuring they would get an easy villain capture and a picture in the newspaper? There were thirty nine people in the bank with you. Did the Wards even confirm their safety before they lined up like they were on a photoshoot?”

“They’re not the bad guys.” Amy was beginning to feel like that was a desperate defense. “The Undersiders were the ones who robbed the bank. They were the ones who took hostages. They planted deadly insects on everyone there!”

He looked at her seriously. “Let me ask you something. When you messed with bug girl’s control, did you know what would happen to all the spiders she was commanding, or did you assume they would just stand down?”

Amy shifted awkwardly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean disrupting the control of a master like that could have put everyone at risk. So either you had complete understanding of the feedback between her and the spiders neural systems that allowed you to block direct commands without defaulting the creatures back to their base instincts, or you warped them to throw out a jamming field and hoped you didn’t end up with dozens of lethal bites from the feedback.”

Amy put up a front of indignity, but inside she was sweating. She had felt out the brains of those black widows. She’d felt the way they were being controlled and, though it had taken some time she’d been able to create feedback that blocked new orders and information without letting the other spiders run free. Vicky didn’t pick up on what that meant, but he did. So the only two explanations were that she had no regard for the lives of the public or that she’s been lying about not being able to affect brains. Damn it, she hated dealing with thinkers. Except this wasn’t some secret that had been dug out from the depths of her soul, it was basic logic that anyone with insider knowledge of the attack could put together.

“Once that giant cannon came out, or people started making threats about cancer...” she felt a pit open in her stomach. “There was no longer any reason to hold back. At that point the Wards were basically betting on the Undersiders being more concerned about casualties than they were.”

A cloud of dread settled on Amy and she tried to avoid showing how much this was bothering her. “So what should they have done?”

“I don’t know.” He cut her off before she could reply. “I mean I really don’t know. The situation makes no sense. I don’t know why teenagers were sent to deal with a hostage situation. I don’t know why the Wards are even allowed to operate independently in this city. I don’t know why a public super powered brawl in a crowded part of the city could be seen as a preferable option to anything else, including letting non kill order villains escape. How many civilian lives would it be worth to bring in a villain? There were stupid decisions on both sides here, but only one of those sides is supposed to be acting in the public good.”

Amy watched the frustration bleed off the man. Clearly the whole situation bothered him, but to her frustration she couldn’t find a way to frame it to turn him against the Undersiders.

“This whole system?” He spoke quietly. “It’s not stable. Those conventions, the unwritten rules, there the only things keeping it from turning to chaos. I’m not endorsing how things work, I’m just acknowledging it. That’s what I meant about Bakuda. That’s what happens when the breaks come off.”

“So that’s it? You’re perfectly fine with the way things went down? No guilt at all?”

“If there was no guilt I wouldn’t be here.”

“And you think I’m the only one you have to make it up to?”

“Well you didn’t decide to turn a hostage crisis into a publicity stunt.”  
  
“That’s why you came here? Because I fit your moral standards and to make sure the city still had its healer for this imagined bombing spree?” He actually looked uncomfortable at that. Good.

“That’s not completely it.”

“Oh? What is it then?”

“My power, that is my thinker power? It’s kind of concerned about you.”

And Amy shifted once more from anger to dread. The emotional rollercoaster of this conversation was exhausting. Where Tattletale had kept pushing her further and further into despair he seemed content to throw her in a random direction every third sentence. One moment she was furious, then concerned, then defiant, then ashamed. Was that his game? Keep her off balance so she wouldn’t be able to counter him.

In a way it was worse than dealing with Tattletale. This wasn’t pulling her deepest fears straight out of her mind. He admitted he was working with limited information, which meant there was a semi-logical chain to his deductions. Sometimes it was blatantly wrong, like about Dean being a tinker, but generally she could follow his thought process. He knew she could alter living things. He knew she could mess with brains. He knew what she had threatened the bug girl with. Between his tinker and thinker powers he probably had a better idea of what she was capable of than anyone else. Of course he’d be concerned about what she’d do if she went bad. When she went bad.

Was all that stuff about capes holding back and consequences building to this? She hated the idea that it was a villain, well borderline villain, who finally saw her for who she was. That he was the only one really concerned about the threat she represented.

Amy steeled herself. “Concerned how?” Despite her best effort she felt her voice waver.

He seemed nervous. Of course he would be. He knew what she would become.

“Uh, are you doing ok?”

And once again he proved he was capable of pulling the rug out from under her. “What?”

“Like, personally, emotionally, are you doing ok?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you do really long shifts, and you don’t seem to have much going on outside your work. You usually look pretty tired as well. And I’m not sure how healthy your home life is. My power’s concerned you’re going to hit a wall.”

Amy was bouncing between emotions. Not knowing how to feel she decided to settle on offence. He spends half the conversation insulting her, criticizing her family, and trying to moralize against heroes and now he wants to pretend he cares about her? “Is your thinker power telling you about my family? You’re ok with it digging into my personal life?”

“It’s not really digging into anything, it’s just worried about you. I mean, from what it’s told me about Brandish I doubt she’s that easy to live with. Plus there’s your power.”

“What about my power?” Amy snapped, faster than she intended.

“There’s no connection to anyone else in New Wave. That means that there was a stronger emotional link from your biological parent than from anyone in your family.”

It was a brutally clinical diagnosis of her family dynamic. The idea that her villain father loved her more than anyone in her family.

“What do you know about my father?” She half growled. Years of frustration was coming to the surface. “What did your power tell you about him?”

“Um, I didn’t even know it was your father. I was just getting the sense of someone connected to you. It could have been anyone, but with your adoption it made sense that it would be a biological parent. That was an assumption.”

He didn’t know. It wasn’t like Tattletale where he could shout the secret to the world. He was looking at her life through frosted glass and making guesses. Really good, well informed guesses, but there was a sense of distance there.

“So what do you know?” He paused and looked off to the side. “Well?”

“You’re serious about this?”

She nodded, expressing confidence she didn’t really feel.

“Ok, I know that they, well I guess that’s he, really cares about you. Like, a lot. It’s endearing, really.”

Of course a villain would be the only one who could love her. “What else?”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure he’s a strong cape. Like top tier. There’s this feeling of respect and caution.”

“Because he’s dangerous.”

“Yeah, but not in the random violence way. The closest comparison I could make would be... I guess Miss Militia?”

Amy’s mind screeched to a halt. “What?”

“There’s this respect, and a kind of, like, honor? I’m dealing with this second hand so it’s hard to process. What I mean is, Miss Militia can create tactical weapons, but she’s not going to. She’s dangerous, but generally not a threat to people around her. That’s the sense I’m getting from your father.”

“Seriously?” What was she supposed to make of this?

He held up his hands. “My power isn’t great at moral judgements. I can’t really guarantee any of that.” His eyes went wide. “Oh.”

“What?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure I should say.”

“No, you started this, you don’t get to back out now. Tell me what you found out.”

He looked pained, but he continued. “Look, I’m not sure about this. My power is hard to figure out.”

“Just tell me.”

“Ok,” He swallowed. “There’s something between your father and your current family.”

Amy felt the blood drain from her face. “What did he do?”

The tinker just shook his head. “It wasn’t him.”

“What does that mean?”

“What I’m getting is New Wave did something bad. Not like an atrocity or anything, but they did something immoral. Like they broke a convention that everyone’s agreed upon.”

“So what, New Wave is horrible and my father was great?”

He seemed to be struggling through whatever his power was giving him. “I told you, it’s not good at moral judgments, and it’s hard to sort out. I think they had a reason for it, but they went further than anyone else would have. Like to a dangerous level.” He let out a breath. “Frankly, this is a mess. I think more than Brandish the real reason I stayed away from seriously considering New Wave was there was just too much of this stuff to sort through.”

“What, you’re just leaving it like that? You accuse my family then decide to stop?”

“Look, I’m not going to be able to get you a perfect picture of what happened. You’re going to have to talk to your family about that.” He flinched. “But not Brandish.”

Carol? “Why not?”

“I don’t know why, but there is some serious bad stuff between her and your father. Whatever New Wave did, it was a lot worse on her part.”

That didn’t make sense. Carol and her father? What happened? Should she even believe him? This whole situation was a mess. He worked with Tattletale. He could have been playing her from the start, but that didn’t match up. Too many details. He was too casual. There was no sense of a plan. He was either a master level thinker or he was just blundering his way through this. She didn’t know which one she’d prefer.

She slumped like a deflating balloon. All her hopes of getting dirt on the Undersiders were long forgotten. This conversation had taken too much out of her and it felt like she barely got anything to show for it.

“You know, they still think the bug girl is the tinker. They’re not going to believe me when I tell them about this.” Some might, but the PRT could get legendarily obstinate. She had no proof so they would keep insisting for tentative classifications until something forced their hand.

“Actually, here. I meant to give you this earlier.”

He dug something out of a coat pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it on reflex and felt the heft of it. It was a piece of card with something pinned to it.

“What’s this?”

“I figured it would be harder to convince you I was who I said I was, so I made that as proof.”

She turned the card over and saw the object attached. It was a hairpin, but leaving the descriptor at that seemed like a criminal underservice. It had two prongs of the glassy metal she remembered from those monster knives, only this was tiny and delicate. Where the prongs met a bouquet of flowers had been sculpted from the same metal, only each petal was individually shaped. Somehow something had been done to the surface of the metal giving it a rainbow gleam. Somehow it reminded her of gasoline spilled in a puddle. The prongs shifted through hues along their length but each flower was a different color. She ran a finger over the flowers and the individual petals moved. They felt like foil, but sprang back into shape immediately and the colors they displayed shifted slightly with their motion. 

It was beautiful. It was also terrifying. She could tell the entire thing was one solid piece of metal. The colors on the surface weren’t due to any paint or coating, somehow he had worked the metal to a rainbow sheen and also controlled how the colors presented. The tiny bouquet had nine individually sculpted flowers of different types. The precision and craftsmanship of someone who had made this just to prove his claim was at the disposal of the Undersiders.

She knew she should throw it back at him, but she didn’t want to. He had made it for her, not in any personal sense, but it was made for her and it had nothing to do with healing. There was no red cross, no doctor theme, no Caduceus. It was just a pretty object, a tinker level pretty object, but it gave the sense it had been made for Amy Dallon, not Panacea.

“It’s beautiful.” Damn it, she didn’t mean to compliment him, but it was true. And she was back to resenting him for working with villains.

“Thanks.” He sounded half embarrassed by the compliment.

Where did she go from here? All that and had she even gotten anything she could use against the Undersiders? All that effort and she’d only been talking in circles.

The door at the end of the hall slammed open as a blond figure in a white dress burst through.

“Amy? Amy, thank God. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” In a faction of a second Vicky was next to her, the wind of her movement throwing Amy’s hair into chaos and making the tinker’s coat billow back. She glared at him. “Who’s this?”

He answered before she could. “I’m the tinker who made the Undersider’s weapons.”

Vicky’s eyes narrowed and Amy felt her aura flair. “Amy stand back.”

“Vicky, wait...” but her sister was already winding up. She saw the attack fly. And she saw it stop dead against the tinker’s chest. There was a faint ripple across his clothes but otherwise it was like nothing happened.

He looked over at her. “So, ‘lack of restraint’ was about right? Sorry to cut this short.” He threw another glowing mix into the air. Vicky interposed herself between Amy and the tinker, but instead of spreading like the last time the light settled over him, then flared as he vanished from the hallway.

She smelled vinegar.

Amy stared blankly at the spot that once held the tinker trying to figure out what had happened. She realized her sister was shaking her and quickly came back to her senses.

“Amy! Amy, are you alright? What happened?”

“Vicky,” What was the priority? Right, unknown tinker tech healing. “Vicky, I need to get upstairs right now. Get me to diagnostic medicine.”

“What? What did he do?”

“He used some kind of healing technology on me.” She held up her unsprained wrist and rotated it, as well as wiggling her fingers of her formerly broken arm. At the very least she needed to get that removed. “I need an exam. We have to make sure it was safe.” And maybe figure out how to replicate it, as much of a long shot as that was.

“He healed you?” Props to Vicky, she didn’t let her shock slow her down. Amy was scooped up and carried through the halls at a nearly unsafe speed.

“Afterwards I’ll need to speak with Director Piggot or Armsmaster.” And she had to figure out what she was going to say. The thought of repeating all his ramblings mortified her, but if there was any chance of bringing the Undersiders to justice she’d have to take it.

She just had to inform them the tinker who made those blades could also heal, teleport, and had defenses that could negate Vicky’s punches. Oh, and claimed that he was both able to analyze tinker tech and that he was a strong thinker with the ability to predict personal details and bombing sprees. And that he had an ongoing ‘business relationship’ with the Undersiders. They were just going to love this news.

She would have plenty of time. The number of tests she had coming would see to that. It would also give her a chance to calm down. That tinker was infuriating. She could see how he set Tattletale off. Actually that image greatly improved her mood. If nothing else at least she could imagine Tattletale curled up in the dark with a thinker headache.

For that she could deal with the fallout from this meeting.


	12. 9 Acquisitions

Escape was a frustrating formula to work with. I could combine wax and vinegar for the power to teleport. It sounded amazing, but the formula would only work to get me ‘out’ of places. I couldn’t use it to cross the city, I couldn’t even use it for tactical advantages in combat. It was totally useless in open areas without a concept of inside and outside to work with. Additionally, I could only vaguely affect where the formula would deposit me.

Fortunately I had enough control to make sure I appeared at a rear exit of the hospital. The door was a fire exit, so there was no chance of someone opening it and discovering me. Also the affinity Decadence gave me with surveillance devices let me make sure I was in a blindspot. The area had sparse coverage to begin with, so it wasn’t that much of a challenge.

I quickly accessed my workshop through the door and slipped out of my costume. Dropping the coat, mask, and metal details instantly transformed me back to a normal civilian. At that point it was just a matter of following the route I’d previously identified to avoid security cameras until I was far enough away from the PRT hospital to blend into the crowd.

Getting away from the hospital was a lot easier than what my infiltration had entailed. Still, sneaking into a place like that was something I never would have thought I be able to handle a week ago. As it stood the exercise barely challenged my abilities. I’d thought I’d need to use my monomolecular pen knife to bypass doors but it seemed that now I could pick locks. None of my abilities specifically were related to lock picking, but my understanding of mechanics and crafting skills was so excessive that any pin and tumbler lock might as well have been an open door. Electronic locks and sensors were more of a challenge, but I was able to find alternate routes or bypass the systems with a bit of effort. That was actually a bit surprising as I hadn’t practiced much with those kinds of skills. It was odd using them for the first time to get around security systems, but I was able to handle electronics infinitely more complicated than what they had in this place.

I was able to pick out surveillance cameras but I hadn’t been able to avoid them all. Fortunately there was an advantage to Decadence covering all aspects of design. A bit of alteration to my hair, the slightest touches of pharmacy makeup on my face and a change in how my clothes sat and I looked like a completely different person. Even if they could pick me out from every other civilian walking into this place they would never be able to match me to the person who appeared on their tapes. Same with any member of the hospital staff who might have spotted me. I hadn’t gotten a second glance on my way in, so I think I was probably safe on that front.

I had gotten damn lucky when searching for Panacea. I half expected to have to jump out, hit her with the Miracle Cure formula, and then immediately use my Escape formula. I’d spotted her slipping into the basement and had just enough time to duck into my workshop to change and cut her off when there was no one around.

I wasn’t sure how I was feeling about Panacea at this point. My passenger cared about her. Not as much as Taylor, but at least on the same level as any of the Undersiders. There was so much mixed up stuff around her I couldn’t tell if I’d done any good. From her reactions it was obvious there was something to my passenger’s predictions regarding her home life. She had tried to downplay it but it was clear how much it was bothering her. It was a strange experience looking as someone else’s family drama. I may not have helped on that front but at least she wouldn’t be nursing an injury for the next six weeks.

I thought Panacea would be pressing me for information, but she got almost nothing out of me. Plenty of stuff about my power, but I’d decided I was willing to share that anyway. In regards to grilling me on the Undersiders she either got distracted or is really bad at the whole subtle interrogation thing. The only new pieces of information she’d picked up was Tattletale’s headache and the nature of my arrangement with them. And that Taylor wasn’t a tinker.

I still felt kind of embarrassed about that hairpin. The idea that I’d need proof was a last minute decision. I originally thought about just taking a metal sample, but I figured they’d need some evidence that I could make things. Machinist was an unbelievable acceleration power for anything involving mechanics or fabrication. When it was combined with my Smithing and two design perks I’d let things get away from me. From her expression when I tossed it to her I could tell she thought it was ridiculous. Honestly, I was kind of relieved when her sister barged in if just for the distraction.

Also, it’s good to know my Force Field formula counters impact along with damage. It would have sucked to get the injury from the hit negated only to be sent flying through half a dozen walls. I was right on the money about Glory Girl’s restraint. That blow would have nearly collapsed my chest, and that’s counting the boost of my durability. There’s also the impact damage from being sent flying. Like, that was legitimately attempted murder. Well, she was a hero cape, so probably involuntary manslaughter. A villain would definitely get murder two.

Everything I did tonight was definitely going to be figured out by Lisa and thus communicated to the boss. Even if she didn’t have information sources inside the Protectorate she had enough insight to be able to figure out something was up, if not from the reactions to this then when Panacea showed up without injuries. That would probably be an interesting conversation. I ran through everything I’d said. Nothing gave details on the Undersiders, except the crack about Lisa not being able to figure out my tinkering. I let them know who I was and that I was hired, but that was entirely on my side. No details of powers, no locations, not even information on what I had made them.

I didn’t like the idea that everything I did and everything I was capable of was being conveyed to a mystery crime lord, but the fact was that my abilities were growing faster than she would be able to report. She might have a hint about the upper level of technology I could create, but with the blind spots in her power and how the more esoteric applications of my abilities seemed to stress her out I doubted she had a complete picture. I would still need to prepare for repercussions, both from her and from her boss.

Lisa might be angry, or she might just be exasperated. Either way I doubt this is going to end our relationship. And no matter what I stand by my position of not letting Panacea stay injured.

The day had been draining in the extreme. I was coming off a brutal work blitz with no proper sleep, and then this rushed infiltration and clandestine meeting. Now I was walking towards the docks in an evening drizzle and just wanted to crawl into bed. I’d made a commitment, both to myself, and to Mr. Laborn but there was no way I was dragging my tired ass to the gym tonight.

I was also in no mood to deal with Aisha. Since I didn’t know who her snitch was I had no guarantee that she wouldn’t show up for a ‘completely spontaneous’ surprise workout session. Instead I took the time honored strategy of cowardly putting off dealing with things. Maybe the girl could find a life outside of pestering me. She probably had all kinds of people to harass, some of whom might even be age appropriate for her.

As it stood I had only missed out on two days of scheduled workouts and runs. Still, that was exactly the kind of thing I promised myself I wouldn’t let happen. I doubted it would be easier to keep a training schedule when my projects ramped up, much less during Bakuda’s inevitable attacks.

That was the thing. Bakuda. She was definitely counting down to something. It had been nearly a week since Lung’s capture. There’s no telling the amount of tech she could have built up in that time. I badly needed to get started on countermeasures. My alchemy and reinforcement would only carry me so far. With Machinist I could do projects that should take days in a matter of hours. The cash I’d gotten from the Undersiders wouldn’t help anyone when the bombing started. I would need to get started tomorrow. Prioritize what can make a difference, work like a madman, and just maybe I’d be able to get ahead of things.

But there was something I needed to deal with first, before planning, before sleep, before anything. During my infiltration, along with a few failed connections, my power had latched on to the strongest mote it had managed so far. It was from the Clothing constellation and was actually one of two motes clustered together. By expending all of the reach I had developed my power was able to latch onto the larger of the two motes. The one I connected to was an object. I couldn’t get a good sense of the other one, but I could tell it was the skills needed to work with what the larger mote provided. One mote for materials, one for crafting ability. That meant I would have to figure out how to use what I received without any help. With something this powerful it might be able to turn the tide in the coming chaos. That’s why sleep was not an option. I had to get back to my workshop and start my analysis.

I had to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with a spool of Life Fibers.

At the moment I didn’t have much to go on. I knew it could be used to enhance clothing, but that was about it. Fortunately I had an excellent quality lab to work with.

As soon as I got back to my apartment I opened my workshop. This was the first time I had gotten a small item and I wasn’t sure how it would arrive. It turned out a locker had been placed in the wall of my entry room. Inside was a medium sized spool of glowing red thread.

So I had a spool of material that was more expensive than any ability I’d received so far. I know not all powers have an equal relationship between strength and cost, but there had to be something extraordinary about this thread. I carefully moved the spool into my Laboratorium to see what I could learn.

The first think I learned was how many Xeno alarms my Laboratorium had. As soon as the spool touched the scanner every light in the oversized room was blaring red, the cybernetic skulls were thrashing around and more than a dozen fail-safes were trying to activate. I had to scramble to the command throne just to stop the plasma incinerator from activating.

I didn’t even know I had one of those.

It took half an hour of overrides before things calmed down enough for me to actually get a reading. It took another fifteen minutes of disabling safeties to get a reading that wasn’t a full page of warning signs and caution symbols. Finally after all that I found out what I was dealing with.

The thread was an alien parasite. Life fibers were, in fact, alive. The thread was composed of multiple cells, but each was impossibly long and thin. And when I say impossibly thin I really mean that. I don’t think they actually follow the laws of physics and there are a lot of aspects that seemed borderline unbelievable. For one thing they were incredibly durable. As in leagues beyond anything I could even conceive of making. This stuff made my best hyper alloys look like a joke and even if they were damaged there seemed to be a mechanism where they would restore themselves almost instantly.

My analysis could extrapolate how they fed on living creatures, either their blood or neural energy. They also seemed to have some mutagenic properties that let them alter their host. The hint about enhancing clothing made sense after I started looking into their feeding mechanism. Limiting the fibers to surface contact severely reduced the stress on the host’s system. Rather than burning out the host it could maintain the relationship indefinitely without serious damage.

The potential for genetic augmentation was fascinating. The fibers seemed to work to accelerate evolution, pushing their hosts towards more robust bodies with larger brains and advanced nervous systems. They worked to enhance whatever species they came into contact with. In theory they could drive a planet towards developing sapient life, but that seemed more of a byproduct of their self-interest. Those traits led to better hosts for the life fibers to inhabit.

There was also evidence of intelligence, or at least the potential for it. The cells were all seemingly identical, but the energy exchange between them resembled a neural network. What I had on the spool was highly truncated. Projections from my lab’s computers indicated there would normally be a significant mass of fibers coordinating the rest of them in a kind of hive mind. What I had here were the only life fibers in the universe, essentially a baby of its species. Not even that, more of a zygote.

It was naturally parasitic, but capable of a symbiotic relationship. It was also a living thing with the potential of developing intelligence. This wasn’t a tool or resource to be exploited. It was a potential intelligent being and I needed to treat it as such.

Seeing as it could be used as clothing there were some possibilities. I didn’t know how to combine it with other materials and if I used it by itself I’d estimate there was enough to maybe make a pair of gloves. I had no idea what kind of impact either act would have on the lifeform. I would have to look after it and see how it develops.

I drew up some estimates for nutritional needs. It seemed that it was capable of stasis pretty much indefinably, as in for thousands and thousands of years with no issue. If I wanted to awaken the life fibers it would need food, either bio-neural energy or blood. Bio-neural energy provided less sustenance and required continuous contact. So I would either have to maintain skin contact with the spool or introduce it to my blood. Neither of those seemed like a particularly good idea until I knew more about them.

Almost all of the knowledge I had received since I got my powers was based around mechanical principles. The only exception was Nanite Sciences. Those Nanites, unlike the ones from Grease Monkey or Machinist, had so many biological and medical applications that even though the bulk of the knowledge from that power revolved around construction and programing of nanomachines it necessitated a firm grounding in biology, particularly microbiology.

A functional set of nanites would actually be perfect for managing life fibers. Unfortunately I was months away from having that project at a workable state, and that was assuming I had all the facilities and resources that I needed. Instead I would just have to work with the biological knowledge I had and try not to mess this up. It was more than a little infuriating that the knowledge of how to work with something was separated from the material to be worked with.

I wasn’t ready to leave things at that. I loaded myself with a full suite of defensive formulas and deactivated the stasis and suspension fields around the spool while leaving the scanners running. I was about to engage in the most elemental manner of scientific discovery known to man. The first and most effective method of information gathering understood at a core level by every human on the planet. I reached out and poked the spool with my finger.

This wasn’t just because poking is the basis for scientific discovery. Life fibers could absorb neural energy through the skin. I needed data on the process, not just the extrapolation my lab provided. Based on everything I’d learned so far this should present almost no risk of injury.

I also wasn’t getting any major concerns about this action from my passenger, which helped with the decision.

When my finger contacted the spool of red fibers there was a flare of energy and the whole mass began to glow. That was nothing compared to my experience. It felt like lightning was shooting up my arm. Someone was taking a sandblaster to my exhaustion and replacing it with ten cups of coffee and a shot of adrenalin. The fibers seemed to twitch and writhe on top of each other as well as squeeze down on the spool with incredible pressure.

I pulled my hand away and the energy vanished leaving me even more exhausted than before. I reactivated the stasis field and reviewed the scanned data, both from the fibers and my own body. There was a fascinating interaction between the life fibers and a human being. The ultimate potential was something I couldn’t even guess at this point but at the very least it would be able to provide drastic physical enhancement. There would be significant stress on the person’s body, especially if there wasn’t some way of moderating it. That would be what the clothing integration could be for. Unfortunately I had no idea how to manage that. Working with life fibers in their raw state was a terrifying prospect, but I needed to press on, both for the sake of the lifeform and for the potential benefits I could see from it.

I wouldn’t be accomplishing any of that tonight. I decided the best thing for now was to collect more data. I assembled a suite of scanners around the spool and left it under observation in my Laboratorium, making sure to suspend the numerous Xeno purging protocols before I left.

Heading back to my apartment I started making a much needed meal as I considered my next move. I had no illusions about Bakuda. Eventually she was going to make a move. Whatever she was planning it would probably be before Lung was moved to the Birdcage. She might want to cut loose with her tech, but if the ABB lost Lung they would be on borrowed time. Would she try to ransom him, or go for a jailbreak? I assumed he was being held in the Rig, which would be a hard target even for Oni Lee. Or so I assumed. I didn’t know what his range or limitations were, so he might be able to jump into the holding cells from half way across the city.

So now that I had resources I needed to decide what I would work on. Ideally I would do the standard tinker procedure, build improved equipment to improve the quality and range of devices I would be able to create. If I put everything I had into upgrading my workshop and spend a few days on it I could be able to manage some serious technology, not just the material science tricks I’d pulled for the Undersiders. The question was whether I had the time to spare for that.

There was also the problem that such an upgrade could easily take all the resources I’d assembles to date. Having the capacity for advanced construction without being able to afford any of it is not a problem I wanted to run into. Even if they could afford it I wasn’t currently comfortable doing more builds for the Undersiders and calling on their boss for resources was an absolute non-starter.

I needed some gear that would let me function properly as a cape. I’d proven I could manage to some extent last weekend, but a city wide bombing spree was a different matter than a throw down with Oni Lee, especially since I think he was trying to keep the tinker tech grenades quiet at that point. That was an advantage I wouldn’t be able to rely on in the future.

So I needed to figure out what would serve me best in the coming crisis. The list I had made when Panacea asked me in the hospital had been made up on the spot, but most of it held up. I needed better electronic warfare options. Well, I needed any electronic warfare options. I also needed mobility, in case last Sunday’s street level patrol at walking pace didn’t drive that home. My dark alchemy would carry me pretty well, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some offensive options between ‘hit with stick’ and ‘wrath of god’.

The problem was there was a serious bottleneck as to what I could build at the moment. I might be able to manage some of the higher level items I could conceive of, but the fabrication process would be tedious in the extreme. I would have to create huge amounts of new alloys and I was doubtful even with full cannibalization of all the electronics I currently had at my disposal if I would be able to manage anything close to the computing power and control systems I would need for running something like a proper hardsuit. Also, none of that touched on the horror of powering tech like that. I needed a fusion system to break out any of the serious weapons or machinery, and getting one running is its own nightmare project.

When the time you need to complete a specific item starts to approach the time needed to get fully programed nanites up and running you need to reassess your priorities.

So, reevaluate the problem. The easiest of my projects to deal with is probably mobility. I wouldn’t say I could literally rebuild an engine in my sleep, but it’s a close thing. A car or air vehicle would be difficult to conceal without the kind of stealth systems Squealer was rumored to use. I needed something that would address mobility both in and out of cape identity.

I could build an incredible motorcycle.

The only problem was I didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle. Oh, I knew how to operate one. I knew every aspect of that. I knew how they functioned, and what maneuvers different kinds of bikes would be able to manage just from their technical specs. I just had no practical experience.

But I could build the kind of bike that only existed in science fiction. If I did that I could also probably rig a basic assistance program and some gyroscopic controls to keep me from killing myself. Even if I didn’t end up using it for cape work it would get me around the city much faster. With my workshop key giving me access to my cape equipment anywhere with a door I could do rapid response to a nearby area, change in my workshop, and then deal with the problem without any issue.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was leagues better than hoping I could manage with my current level of mobility. I did not want a repeat of this morning’s trudge through the city.

After I finished eating I pulled up New Hampshire’s transport regulations on my laptop. It seemed I could get a learner’s permit for a motorcycle with just a written test. That was more limited than I would have liked, but motorcycle license tests needed to be scheduled well in advance. If I could find something in budget I could get on the road tomorrow. Anything would do considering I would be rebuilding it completely.

I could also load my bike with a good amount of technology. Taking advantage of the power of the engine, especially once I was done upgrading it, I would be able to run a decent set of equipment off it. I’d still be limited to what I could make, but I could probably manage some decent scanners and basic ECM. The bike could act as a mobile support point, especially if I could build an advanced enough control program for it

The day was catching up with me in a bad way. I made a few token searches for what I could find in terms of used motorcycles, then finally let myself collapse to sleep.

I had not turned off my watch alarm. It was probably for the best since I would have been happy to sleep until the crack of noon. Still, it took just about all of my willpower and no shortage of encouraging feelings from my passenger to haul myself out of bed, well off of mattress, and back into my morning routine.

Toast, coffee, run. That was the routine I had held to, and that was the routine I had decided I would not let slide just because my tinkering picked up. It wasn’t as bad once I made it to the bay and started along the boardwalk. Yesterday’s rain had cleared the air and it was just on the edge of a chill. That was my absolute favorite exercise weather. This entire endeavor would get a lot more trying once the summer heat started to set in. Maybe by then I’d be established enough to get a gym membership somewhere air conditioned. The Boxing gym was great and cheap, but its idea of a cardio area was a set of jump ropes. I hadn’t been there in the summer, but I’m pretty sure they managed by sticking a fan by the door rather than the monstrous cooling costs a building like that would incur.

Since I got the Life Fiber Spool my forge had missed a couple of attempted connections, but on my way back from my run the Clothing constellation swung by and made a link. Sadly it wasn’t the one I’d need to work with life fibers. No, this one was much stranger, which is really saying something. This wasn’t a lifeform that could enhance things with the potential for intelligence. No, the Celestial Forge had just given me a fully intelligent being.

It was an expert crafter with telekinetic powers and thinker abilities that could both divine aspects of the future and details about anyone on the planet. Its crafting abilities could be shared with other people, eventually allowing them to develop skills approaching its level. It could also instantly transform a quantity of money into its value in raw materials, effectively bypassing all purchase and supply chain concerns. On top of that it was an ageless and tireless construct completely with no biological needs or vulnerabilities.

All of that sounded incredible, but there was one qualifier that moderated things. One massive, looming qualifier. All of these abilities were limited to one specific field. Not robotics, not weapon design, and not vehicles.

It was fashion.

My power had given me an immortal super powered fashion designer that manifested as an animated pair of gloves. The insanity of it was almost enough to overshadow the fact that I had just been given an intelligent creature like it was a prize from a cereal box. Two creatures if you counted the life fibers. I didn’t know if they’d been created by my power or snatched from somewhere else, though there was a giant room full of skulls I had the same concern about. I remembered how the spool arrived and realized that I may be confining what is effectively a person to a tiny locker sealed in an extra-dimensional space.

As I rushed back to my apartment another horrible thought occurred. Was the intelligence attached to the gloves human? By that I meant was it a person trapped in glove form now? I hoped not. I thought the cyber skulls of my Laboratorium were the worst my power could manage. I didn’t even want to think about someone sealed into the form of a pair of gloves for eternity.

I dashed up the shaky stairs to my apartment and barely took the time to bolt the front door behind me before rushing to the back closet and throwing open my workshop door. Like with the spool a new locker had been added to my entryway, though this had a more stylish feel than the industrial look of the one that appeared before. I’m not sure what the term was for the design, but the locker door had little flourishes on it that reminded me of something vaguely French.

The door was two feet square and centered at chest height. When I pulled it open there was a velvet stand like you would find in a store window. It supported a pair of pure white gloves. When I say pure white I mean it on an almost unnatural level. They were so bright they looked almost unreal. And then they started to move.

At first I thought they were on some kind of mannequin or stand that was holding their shape, but as they lifted up I could clearly see they were holding the form of hands with absolutely nothing inside them. The gloves rose into the air and floated out of the locker. They paused in front of me leaving me at a loss for how to proceed. This was a new lifeform. Either a completely new person or an intelligence that had just been created by my power. I had no idea how I should interact with it. There were too many questions. What did it want? How could I help it? Did it even want to stay here? Should I let it out? Could it function in the world?

All that was put on hold as the gloves lunged forward and started tugging at the light jacket I had worn on my run. It took a few seconds, but eventually I figured out that they were trying to take it off, not throttle me. I awkwardly slipped out of the coat and watched as the gloves held it up against the wall. They let go and the jacket stayed suspended in the air.

The gloves held themselves in the proportion that a human would normally have and started gesturing. It wasn’t as clear as speech, but the impression I got was that they weren’t happy with my jacket. No, they weren’t happy with everything I was wearing.  
  


“What’s wrong with it?”

The gloves threw themselves up in and exasperated gesture and plainly pointed towards my jacket. When I continued to look confused they started tracing seams, feeling material, turning the jacket inside out and displaying the lining, and making strong gestures that seemed to express how it didn’t go with anything else I was wearing.

“Ok, it doesn’t look good.” The gloves expression suggested that was a gross understatement. “But this is work out clothing. It’s not like this is my cape costume.”

As soon as I said that the gloves immediately redirected themselves towards my costume which was currently in a loose pile next to my mattress. The splayed their fingers in shock, them mimed fainting at the sight of it.

“It’s...” What the hell was I doing? Why was I arguing with a pair of gloves? A few minutes ago I had been worried about imprisoning some intelligence and now I’m defending fashion decisions to a pair of hand coverings.

The gloves mimed rolling up their sleeves, which somehow stretched the cuffs to the length of opera gloves. They then used their new size to be able to fold their arms indignantly at me. Apparently Garment Gloves could shapeshift but used the power solely for the expression of scorn.

I knew they were trying to get to me, but damn it I had worked hard on that costume! “What’s wrong with it?”

In response to my question the pieces of my cape outfit floated out of the pile. The Coat stayed in the air while the rest of the items carefully folded themselves up and arranged themselves on my desk in a manner that seemed like a personal attack.

“Hey, I worked hard on that. You think you can do better?”

That was apparently the wrong thing to say. The gloves leapt up in excitement and started disassembling my costume. I mean totally disassembling it. Seams were being pulled apart, buttons removed, even the shoes I wore were dismantled in front of my eyes. I made a few frantic grabs into the cloud, but it was clearly too far gone for me to have any hope of stopping it.

Inside the storm of clothing the gloves had found one of my notebooks and were scribbling in it frantically. Eventually the telekinetic chaos dropped away and I was able to climb over the piled and neatly arranged cloth, threat and other materials to see what the gloves had done.

They had drawn a sketch of a new costume. I had to admit, it was good. It took the broad themes of my previous design and ironed out the last artefacts of when I was scavenging for materials. This looked tailored and professional. There was a cowl instead of the bandana combo and the coat had been completely redesigned to be tailored with what seemed like more of a military cut. The other items of clothing were actually parts of the costume and not random pieces from my wardrobe. The mask, metal panels, and gauntlet had all been redesigned to fit with the new style. The gloves tapped the pencil against those items.

“What?”

They tapped again.

“Oh, yes. I can make those.” I looked at the pile of cloth. “Can you make that with this?”

They waved a clear negative gesture, then rubbed the thumb and index finger of one hand.

“So you need money?” I hadn’t budgeted for this, but I was dealing with an entirely new entity. If this let me start off on good terms it was worth it. My passenger was amused by the whole situation and was being no help at all.

I considered what I could afford. “Is a hundred dollars enough?” The gloves mimed horror. Fine. “Two hundred?” A less extreme reaction, but still a slight indication upward with one hand. “Three hundred, final offer.” They clap the gloves together in excitement.

Well, that was settled. “I have to go. Are you good?” They made a negative gesture. “What do you need?” Thumb and forefinger rubbing, gesture to themselves. “You want to be paid?” Their movements seemed to indicate the tragedy of a lack of clothing. “You want funding for your own projects?” There were happy glove movements.

Well, they were effectively a person locked in my closet. Anything I could do to make it easier for them. I got an extra pair hundred dollar bills along with the funding for my costume and handed them to the gloves. The money vanished from their hands and fabric and thread started manifesting around them.

That may be limited to clothing materials, but there had to be a way for me to leverage that for my other projects. I left them to shower and get ready to head to the DMV. When I left the shower the T-shirt and jeans I usually wore were nowhere to be found and had been replaced with a loose approximation of the items that looked like they fell out of a designer catalog. I looked at the open door of my workshop where the gloves were somehow giving the impression that they were whistling innocently.

I sealed my workshop before I got changed. After putting on the new clothes, which were actually a great fit and really comfortable, I realized I had locked the gloves in my workshop along with every item of clothing I owned.

I elected not to think about that while I made my way to the department of motor vehicles.

It was a little ridiculous that my first step towards serious tinkering involved a test for a motorcycle learner’s permit. I had downloaded a copy of the guide book and between a quick review and my frankly ridiculous level of mechanical understanding it wasn’t really a challenge. Getting to the DMV right at opening hours also helped speed things along. After the written exam there was a vision test and a $30 fee, at which point I had my permit. I was restricted to riding between sunrise and sunset and couldn’t carry passengers, but at least there weren’t any limits on the types of motorcycle I could own.

This led to the real challenge. I only had a few grand in cash at the moment. I also didn’t have confidence in my cash flow. Plus there were tax concerns if I started paying rent and utilities through undeclared income, but that was an end-of-the-month problem. The point was I needed to somehow manage to get the vehicle and all licensing and insurance taken care of without blowing a significant amount of my funds. That meant getting the cheapest bike I could.

I was planning such an extensive overhaul that I could pretty much just shop based on the frame. My web search had proven fruitful. When you don’t care about quality and just want a vehicle there are always options. I did need to take the bus out of town to reach the place, but everything I’d seen said it would be worth it.

The place was called ‘Power Motor Approval’ and was probably the biggest used vehicle dealership within travel distance of the city. I use biggest in the literal sense, not in terms of grandeur or success. The lot had a spill over area onto surrounding plots and fields that was honestly shocking in scope. I’m not convinced the place actually owned any of the land their cars had flowed onto, but this was another one of Brockton’s depressed areas. If anyone actually owned these properties they weren’t under any illusions about their value. I imagine that during the city’s industrial boom this place was probably a lot more reputable and had close ties with the now ruined industrial estates that surrounded it. At the moment it was more a motor graveyard than a dealership, and probably only a zoning decision away from counting as a junkyard.

This place was also a wonderland for tinkers. There was an ongoing feel of ‘what I could do with this’ that pervaded the entire place. It was like a scrap pile except everything was still technically functional. It may have been paranoia, but I wondered if they kept an eye out for anyone showing tinkerish behavior to tip off the PRT. Well, that was the best case scenario. Worst case the Empire or one of the other gangs. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past some people to try to grab and sell an unequipped tinker to any number of organizations. There were some chilling rumors about the Fallen and how some of the cells shored up their membership.

The bikes were off to the side and made up less than five percent of the lot’s stock. I skipped right past the nicer models that were going for over ten grand and headed straight to the bikes that were stacked like cordwood. This was where I would find my bike. Going deep enough into the pile started showing bikes with stickers under two thousand, and for good reason. A cursory inspection could find a plethora of problems with all of them, and not just excessive mileage.

It didn’t take long to attract a sales person, and it also didn’t take long for him to realize he was badly out of his depth. He left to get a more experienced sales person, who switched out for an even more senior salesman, who brought a junior mechanic to tag along, who then passed me up the chain two more times until I was talking with their head mechanic and a member of the sales staff who had been with the company since the 80s.

It wasn’t anything cool. I wasn’t being incredibly charming, or threatening to expose some scam they were pulling, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something like that going on with some of the cars here. The thing is I’m generally not great with people and conversations make me uncomfortable. There’s one exception to that. If it’s a technical discussion I can go on for hours with no problem. It’s a trait that served me well in college. Really, that’s all that was happening here. They easily bought my cover story about being an engineering student and needing a vehicle on a tight budget, also with a partial rebuild in the cards. When the stuff I was asking became too technical for the person I was talking to I got passed up the ladder. I don’t think they had any illusions about getting a serious commission out of me, and if it wasn’t a slow Friday morning they would likely have had better things to do, but as it stood I spent a chunk of the morning discussing technical specs, changes in engine design over the years, and maintenance strategies with two professionals who probably spent most of their time convincing people that ‘yes, the engine is in fact supposed to sound like that’.

I wish I could say I’d gotten some killer deal, or that they’d thrown in some extra parts after I smooth-talked them. No, at the end of the day they were professionals and I was just a slightly interesting client. I got a ‘functional’ motorcycle with registration, helmet, and the minimum level of insurance necessary, but still paid more than the thing was worth. There was probably some amusement in the fact that I knew exactly how bad a deal I was getting, which likely saved me from being completely raked over the coals.

The bike I ended up with wasn’t truly terrible, but it was probably the last thing I thought I would end up with. It had a good deal of mileage and the bodywork wasn’t in great condition, but those weren’t the main issues. The big problem was that it was a Japanese motorcycle.

Since Leviathan hit Kyushu the Japanese motor industry had been in shambles. There were still some companies in business, but they were shadows of their former selves. Mostly they opened branch manufacturing facilities in places like Indonesia, Thailand, or Malaysia. Those facilities had little to none of the quality the parent companies were known for and the parts that came out of them were jokes. Keeping any Japanese vehicle operational was an exercise in frustration, and that was for cars with major dealerships. For motorcycles they were basically on a death march. Even enthusiasts couldn’t keep them going and switched over to other manufacturers. The lucky ones were bought out by American or European companies that started putting out decent replacement parts and even the occasional new model.

Suzuki was not one of the lucky ones.

The motorcycle I rode out of the Power Motor Approval lot had been patched together with some of the cheapest and most slipshod parts south Asia could churn out. Everyone who knew anything about bikes wouldn’t be caught dead on this thing, and if I wasn’t planning to rebuild it from the ground up I would never have stooped to make the purchase. Still, with my mechanical knowledge I might be able to turn a Suzuki GSX-R 750 into something other than an embarrassment.

The bike got me back to the city, but I could pick up on every problem it had over the course of the drive. I couldn’t think of any part of it that was in good enough condition to leave as is. Also, like the automatic transmission on the van I was essentially leveraging mechanical knowledge in place of vehicle operation skill. It wasn’t the smoothest or most stable ride, but then again I wasn’t exactly street racing. Cautious turns and moderate speed got me within a few blocks of my apartment without any hiccups.

As I looked for a way to get my bike into my workshop I felt the forge move again. It was the Alchemy constellation and my power latched to a tiny mote. The oddly named ability was called Kazooie Alchemy.

It let me make potions.

This was a fundamentally exciting concept. All of my alchemy so far had been closer to casting spells with material components than creating elixirs for later use. This ability addressed that disparity. With it I could brew and create actual potions. I was getting over how supernatural a lot of my powers seemed to be. When you had possessed gloves making clothes for you in your secret expanding closet drawing the line at potion brewing seemed kind of arbitrary.

The potions weren’t difficult to make. The ingredients were mundane and fairly inexpensive. With nothing but a pot and a heat source I could brew one in about an hour. A professional laboratory set up would help me cut down on that time and potentially boost the quality, but it wasn’t essential to production.

Unfortunately I could only make three types of potions. Their effects would last a few minutes at most and mixing them was a horrible idea. Also the potions would only affect me, there was an element of the ability that made them chemical messes for anyone else who tried to drink them. Still, the three effects I could create were seriously powerful.

The first and least noteworthy was an invisibility potion. Totally undetectable by sight until the potion wore off or I took some damage, which would dispel the effect. Other than that it was perfect invisibility, stranger powers in a bottle.

The second effect generated a type of shielding that completely negated damage. This would be colossally significant if I didn’t have an alchemy formula that did basically the same thing for a shorter period. Still, this was total, walk up to Behemoth and say give me your best shot invincibility.

It still didn’t excite me as much as the third potion I could now make. With that mixture I would be able to generate two copies of myself. They would only last a few minutes or until they took a hit and I didn’t have any link to them after creation, but they did have all the equipment I was carrying. With one minor ability I had gotten the power to beat Oni Lee and Bakuda at their own game. The significance of what I could manage with this cannot be understated.

I was going to make so many missiles.

I just needed a place I could brew them inconspicuously. They might not need expensive chemicals, but the brewing process would produce copious amounts of colorful smoke and a smell like a chemical spill in an aroma therapy center. My workshop didn’t have anything close to the ventilation needs to handle this and trying it in my kitchenette would bring the police or PRT to my door in short order.

It was much too powerful to let that stop me. Brockton had an abundance of abandoned buildings. It looked like I would finally have to set up a real world lab. It was bound to happen eventually, but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed in myself.

Finding a location for brewing would be a problem for later. I found an out of the way alley that I could pull into and started to figure out how to get this thing into my workshop. Unfortunately that would have to go through my entryway, which meant squeezing the bike past everything I’d stored there each time I wanted to store or deploy it. It wasn’t exactly set up for dramatic launches onto the street, but being able to always have access to my bike was worth the inconvenience.

I did find a larger door that made accessing the entryway less of a trial. One thing I had learned was that the main door scaled to whatever size I used to access it. Any size door. I tried it on a cubby locker once and got a roughly one foot square entrance to my workshop.

As I opened the large loading door to access my workshop I was understandably surprised to be greeted by the shape of a woman in evening wear. I say shape because there wasn’t actually a woman there. The gloves had apparently made a red evening dress and were suspending it between them with their telekinesis in a manner that made it look like it and the gloves were actually being worn by an invisible woman.

Once I got over my shock I realized it was actually a lot less distracting than seeing disembodied gloves flying around. The dress was arranged so it was ‘sitting’ at my desk chair and turned to face me as I entered. The simulated body movement also helped the gloves emote, which was a serious benefit.

“Oh, uh, hi?”

The gloves waved in greetings.

“Nice dress?”

They rose in a way that made it looked like they were standing up. The illusion was perfect and if I didn’t know how their powers worked I would have thought it was an invisible person standing before me. They ‘stepped’ forward and twirled to show off the dress. They had even made shoes for themselves and were managing them as well as any other aspect of the outfit.

Something occurred to me. “Sorry if this is rude, but are you female?”

The gloves made a gesture to where their pelvis would be, then an irreverent gesture that seemed vaguely positive.

“It doesn’t matter, but sure?” I guessed at a translation.

There was an excited response and an enthusiastic gesture towards the dress, and a dismissive one to a suit hanging on the wall.

“Female because women’s clothes are better?”

Again enthusiasm from them, or I guess that should be ‘her’, if that’s what she wanted.

“So what should I call you? The ability that brought you here, or created you, or whatever is called Garment Gloves...”

There was an excited snap.

“You want that as your name?”

More expressions of positivity.

“So Garment?”

There was a happy gesture.

“Right, ok Garment. I need to get this bike into the workshop.”

She leaned around me in a way that a normal human would, ‘looked’ at the bike, then reacted with horror. In a flurry of motion various items of clothing floated off surfaces to places as far from the path I’d have to take as possible. It ended with her ‘standing’ on the chair and making shoeing gestures as I wheeled the admittedly rusty and oil soaked machine through her workspace.

My metal workshop was largely untouched, but the components of the costume Garment had designed were laid out for assembly. It looked nearly finished and I wondered why she had left it like that.

Once the bike was settled in the center of the workspace I turned to see Garment at the door. “Do you need some help with that?” Given the level of skill on display from what she had thrown together I couldn’t imagine what she would need me for.

What followed was a bunch of abstract gestures that I had a hard time deciphering. Eventually I got fed up and happened upon an idea. I got one of the spare laptops Tattletale had included with my supplies and booted it up. I loaded a word processor and set it in front of Garment.

It seemed that while Garment may have been a genius in terms of clothing they didn’t include basic computer use in whatever skillset she’d been granted. She typed by hunting through the keyboard letter by letter with the speed of a glacier and the grace of a drunken sloth. Gradually a word appeared on the screen.

P...O...W...E...R...S

“You want to use my powers?” This brought on an excited flurry. It made sense, my Made to Last ability would make the clothing impervious to time and the elements. Making it in the workshop would let it repair itself in forty eight hours if it was ever damaged. My style abilities combined with her fashion sense and tailoring skill would produce a level of quality that dwarfed anything I could even imagine.

“How do you know about my powers?”

That merely got a shrug and a dismissive gesture. Well, that explained nothing. But I guess if she came from my powers it made sense that she would know about them. That was still bothering me. I had a sentient being confined to my workshop. I wasn’t going to pretend this was something normal. I had to make sure she was happy with whatever this arrangement turned out to be.

“Look, Garment, I don’t really get how you came here or what it means, but I want you to be ok. So what do you want?”

She made a contemplative gesture, then an exclamation followed by indications towards her dress and the half-finished costume.

“Clothes? You want to make clothes?”

The excitement was bubbling off her.

“Ok, I’ll make sure you can make all the clothes you want.”

That got a little hop of excitement.

“I need to move the entrance of the workshop before someone finds it. I’ll see you back at the apartment.”

She waved goodbye as I left and sealed the door behind me. As I started walking home something occurred to me. I didn’t own a suit. In fact, I didn’t recognize any of the clothes she had ‘saved’ from my bike. The duffle bag I used as a dresser was looking very flat and there had been a cardboard box in the corner with the word ‘RAGS’ scrawled on it.

Ok, I needed to have a word with her. I was going to have to put some limits on that promise before she dismantled everything I owned and I ended up drowning in formalwear.

***

Author’s Note:

Updates are going to slow down a bit from this point on. I had a buffer of drafts ready when I started posting and this chapter brings me to the end of them. The story will continue, but not with daily updates. I’m going to shoot for two chapters a week.

The writing exercise that started this story worked by wordcount. Every 2000 words was worth 100 points and triggered a roll for a new power. The power is purchased if enough points have been accumulated to cover its cost. That’s the meaning of the in story references to building reach and stronger and weaker motes. In the revision of my drafts the wordcount has expanded, so to accommodate this there will be a lot more powers coming in the next few chapters.

I wanted to thank everyone who provided feedback on this story as it really helped keep me motivated to continue writing and posting. I’m sorry to slow down the updates just as things are ramping up but I promise you there is more to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Life Fiber Spool (Kill la Kill) 400:  
> A medium-sized spool of Life Fiber. It's only enough to maybe make a pair of gloves out of, but with the proper knowledge, one could create Goku Uniforms- Or enhance existing articles of clothing to be like Goku Uniforms. One spool of thread is enough to make several one-star outfits, three two-star outfits, or a single three-star outfit, assuming you have the knowledge of how to work with Life Fibers
> 
> Garment Gloves (Dodgeball) 200:  
> These are a pair of pure white gloves. Bound to them is an intelligence with a mind for fashion: a designer, seamstress, clothier, and tailor without mortal peer. It has the ability to scry for fashion based information from international trends to precise measurements. Given materials and orders, it will industriously produce fine apparel, producing any modifications, clothing, footwear, accessories, etc that is within theoretical mortal ability. It has sufficient telekinesis to move itself and to independently suspend materials. It must be provided with materials, though it may be provided a lump sum or budget with which to magically acquire materials at cost.  
> You may wear the gloves to channel the skills (but not powers) of the entity, perhaps even learning from it.
> 
> Alchemy (Banjo-Kazooie) 100:  
> You are incredibly capable at mixing together mundane ingredients to create effects that can only be described as magical. For a short time these potions can create temporary copies of you, turn you invisible, or give you shielding.


	13. 10 Overhaul

10 Overhaul

I hurried back to my apartment and tried not to think about what Garment had been doing to my wardrobe. I’ve never been particularly fashionable. My strategy has always been to find something serviceable and run with it. When I was in college a T-shirt and jeans had practically been the uniform of the engineering class. I don’t think I saw one person vary from it in my entire time there.

Clearly that did not work for Garment. I didn’t know what she intended, but it made me nervous. I didn’t like attracting attention and what she’d replaced my earlier clothes with was already at the limit of what I was comfortable with. I really didn’t want to end up dressed up like some hipster just to keep Garment happy.

I guess I was her only model. I could do something about that. I had been able to build humanoid androids since I got my Grease Monkey power. High level synthetics required extensive development times, but I could cut down on that substantially by using cultured human tissue and repurposed neural matter to compliment processing.

Ok, no. I’m not building a borderline sapient cybernetic android just to avoid having to play dress up. A.I. was a dicey enough prospect to begin with, much less if you took those kinds of shortcuts. I’d promised myself I’d be responsible with any intelligences I created. I wasn’t going to bring new life into the world only to explain that the purpose of its existence was distracting the fashionista.

Garment was part of my power. We were stuck with each other and I’d have to come up with a compromise we could both live with.

As I climbed the stairs to my apartment I felt the Celestial Forge. The Size constellation passed by without any successful connections. I put that out of my mind and continued to the closet to open the workshop. Garment was standing there defiantly. Well, ‘standing’ there. It was incredible how quickly I had accepted the illusion. Really she was a pair of floating gloves with everything else telekinetically suspended, but it was a lot easier to think of the entire collection as one person.

“Garment, what happened to my clothes?”

She gestured at the various items folded on the assorted surfaces or suspended on the wall as if to say everything was fine. She also shifted slightly to obscure my view of the definitely empty duffle bag that had previously contained my wardrobe. Instead I looked over to the cardboard box and cracked the lid.

Inside were the disassembled remains of clothing. I wasn’t the best judge of things, but it didn’t look like enough material to account for everything that disappeared from the duffel bag. Looking over the new items there were some familiar elements, colors or broad designs that had been integrated into new items.

“Did you remake all my clothes?”

There was a sense of pride and accomplishment in her stance with no hint of shame. Looking closer with the benefit of my abilities I could see the effect. Everything had been tailored to be completely bespoke. Not everything had made the transition. It looked like some items had been cannibalized for fabric and others had been trashed completely. There were some new items, the suit being the most obvious, but it wasn’t as shocking a change as I’d been afraid of.

My personal style was definitely being altered, but that was mostly because I had no personal style to begin with. It was at least more subdued than I had been afraid of. There were no ridiculous runway flairs or poorly integrated vintage items. Miraculously it was not hipster clothing. I might go out in a shiny costume to fight supervillains but I still have standards.

“It’s incredible that you managed all this since this morning.”

There were some awkward qualifying motions from Garment.

“What?” I had seen everything stored both in here and in the workshop. What was she talking about?

There was the slightest gesture towards the Laboratorium door. Cautiously I edged forward and opened it.

Apparently I had badly underestimated Garment’s crafting rate and her level of boredom. I probably should have clued that something was up when all of the items in the entry way had been designed for me. Garment had seemingly decided that my Laboratorium would function perfectly as a walk in closet.

I was honestly amazed at the quantity of it. Assuming she kept to her budget how was it possible to buy this much material for what I had given her? Actually, how was the cost decided? Wholesale direct from a factory was a very different number than the retail price at a specialty fabric store. Even so, the only way I could make sense of this is if she was abusing the international exchange rate in some way. Somehow she had purchased enough supplies to fill the entrance of my gothic technology lab with outfits.

There were dresses, coats, sweaters, shirts, pants, and shoes. Those I didn’t have a problem with. What was bothering me was the hats. Only about a half dozen of them, and all nicely made. The problem was how Garment had decided to store them.

The other items were folded, hung on walls, or spread over computer altars. For the hats she had decided the Laboratorium had the perfect manner of displaying them. The half dozen cyber skulls nearest the entrance were all festooned with lovingly made women’s hats. The worst was probably the bonnet with silk flowers sown into it. Its skull warbled towards me, one eye socket empty and the other with a cybernetic lens, and managed to look confused at what was happening to him. The other skulls weren’t much better, particularly the one wearing a broad hat with attached peacock feather.

I slowly backed out of the lab and closed the door. How had she managed this? It had barely been four hours since she arrived. If this was the rate of work she needed to entertain herself then I was going to be both bankrupt and drowning in clothes within a few days.

“Uh, Garment?”

She stood there expectantly.

“Ok, uh, that’s really nice work, but please don’t store things in there. I’ll find you a place to keep your clothes.” Which would have to be outside my workshop. Or my apartment, since there was just no space for that amount of clothing. This would be getting complicated. Maybe a storage locker would work as a temporary option.

In the mean time I needed to find something for Garment to do that wouldn’t require any additional money or storage space. What did normal people do to kill time?

I looked over at the laptop I had set up for Garment and an idea struck me.

“Would you like to watch some fashion videos on youtube?”

She seemed a little nervous around the computer but was still excited at the concept. I took it out to my apartment and connect it to the wifi. I loaded Youtube and, remembering her typing speed, did a search for ‘Fashion’. Interestingly she kept up the illusion even when working on the laptop, giving the impression that she was curled up on the floor rather than just floating the gloves to the keyboard. With a bit of help she picked up how to use the track pad well enough and soon was working her way through a series of videos.

Setting aside the fact that I might be encouraging internet addiction as a solution to my problems, I took advantage of her distraction and returned to my workshop. I needed to get that bike in working order and install enough systems to keep my riding stable and provide some measure of cape support. I had barely started when Garment returned to the workshop and beckoned me outside.

She had a video loaded and was pointing to the section under it that said “Log in to comment or rate this video’.

This was a complexity I hadn’t anticipated. “You want an account?”

There was a positive gesture. I got where she was coming from, but the idea made me uneasy. Considering the alternative was confining her to isolation I decided it was worth the risk.

“You’ll have to be very careful.” Before she could respond I continued. “Very, very careful. You can’t say anything that will lead back to us, or share anything. Uh, I can probably obscure our location and set things up for safe browsing, but you shouldn’t test that. Stay on this site for now and let me see the comments before you send them.”

With her agreement I set to work. I dug into the best of my technical skills to manage a proxy chain that would hold up to most casual inspection, then set up and account. Her ‘name’ wasn’t taken, so she was officially online as GarmentGloves.

I navigated back to the video and gave her the keyboard. She slowly began picking out letters.

D...U...L...L

She sat back and gestured to the screen.

“That’s it?” Her reactions indicated that said enough and anything else would be too much work. I posted the comment and Garment navigated to another video and began typing once more.

C...H...I...C

I looked at the word and her satisfied movements.

“Are those what you want to say?”

She was affirmative and fairly smug about it.

“Anything else?”

There was a shrug and a dismissive gesture to the keyboard.

“Alright, if that’s what you want I can leave you to it as long as you can keep it short. Remember, no personal details.”

With her dismissive gesture and typing speed I didn’t imagine she’d be sending her life story to anyone in the comments section. I left her to the laptop and headed back. Interestingly she didn’t seem to be getting any better at finding letters on a keyboard and took the same ponderous approach every time she typed a reply. I really need to get her a typing course or computer class or something.

On my way back to the workshop I felt the Celestial Forge move and the last constellation I had yet to identify came into reach. My power was able to link to the smallest of the motes, but with it I could classify both it and the constellation.

The final constellation was called Magitech. It dealt with the integration of magic and technology. At this point I was pretty well past the concerns I had about magic. I could carve runes, make potions, and had a possessed set of gloves binging youtube videos in the other room. I wasn’t going to get caught up on the semantics of what my power was calling things. Whatever reality warping power capes used also seemed to fall under that category, so it would all come out the same.

The new ability I received was called Mechanist. It came with some decent mechanical knowledge, middling by my standards but still somewhat useful. The big thing was the knowledge of magitek.

Ok, since I was just talking about semantics I need to break down the entirely arbitrary definitions I was working with. Magitech was the integration of magic and technology on any level. Magitek was technology specifically powered by magic. There were some advantages, things that were possible when using magic as a power source, but mostly it was just machinery that ran on magic rather than chemical, thermal, or electrical energy.

When I say that it runs on magic I mean directly on the magical energy. If I built some magitek to draw from a lightning rune it’s going to be pulling the energy that empowers the rune, not the electricity the rune is putting out. On one hand it means I could run the devices from any magic source, on the other I can’t actually integrate the effects of whatever magic I’m using into the device. It’s all just fuel.

Conceivably that principle of fueling machinery from any magical source could even include parahumans. There’s a dark thought and that’s another thing to file away in the ‘too horrible to consider’ drawer.

The level of understanding I had gotten from this mote was pretty basic. I would only be able to build simple devices, but that should be enough for a power source. I could use this to finally sidestep my energy problems. All I needed was a concentrated source of magic and I would be able to power just about anything. The only question was what I would be able to use?

My runesmithing would let me make a weapon that could provide a decent level of power. The connections would be difficult and I’d need a fairly large weapon to hold enough energy. If I wanted to run my bike from this I would basically need a zweihänder jammed in the engine. The new potions I could make would also count, but they would have variable power outputs and I couldn’t accurately predict how long they would last. Plus they were so useful I’d hate to waste them as fuel. For the best option I would have to go to my original alchemy.

There was an alchemy formula I had never attempted that was Call Up. It creates a small crystal called a call bead. Call beads are links to massively powerful magical entities and allow free manifestation of their abilities to anyone who expends the crystal. The process of linking them and the implications of the power would have scared me off the concept even if the components weren’t so difficult to obtain.

But my new ability was designed to work with a crystalline material called magicite. Magicite was, somewhat distastefully, the concentrated remains of a powerful magical creature. Like a call bead it could be used to access the power of another creature. The principles for integrating magicite into a device should, in theory, work for a call bead.

It won’t be as stable as a full magicite crystal. The call bead would degrade as it expended its power, but I should still be able to get a titanic amount of energy from it. At least as much as a magicite shard. The only problem is creating the beads.

The Call Up formula requires two reagents, meteorite and dry ice. I had pretty much written off getting either of those before I dealt with Tattletale. Along with all the essentials for crafting the knives I had been able to add all the reagents I hadn’t been able to track down. The limestone block may have been an odd addition, but no one’s going to find it strange for a tinker to ask for gunpowder, ethanol, dry ice, or meteoric iron. Well, strange by the standards of tinkers.

Because of that request a small freezer of dry ice and some pieces of meteorites had been included in my supplies. Now, I had a highly finite supply of these materials. I would be running on a very limited resource and probably only be able to make six or seven beads. But that thinking was from this morning, before I had gotten the ability to duplicate myself.

With my duplication potion I could copy all the materials I was holding. The copies could then use the Call Up formula and generate as many beads as they could before they dissipated or expended the reagents. As long as I could brew that potion I effectively had infinite magical fuel.

Unlimited Power!

But I still needed to prove the concept. I hadn’t even seen a call bead yet. All this was theoretical. Furthermore I needed to calibrate the magitek device to the power source, so I at least needed a single sample to start. Also I didn’t get any feedback from my copies. I needed a sense of how the beads formed in order to properly integrate them. No matter what I would have to make at least one call bead without the duplication potion.

As I prepared to combine the formula I felt my passenger’s excitement building. Mostly the strong emotions were reserved for capes, but he was probably even more invested in the Celestial Forge. This would be a major step forward. Even if I had to do it with a specific type of technology this would address all of my power source concerns. No more worrying about fuel or the complications of building a micro-fusion reactor. How far I could take it would depend on my examination of the call bead, but this was a massively significant project.

I put on some protective gloves and collected a piece of dry ice and a chunk of meteorite. Carefully, in an open area of my workshop, I combined the two reagents. The formula glowed brighter than any had before. Rather than the light spreading out it condensed to a single point. Slowly a blue crystalline substance began forming around it until a bead about two centimeters wide was floating in the air in front of me. I placed a hand beneath it just as it began to dip and the tiny object fell into my palm. 

On basic inspection it looked like a plain glass bead, but if you looked closely you could see the faint glow in its center. There was something both enchanting and terrifying about that glow, like you were looking at light shining through a tunnel from an unimaginable distance rather than being generated by the bead itself.

I had done it. I had a massively powerful magical object, one that should be able to run every system I could want from my bike. But now I needed to analyze it.

Unfortunately my Laboratorium would not be helpful with this. Actually, I’m going to reclassify that as ‘fortunately’ since that meant I wouldn’t need to deal with the behatted cyber skulls just yet. The Laboratorium was designed to measure physical effects. It could measure highly obscure physical properties that I barely understood, but it couldn’t actually gauge magic, only what magic could do. The most it was capable of was identifying when something was magical. Without activating the call bead it would be no help.

Instead I had to assemble a basic magitek calibration system. Fortunately all of my other abilities made this a trivial task and I completed what would have taken at least a day in less than half an hour. With the apparatus in place I could start to gauge what I was dealing with.

As an expendable item it seemed a call bead was capable of immense power output, but only for a short time. When I say immense I really mean that. In theory I could dump all the bead’s energy in one massive burst, but it would completely destroy whatever system it was attached to. I just didn’t have the materials or technology to channel that kind of power. What I could make would barely be able to handle one tenth of that. If I was going to use this as an ongoing power source rather than for massive discharges I was going to need to moderate energy flow to the slightest fraction of what it was capable of. Fortunately even at that diminished level it would be able to run every system I had considered installing on my bike while also keeping the motor at max output. For civilian operation the bead could last for months. If I took it into combat or ran serious systems from the engine then the lifespan would be severely diminished. By serious systems I mean the type of ECM jamming that normally comes from naval ships. This could even open up installed weapon systems, or that motoroid idea I had largely dismissed.

Though building something like that would require a lot of programing support.

I was also going to be limited to vehicles or large devices. The best magitek core I could build was the size of a small engine block. I didn’t have any powers that would help me shrink that down, so this kind of power source would be limited to things big enough to accommodate something like that. Bikes, robots, and base systems were on the table, handheld devices were definitely not. If I wanted to run a man portable device off this kind of energy it would require a Ghostbusters backpack for the power source.

This also wasn’t going to be as easy as shoving a call bead into my bike’s engine. Magitek meant every aspect of the device was powered by magic. The engine wasn’t driven by an exploding fuel air mixture, it was turned by magic. The lights weren’t powered by electricity from a battery or alternator, they were powered by magic. Various auxiliary systems weren’t maintained by power transfer from belts, pressure, or gears. They all ran on magic. The energy was basically a cheat mode for all kinds of complicated technology. I could even build a magitek cogitator to imprint control procedures onto directly, allowing high functioning automation without any use of microprocessors.

That last application was beyond me for the moment. It was at the very limits of my skills with magitek. Also, without a preexisting control program to work from I would be flying blind and could easily end up with a rampant machine. Instead I would need to install an alternator to run a series of electrical systems. That would allow the control program to run in a normal computer environment. It would add extra complexity, but also allow much easier development of the support system.

I had to completely rip apart the motorcycle and start fresh on a new engine. With my powers that was utterly trivial and the bike pretty much flew apart. In addition, my Rationing ability allowed me to squirrel away every part, linkage, and potentially useful scrap material. Anything I ended up dumping from the bike I would be able to find another application for later.

As I was working I felt the forge again. This time it connected to a small mote from the Resources and Durability constellation. It was called Repair Savvy. In addition to even further boosting my mechanical skill it enabled me to make repairs for all of my weapons, armor, and personal equipment drastically easier. Maintenance for them would take minutes instead of hours. It didn’t help with design or new construction, but corrective work, assembly, or minor modifications could be accomplished in a flash. Combined with my other abilities I might even be able to work fast enough to repair equipment in combat situations.

What counted as personal equipment was somewhat arbitrary. Cars or other large vehicles didn’t, nor did anything that had to be installed into a location. A laptop would, but a server wouldn’t. A desktop was right on the line and would see very marginal benefits. Motorcycles were in a similar situation where the application was mixed and therefore marginal.

However, if I did that motoroid conversion it would suddenly completely qualify for that power’s effect. At that point it would fall into the armor category as well. A motoroid counted as very heavy power armor. It was just on the border between power armor and mecha, but it still counted. Incredibly it was right at the limit of what my duplication formula could copy in terms of personal equipment. That meant drinking a duplication potion while in armor mode would provide all of my copies with their own sets of power armor.

I would still need to sink the time in for design and construction, but I could churn out something barely functional and then get Repair Savvy’s acceleration on all maintenance and refinement processes. It was unbelievable that I could drastically accelerate the construction of my bike by adding the ability for it to transform into a suit of power armor.

At times like this I really, really loved my power.

I mean this was cheating, but it was cheating in a way that is practically an engineering tradition. This is the principle of something absolutely, totally being completed by the deadline, it just needs a few touch ups. Over several months. At a cost equal to half the original project budget. It was the equivalent of the ‘fix it in post’ or ‘patch it later’ mentality. I was kind of proud that such a core element of design and construction was included in my power set.

All I needed to do was build something that technically qualified as a motoroid.

My powers already allow me to work blindingly fast while operating to an impeccable level of quality. When I pushed myself to get something just ‘functional’ as quickly as humanly possible, well let’s just say things were happening in the workshop that defied grace, dignity, and the laws of nature. I’m pretty sure I could feel my Decadence power crying at what was unfolding before me. Strangely it was my Black Thumb power that was really shining through. I may have been driven to a bit of maniacal laughter as I took a hammer to the cycle frame in order to wedge in a magitek drive converter. Hastily built thaumic servos were shoved into gaps cut in the structural metal with my monomolecular pen knife and roughly welded into place. Anything not necessary for it to qualify as a bike or a motoroid was left out. The control system was nothing but a hastily coded series of servo operations connected to a hotwired laptop.

The entire thing was a mess that the combined efforts of both of my style perks couldn’t save. When it was finished the bike actually looked worse than it had in the lot. The casing didn’t fit together, the wheels were off alignment, the shocks had been torn off, and the seat was a mess of jagged metal. With a great deal of apprehension I activated the transformation. Sparks of thaumic discharge scorched the floor and nearby equipment leaving streaks of soot that glowed faintly green. The bike lurched like it was having a seizure, then slowly started to split in a way that reminded me of a John Carpenter film. I was half afraid it would fall apart on the spot, but with a series of shudders and no shortage of discharged magical energy eventually it pulled itself into a vaguely humanoid form.

It was hideous. The thing looked like a design that had been rejected from one of the Earth Aleph Transformers movies because theaters didn’t want to deal with the inevitable nausea it would trigger in their audiences. It was like someone asked ‘what would happen if a robot could get cancer and herpes at the same time?’ and then turned the answer into a modern art sculpture. It looked like someone had taken the results of an industrial lake dredging and sculpted them into a mockery of the human form.

With a final shudder the armor opened up revealing the compartment for the driver. There were continuous sparks of thaumic energy jumping back and forth inside it and the whole thing had a wet and greasy look. Enough spikes and loose wires were present inside the compartment for it to easily have been mistaken for a medieval torture device.

With a spray of hydraulic fluid from the outside of the right leg the entire machine began to list to the side. I watched helpless as the hulk tipped past its point of no return and impacted the ground with the sound of a plane crash.

It was hideous, but from the feel of my power it was just enough to qualify for my latest ability. That meant I could do repair and maintenance work at such an accelerated rate I would be able to get it in top form in no time. And as long as no one saw it at this stage I wouldn’t have to admit to falling into the worst of newbie tinker design practices.

Of course that was the exact moment when Garment rushed into the workshop. I suppose an event that sounds like a demolition derby meeting a trash compactor will attract some attention. On one hand it was a relief to know that she would have been there for me in the event of an accident. On the other hand the way she reacted when she saw what I’d done to my bike made me feel like she had caught me doing something indecent.

I didn’t know a set of animated clothes could look like they were about to break into tears. She ran off in horror before I could say anything. Eventually I found her in the Labratorium surrounded by the nicer dresses she had made. It was as if she was trying to create a barrier against bad taste.

She met my attempts at an explanation with accusatory stares. Well, accusatory body language. When I promised I could fix it she made a dismissive gesture and went back to checking the seams on one of her gowns.

Suddenly I felt like I was performing a penance. I returned to the workshop and looked down at the twisted mess of a motoroid. Yeah, that definitely counted as a sin against nature. And on the scale of sins against nature I was guessing this thing would be near the top of the list. I got to work.

There are varying levels of maintenance, from tune-ups to minor services to overhauls. What I was doing here was about two steps past a complete rebuild. It only technically counted as maintenance because there was a physical object that I was working on.

The Greeks have the story of the ship of Theseus that was maintained by replacing every damaged component until none of the original ship remained. What I was doing here didn’t go quite that far. I was keeping the tires.

Machinist would let me completely rebuild an aircraft in a single night. I was currently working about a hundred times faster than that. I was leveraging levels of technical understanding I had never explored while moving faster than should have been humanly possible. My Rationing power kept even a single bolt from going to waste as parts were replaced, refurbished, or full on fabricated. I swear I could feel blisters forming on my fingers. My muscles ached and head spun from how quickly I was moving.

The electronics were reworked. Software was transferred from the laptop to a custom made control computer. It was then deleted and rewritten with a prototype neural net designed to train itself in vehicle control. It was wired into the magitek systems with properly calibrated adapters rather than the equivalent of penny fuses that I’d been using before.

Through it all I was letting my style powers run rampant. Everything was being designed to an impeccable standard. I was really feeling like I needed to make up for my earlier performance, despite still believing the rushed quality of the early work to be fully justified.

When I took a short break for some lunch I found Garment had made her way back to the laptop and did her best to convey the idea that she was glaring at me while I ate. During lunch my power missed a connection from the alchemy constellation and my reach continued to grow. I powered through a quick meal to the sound of red carpet fashion commentary followed by the slow typing of a one word comment.

Really, really needed to get her a typing class.

After I cleared my dish I was right back to work. Systems were rearranged, tuned, refined, and tested. The control program was put through pathfinding and dexterity tests. Key components and structural pieces were replaced with custom formed hyper alloys. The entire magitek core and drive system was rebuilt from the ground up to improve efficiency and peak output. Every part that had been overlooked or ignored in the previous build was added in exquisite quality. The entire assembly was precisely aligned, polished, and presented in the best and most efficient manner possible. Even the seat was perfectly aligned for both comfort and control.

By the time I was done it was early afternoon. I had spent nearly two hours on the overhaul, which was accelerated to about two hundred hours thanks to my power. But that was two hundred hours at my typical level of proficiency and accelerated work. For a normal person that would be... I have no idea. Normal people don’t do this kind of project. Not without a team of experts and an extensive research budget.

The point was that despite the rough start I had managed a bike that would have taken weeks of work in a few hours. It was light on support systems or weaponry, but was more advanced, refined, and powerful than anything I would have dreamed of having ready at this point. I checked on the progress of the control program. This is something I’d envisioned as a fleet management program for when I had multiple vehicles to operate. Right now it was learning motorcycle operation through simulated scenarios, but eventually it would be capable of piloting assistance for anything I could build.

I would definitely need that assistance because this bike was fast. It was fast on a level that normally required a streamliner body shape and miles of salt flats to pull off. I was cheating with advanced knowledge of wind resistance and some variable geometry in the paneling, but this thing could definitely break three hundred miles per hour. Not that I would ever see those speeds inside the city, but it was incredible to think I was operating on the level of Armsmaster’s motorcycle, only with less gadgets and better acceleration.

Also my aerospace knowledge had let me break out some surprises for the motoroid form.

Finally, it was good enough that I felt like I had made amends for my earlier design. When I left to get Garment she gave me some skeptical gestures, but reluctantly came along. When she saw the rebuilt motorcycle she approached it with the attitude of a dog show judge. It was carefully observed from every angle. The material of the seats was evaluated. Exposed machinery and wheel wells were checked. She stepped back and made a ‘continue’ gesture.

At my prompting the bike began to transform. This time it was smooth and seamless. Within a second there was a robot standing where the motorcycle had been parked. The wheels were positioned above its shoulders exposing the integrated turbine blades with variable angles of attack.

Yes, it could fly. No, it would not be flying. My experience with piloting was nonexistent and the fleet program was still trying to learn ‘motorcycle’. With a lot of simulation and practice it could be an option in the future, if I didn’t mind significantly stressing the machine’s energy reserves. Until then it was just future proofing, though in a pinch it could provide a jump assist. If I was lucky I might even be able to land somewhat gracefully when I used it.

Once more Garment did that show judge thing, moving around and evaluating the robot from every angle. I had a feeling she wasn’t sold on every design choice, not for quality, probably for style reasons. She did have a better handle on that kind of thing thanks to her powers. Still, she couldn’t criticize the workmanship even if the design wasn’t fashion forward.

When she backed off again I signaled the fleet program and the front paneling opened up. The pilot compartment wasn’t anything like the nightmare it had been before. Parts of the seat were redistributed to cushion key points and everything was clean and ergonomic. I slid back into the armor and let it close around me. This was a bit weird as it was my first time driving it. I moved a bit unsteadily, but the fleet program kept me from falling. Garment gave me an approving gesture and motioned for me to continue.

Ok, this was the hard part, and if I had gotten any part of it wrong it could rip me in half. I mean, I was sure I didn’t get any part of it wrong. Like half a dozen technical powers were backing me up on that, but knowing how bad it could be if things did go wrong was still a bit nerve-wracking.

I had to rely on Fleet to coordinate most of this. With two short steps the armor leapt into the air and shifted around me. With a slam of shocks I landed, seated on the back of the fully transformed motorcycle.

It worked. And I hadn’t even dislocated an arm. Excellent.

Garment was clapping and I finally felt I had redeemed myself for earlier this afternoon. She did approach the bike and run a glove over the unpainted metal of the paneling then made a quizzical gesture.

“Right, I wanted to talk to you about that.” I climbed off the bike and moved to one of the workshop’s tables. “Your material summoning thing can generate dyes, right?”

She made an obvious gesture.

“Ok here’s my idea. Originally this was going to be my civilian identity bike, but it got a bit away from me.”

She sarcastically indicated a small amount with one hand.

“Yeah, I know. So I had to choose between cape vehicle or civilian, but then I had an idea.” I showed her the plans. “I built variable geometry paneling to help control air flow and drag, but that means I have limited control over the shape of the bike.”

I signaled the fleet program and the panels shifted around, contracting and expanding, changing angle. In the span of a few seconds they were able to create the impressions of three different shapes of motorcycle.

“That’s not enough to fool people, but if you can generate some thermochromic pigments I should be able to alter them to respond to the magitek drive. That will let the bike change color. That way when it changes shape it will appear completely different. I can ride it as a cape and a civilian and no one will make the connection.” I’d also have to fold away the license plate, but that was trivial with all the other modifications.

She looked thoughtful, then rubbed a thumb and forefinger together. I should really learn to expect this.

“Fine, what do you want for it?”

She gestured towards the paneling on the bike, then to herself.

“You...want to choose the colors?”

She gestured in the affirmative.

Well, she would probably do a better job than me. “Ok, it’s a deal.”

She waved a negative with one hand and indicated two fingers with the other.

“You want something else? What?”

She ran over to the bike and jumped on the back of the seat, then made motioning gestures with her arm.

“You want, you want to go for a ride.”

That triggered a bout of excitement.

I looked at her awkwardly. “Uh, there might be a problem with that.”

To that she gestured to herself, then to my helmet, then seemed to indicate a full body.

“You can cover up?”

There was even more excitement at that.

That could actually work. Biking gear with a full face helmet was one of the few outfits in which she’d be able to pass for normal in the outside world and interact with people. I looked at the door. I didn’t want to keep her prisoner, and she’d already subjected herself to half a day of youtube’s fashion community for a hint of escapism. I doubted that would hold her forever.

“Ok, it’s a deal. Work out the cost for what you need. Oh, and while we’re out we can find a place to properly store your clothes.”

She gave me a quizzical gesture.

Why? Because those skulls in hats are going to give me nightmares. “Because I don’t think the incense in there is good for the fabrics.”

She froze and looked momentarily panicked. She gestured emphatically, indicated two hundred dollars. As I was getting the cash she hastily, but still to a great standard of quality, drew a painting guide on the plans for both versions of the bike. As soon as she had the money the pigments appeared and she ran off to save her wardrobe.

As I was working on applying and modifying the pigment I felt the forge again. This time it was the Quality constellation and I connected to a small mote called Stylish Mechanic. In addition to giving me even more mechanical proficiency it provided another boost to design skills. Not only would everything I fixed look clean and pleasing to the eye but it opened up a bunch of weird and awe inspiring design possibilities without compromising function.

All together it was a fairly minor ability, but still compounded with the rest of my powers. My level of mechanical proficiency was approaching ridiculous heights and I had no idea if there was even an upper limit.

The painting process still counted as maintenance, so I blazed through it. Apparently my powers could even cause complex compounds to set faster if it wanted to. Not that I was in any way complaining about the convenience.

Garment had picked a white body color with blue highlights for the civilian mode and a rough extension of the black, grey, and silver of my costume for cape mode. It definitely came together better than what I would have chosen.

I exited the workshop to find all of Garments clothes piled in the entry room, and all of my clothes and a good amount of my furniture back in my apartment. She looked very pleased with herself.

“Ok, are you ready to go?”

She held out a finger, then gestured for me to stand back. I did so and with a flourish material began to appear in the air around her. I had never watched her make a complete outfit from scratch before. The effect was fascinating. The materials just appeared out of thin air as they were needed. Thread stitched itself into seams as it was conjured. Nothing was summoned as a completed item of clothing but some small pieces like zippers, snaps and buttons appeared completely intact.

The outfit came together one piece at a time. A white turtleneck sweater was assembled at blinding speed. Then a set of motorcycle leathers, jacket and pants both in pink and white. Probably with more detail and intricacies to them than I would have bothered with for a disguise. She then made a pair of boots in the same colors and watching those assemble themselves from based components was fascinating. Finally she conjured the components of a pink helmet with a mirror visor, assembled piece by piece in front of me.

It was interesting to watch, but it also meant she could summon synthetics, plastics, and any number of other materials. Nothing high tech by the look of things, but still an incredible resource I’d be able to draw upon.

With everything created she began rolling down the cuff of her opera gloves to transform them into something more conventional. I knew everything was just show and there wasn’t really anything but suspended clothing between the gloves, but she had put so much work into the illusion that watching her ‘change’ her clothing somehow felt intrusive.

“I’ll just be in the workshop.”

I retreated to the pocket dimension and looked at my motorcycle. It was beautiful, and not just because of my style perks. It felt like the first proper piece of technology I was responsible for bringing into the world. Like a real tinker I had taken an ordinary vehicle and turned it into something terrifyingly powerful.

It also occurred to me how terrifyingly powerful this thing actually was. The original bike had a fairly strong engine, but now it was running from a magitek converter drawing energy from a crystal linked to the realm of passengers. I was taking what might be the most powerful bike in the city out with nothing but a half trained A.I. to stop me from laminating myself to the side of a building on a single missed turn.

I considered the soccer shin guard I was wearing under my now designer jeans. That would not cut it. I needed something better.

God bless that Rationing power. Because of it absolutely nothing had been wasted in the construction blitz I’d just put myself through. I had burned through most of the stock of metals I needed for hyper alloys but with every scrap saved and recycled there was more than enough to build a replacement for the plastic padding in my shin guard. Luckily this counted under my maintenance power, so I was able to complete the work blindingly fast. I even improved the fit to make it less obvious that I was wearing a shin pad under my jeans.

I felt the protection increase. The way my Fashion ability’s reinforcement worked was oddly intricate. I had higher resistance to initial damage from the harder hypermaterial of the shin pad, but the bulkier build of my bracer let me absorbed more abuse. It was hard to explain, the best analogy would probably be to think of it like an RPG with armor and hit points. It meant there was still an advantage to large and bulky protective items.

One aspect of that power I had been overlooking was the fact that it took the most superior properties of the protective items I had equipped. It wasn’t that useful when I was scrounging for materials and couldn’t have done any better than strapping a chunk of steel to my body. Now that I had proper supplies there was the potential for multiple pieces allowing combined protection. One for hardness, one for compression resistance, one for bulk, one to be chemically inert, one for heat resistance, and so on.

The only problem was that the pieces would share protection with me and my clothing, but not with each other. I could make a panel of tantalum hafnium carbide that would keep me safe up to seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but every other protective item I had would have melted or probably boiled away long before then. Composite defenses would be useful, but I needed to remember it would never be perfect invincibility.

Garment rushed into the workshop now ‘wearing’ her pink and white motorcycle outfit, though without the helmet. She frantically gestured for me to follow her and led me out to the kitchenette. My cellphone was ringing.

I looked over at the caller ID. Dr. Campbell. My guts wretched. He was not actually one of the people I had made a point to cut contact with after my trigger event. Actually he had probably been one of the more stable influences in my life. Still, the thought of talking with him brought up a wave of anxiety that I desperately wanted to put off.

When I didn’t immediately pick up the phone Garment gestured to get my attention and pointed towards it. When I still didn’t take it she started tapping the ‘Dr.” part of the name on the display. Eventually the relentless concern and effort she was displaying broke down my resolve. I pulled the phone off its charger and answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon Joe. This is Dr. Campbell.”

“Good afternoon.”

I felt my power fail to make a connection to the Alchemy constellation and ignored it, staying focused on the call.

“I’m calling to confirm our session tomorrow afternoon.”

I let out a breath. I had completely forgotten about that. I was still under my parents health insurance thanks to the technicality of a clause about ‘college enrollment’ that would be active until the end of the year. There was a limited allocation each quarter for therapy, so I hadn’t seen Dr. Campbell since early March.

If I was honest those four weeks without checking in probably had no small contribution towards the conditions of my trigger event.

“Uh, I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it.”

I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to get back into any of this. I was fine. I had moved on. And I had important work to do. Bakuda could attack at any time. Every minute of preparation increased my chances to contain the damage, maybe even prevent it. I couldn’t take time away from that.

“Joe, I heard about what happened a couple of weeks ago. I think it would be a good idea to check in and make sure you’re doing alright.”

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Of course. Of course he’d want to talk about my trigger event. This, I could not deal with this. Not now, preferably not ever.

“Actually I, I’m doing a lot better. I don’t think...” I dropped off. I didn’t even want to talk about this, much less think of it.

“Joe, I’ve always said your commitment to your recovery was extraordinary.” Yeah, for all the good it did. “It’s wonderful that you’re doing better,” he didn’t sound like he’d been completely convinced that I was actually ‘doing better’. Stupid insightful doctors. “But it would still be a good idea to touch base and make sure you’re on good footing going forward.”

God damn it I didn’t want this. I was doing fine. Since my trigger I had... I had leaned on my passenger so much I ended up building weapons for supervillains. I had nearly fallen apart the first time that relationship was called into doubt. I had gotten in massively over my head and was scrambling to try to keep my head above water.

I was not doing fine.

I felt the gentle reassurance of my passenger. It had become obvious that the link was a double edged sword, but it did try to push me towards healthy behaviors, and right now it wanted me to go to therapy. I flinched as I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Garment doing her best to convey concern through body language.

Why did I have to be surrounded by supportive people who wanted the best for me? I swear, if my driving A.I. started expressing concern for my mental wellbeing I was giving up on this whole cape thing.

I sighed. Just last night I had been laying this out to Amy. Everything I had learned suggested that mental health was not the priority it should be in the cape community. If my passenger was right then Director Piggot was most likely traumatized and unstable. Brandish had issues from childhood that she was now inflicting on the next generation. Amy needed serious help and just wasn’t getting it. Could I be critical of them and neglect my own health?

Yes, I would just need to be a giant hypocrite filled with self-loathing and blatant contradictions.

If I went I would have to talk about my trigger event. I could probably dance around the cape stuff, but the rest of it... God I did not want to do this.

I felt my passenger’s concern and looked at Garment’s worried gestures. I took a breath.

“Ok Dr. Campbell. I’ll be there.”

“Thank you Joe. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I hung up the phone and felt the life drain out of me. It was probably for the best. Not dealing with this would only set me up for bigger falls later. But I hated every aspect of it, including the fact that I hated it. Recursive self-hatred was a wonderful thing. But Dr. Campbell was so insufferably nice and supportive that there was no way I could skip out now. He was probably the only competent person I had seen through the whole mess and I owed it to him.

I could spare an hour tomorrow evening. I doubted anything serious was going to happen on Saturday night.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The mood whiplash from the joy of having completed such a big project to all of this being dredged up was jarring. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

Garment crept towards me. She was holding a beautifully made white motorcycle jacket with a bomber collar, and what might have been my helmet after she had gotten through fixing the fit, design, and color scheme. She gingerly held them out like an offering.

I gave her a weak smile.

“Alright. Let’s go for a ride.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Mechanist (Final Fantasy VI) 100:  
> You know how regular technology and magitek function and can repair it if it breaks down. You'll still need the tools and supplies, but at least with this you'll know what you're doing with mechanical technology. This knowledge can be used to build basic examples of it too, but don't expect to be able to copy anything too complex without getting your hands on the blueprints.
> 
> Repair Savvy (Outlaw Star) 100:  
> Your skills in mechanics are top notch. Your weapons, armor, and personal equipment are all easy to repair, and maintenance of all of them takes mere minutes instead of hours.
> 
> Stylish Mechanic (Gurren Lagann) 100:  
> In addition to knowing how to repair and create mechanical devices you also have quite a knack at making anything you work on look good. Any time you fix something it'll end up clean and pleasant to look at, and you can easily come up with humorous or awe-inspiring designs for vehicles and devices.


	14. 11 Power Trip

11 Power Trip

Garment retreated to my workshop and I sealed the entrance before leaving the apartment. If I was going to do this more often I’d need to find a better option than just hunting through back alleys for an unobserved door. Maybe something like what I pulled with the van would work, find a parking structure that I could use to access my workshop so people wouldn’t wonder why a motorcycle was constantly entering or leaving.

While I was heading towards the alley I previously used I felt the Celestial Forge move again, bringing the Alchemy constellation close by. This time I was able to connect to a mid-sized mote. The ability was called Deranged Alchemist. This, this was proper alchemy. Not component spellcasting, not the brewing of a quarter dozen potion types. This was the real deal.

In addition to all the medieval chemistry you could possibly want there were sparks of significant power. The most important was the ability to transmute materials. The rituals were a little elaborate, but with work I could transmute just about any material into a substance of the same alchemical base. I couldn’t turn lead into gold. I could, however, turn gold into platinum.

Setting aside the prospect of bringing WEDGDG down on me for disruption of the precious metals commodity market this would address a serious number of my supply problems. My workshop only restocked basic materials, but those included iron, lead, tin, and copper, four of the seven base alchemic metals. With some transmutation work that opened up effectively unlimited supplies of most of the metals on the periodic table. Unfortunately I was still limited on the ones I’d need to transmute from mercury, silver, or gold, but this had bypassed a massive hurdle for my supply chain.

There was another aspect to this power that I was a good deal less excited about. Among the alchemical knowledge I had received from this ability was a comprehensive understanding of the alchemical studies of Paracelsus, specifically those concerned with the creation of life. In short, I could make homunculi.

There’s a distinction between wet and dry tinkers that’s so stark people don’t even bother with the ‘dry’ classification. You’re either a normal tinker or a wet tinker. Homunculus creation was the wettest of wet tinkering. It worked by a variation of preformationism where you basically grew a tiny version of a creature from the hypothetical tinier versions of that creature that existed within their living bodies. Considering I was pretty sure I could already manage to build a cloning tank this application was both disgusting and redundant. The power was called ‘Deranged Alchemist’, and apparently for good reason.

There may have been some advantages if you got deep enough into homunculi research, but I was perfectly happy keeping my hands off on this one. It would be hard enough figuring out the alchemical transmutation alignment for elemental neodymium. I didn’t need to dive into a field of tinkering I’d been specifically trying to avoid since I found out what my powers would have been without the Celestial Forge. I really didn’t need this after the call I just had. I’d been reminded of that stuff more than enough for one day. 

Setting aside the horrible wet tinker aspects of this power there was an interesting element to it. This was actually an entire discipline unto itself. I was coming into it with master level understanding, but there was the potential for development, refinement, and even new discoveries. The holy grail of this particular system was the creation of the panacea. That is, the medicine that cures all illness and extends life, not copies of the new wave cape, though with the homunculus stuff I could conceivably make small copies of the New Wave cape and I’m not thinking about that anymore. Combinations of homunculus distillation with parahuman biology had terrifying implications that I’m just not going to into right now. The non-horrible point is that there’s actually room for development and refinement in this particular discipline. It’s closer to the science related powers that allow new designs and discoveries than my previous two alchemy abilities which were strictly limited to the knowledge they provided. The formulas from Evermore Alchemist could be refined and improved in effectiveness, but I couldn’t develop anything novel. This actually had the potential for new discovery.

That would be a daunting prospect and something I normally would never have considered attempting, but I also had two intelligence boosting powers and the second one was specifically designed to allow me to become the foremost mind in any field. While I doubted there was much competition for the title of ‘foremost alchemist’ the end result was a massive increase in my ability to develop this craft. I wasn’t sure what direction I would actually be taking my research. The panacea was well out of my reach at the moment and I would be having enough trouble figuring out transmutation principles for metals medieval alchemists didn’t even have names for. I wasn’t likely to manage anything that would exceed the combat potential of my Evermore Alchemy, at least not without more research than was practical to consider with the scope of my current problems.

This was also truly the final nail in the coffin over the whole magic thing. The rituals needed to successfully transmute materials had an overwhelmingly mystical bent. I would never be able to dress them up as anything scientific. We’re talking circles, candles, placed reagents, chanting, and possibly robes. I’m really hoping I can avoid the robes, partially because I’ll be doing this in my machine shop and loose clothing is a death sentence in that kind of environment, but mostly because I don’t want to find out what Garment’s reaction would be if she saw me trying to cobble together a set of alchemical vestments.

The world is not ready for a line of designer cowls.

There was also some medical knowledge tied up in this mess, but it was seriously archaic. Barber surgeon skills or diagnosis by humors, that kind of stuff. Just enough to facilitate the squishier aspects of the power without providing any real proficiency in terms of modern medicine.

As much as I would have liked to get back to my workshop and start transmutations I had promised Garment a ride. The bike also needed a test run since there was no way I was having my first experience on something that powerful be a cape fight. The fleet program would also need all the training I could give it if it was going to be more than a glorified cruise control option.

I found a decent access point in the same alley I had stored my bike. Hopefully if anyone in the neighborhood had been watching me put it away this would negate any hint of cape shenanigans at play. In its civilian mode the bike still had the same broad features of what I had purchased, just seriously cleaned up. Providing no one was filming me when I drove in then it would probably pass any level of casual inspection. That was of course assuming a level of engagement that just wasn’t present in this part of the Docks, so I was feeling pretty confident about this.

When I opened the door to my workshop Garment was standing in the entryway wearing her full biker outfit, complete with helmet. The illusion really was perfect. If I didn’t know for certain it was a telekinetically suspended set of clothes I would have been completely fooled. I guess knowledge of fashion at her level gives you an understanding of how clothing is supposed to sit on a human body. By the way she arranged the outfit she was able to give a flawless impression of a rather pronounced female figure. The only thing that looked slightly out of place were the gloves, which were still that overly pure, almost unnatural shade of white. They had shifted from form fitting evening wear to the look and shape of white leather motorcycle gloves. I had no idea the extent of her shapeshifting abilities, but apparently she could adapt them to the most appropriate option for the situation.

She had cleared a path for the bike to exit the workshop, but with it in a much cleaner and less greasy state she wasn’t demonstrating quite the desperate defense of her clothing she had shown before. I wheeled the bike out of the workshop with a slight amount of assistance from the fleet program. Technically it should have been able to manage this itself with automated steering and gyroscopic stabilization, but I wasn’t ready to risk it so early in the program’s development. When I rolled it into the alley Garment hopped onto the back and excitedly gestured towards the open road. I sealed the workshop before turning to her.

“Ok, this is a quick run around the city and maybe a few errands. My permit doesn’t allow me to carry passengers or be out after sunset. Still we should be fine as long as we don’t get pulled over.”

She made and excited gesture and pointed towards the road.

“I’m serious Garment, I know you’re excited but we need to keep this low key. This is a trial run and I don’t want to attract too much attention.”

She gave me an adamant nod and turned to the street again.

“Ok, one last thing.” I reached into my jacket and pulled out a fold of bills. She immediately perked up. “This is emergency money. I don’t anticipate anything happening out there where you’ll need it, but if something does happen I’d rather you have the option. There’s three hundred dollars here, so it’ll be enough to cover most expenses, at least to get you someplace safe.” She nodded furiously. “Garment, this is emergency money. It is not for you to immediately spend on materials. Do you understand?”

She paused in reaching for the cash, then slowly nodded. Without being able to speak it would be difficult for her to use it, but if we got separated for any reason it would at least give her some options. I handed over the money and she tucked it under the hem of one of her gloves.

“Alright, let’s go.”

I mounted the bike and engaged the drive. I would be managing things until the fleet program developed enough to start assisting. With that in mind I carefully pulled down the alley and out onto the street.

It didn’t take long after we were on the main roads for me to realize things were not going to go the way I hoped. I probably should have seen this coming. Either ‘low key’ was not part of Garment’s vocabulary or, more concerningly, this was her idea of holding back. If that was the case her base level of engagement was probably a city wide rager. In retrospect my idea of avoiding attention had been doomed from the start. A white and blue super bike with a pink clad passenger clinging to the driver wouldn’t have been subtle even if said passenger wasn’t trying to engage every driver, pedestrian, and feral animal that crossed our path.

That was bad enough when we were on the side streets. When we pulled onto Bayside and started riding parallel to the boardwalk things were definitely getting out of hand. Garment alternated between standing up with her hands on my shoulders to get a better ‘view’ of the area and leaning back to wave at anyone willing to engage her. A convertible nearly veered off the road after Garment spent a quarter mile leaning back and waving at the driver.

Apparently my power had decided to curse me with an extreme extrovert.

The entire endeavor was about as far from avoiding attention as humanly possible. Eventually I pulled into the parking lot of one of the clusters of boardwalk stores just for a break. That turned out to be of mixed success as we shifted from endangering traffic to being a public spectacle for every tourist, boardwalk patron, and teenager that walked by. I may have badly underestimated the quality of work I’d done on my bike. I had to field a stream of greetings, compliments and the occasional technical question. Garment preened at the attention but I couldn’t help but feel like I was under a microscope. The occasional click of camera phones didn’t help. Come on people. This is a cape town. Is a motorcycle really that remarkable?

The Celestial Forge moved again and my power failed to connect to a mote from the Quality Constellation. I put it out of my mind as Garment communicated through gestures to a tourist that yes, it was perfectly alright for him to take a picture and she would be more than happy to pose for it. I stayed buried in my jacket and helmet to hide my discomfort at the entire situation.

I may have found a flaw in my plan to use the bike and as innocuous civilian transport. This thing was stark, unique, and memorable. If I really wanted to go with that idea I would have painted it in faded shades with fake rust and rode it in the drabbest outfit I could get away with. As I watched Garment pose for another picture I realized that plan was doomed from the start.

Apparently I had become one of those assholes who swings down to the boardwalk to hang out in designer clothes next to a car with a minimum price tag of a hundred thousand dollars. All I needed was some arm candy and the transformation would be complete. There was probably no better evidence of how much we had accidently embraced boardwalk culture than the fact that we were taking up a prime parking space for an overly expensive café and no one was making a fuss. Even when a hulking team of boardwalk enforcers passed by we got nothing more than a smile and wave with one of them commenting “Nice bike.”.

Eventually I managed to pry Garment away from her adoring public and get back on the road. The time spent dealing with Boardwalk patrons seemed to have sated her somewhat as she was marginally more subdued as we looped south along the coast. This was mostly a test ride and a chance for Garment to see the city, but I still had a few things I hoped to accomplish.

What I was going to do was a borderline violation of the unwritten rules, but considering the people I was subjecting it to had tentatively revealed their identities to me I would probably get a pass. The boardwalk ran nearly the full length of the bay, meaning I could get a sense of the entire city as I rode its length. By concentrating on the items I had made I was able to feel out their relative locations.

Some were easy to place while others were a bit more vague. My dagger and half of my karambit, the knives I’d made for Alec and Brian, were still in the direction of their hideout, so I was willing to bet they hadn’t been moved. My Bowie knife was further north, so that was probably a second location for Rachel away from the Undersiders’ lair. My experimental wind blade and impact baton were deeper in the Docks, probably at Taylor’s home. I could feel my stiletto somewhere Downtown, but I’d need a closer sweep to find where Tattletale was storing it. The other half of my karambit was clearly at the Rig. Whether it was being studied or stored I couldn’t say, but that would be taken care of when it repaired itself tomorrow. Finally the hairpin was somewhere downtown, so most likely kept at the PRT headquarters. I doubted Panacea was still there so it had probably been handed off as evidence.

I cringed at the idea of that rainbow flower pin being used to prove my identity. It seemed like a good idea at the time, do a bit of craftwork to give evidence of tinkering rather than just a material sample people probably wouldn’t even look at, but it turned into a game of ‘what’s the most I can do with a single material?’ and ended up with my style and Smithing perks running wild. I had a feeling that thing would be an ongoing embarrassment on the level of taking a steel club with me on my first night’s patrol.

When we reached the south end of the Boardwalk I turned left and started circling through Downtown. This route had me brushing against campus which is something I wasn’t too comfortable with. There was minimal chance I would run into anyone I knew, but there were still bad memories connected with the area. Getting that close to the university did result in a significantly different tone for the city. Brockton isn’t exactly a college town but the student population is large enough that the immediate area around the campus is clogged with businesses devoted to student college goers. Generally that means cheap take out, coffee shops, and bars that do the bare minimum in terms of checking for fake IDs.

The point is the tone of the city changed around the campus and Garment picked up on it right away. Whatever level of restraint our stop at the Boardwalk had granted her melted away as she did her utmost to grab the attention of any student she could. At least this close to the university this kind of nonsense was less likely to be remarked upon given some of the crap college students could get up to.

I shifted one street over and ended up on a road lined with mid-level stores, probably designed to suck as much money out of the student population as possible. Nothing more exceptional than what you’d find in an average mall, but for Garment it was like I’d spread the treasures of the world before her. At her prodding I reduced my speed to the minimum I could get away with while she took in every window display on the street.

My power failed to connect to a mote from the Vehicles constellation as we eventually ran out of stores for Garment to ogle. With how much she had been moving around on the back of the bike if she had any actual mass to her instead of being completely suspended I probably would have spun out three times by now. Also I really hoped that no one had been watching the rear shocks too closely because that would make it clear my passenger was effectively weightless.

Following the sense of my stiletto led me to a mid-range apartment building. Well, mid-range for Downtown. It would be positively opulent by the standards of the Docks. From the feel of things my knife was in an apartment about two thirds of the way up. It seemed like a likely location for Tattletale. Comfortable without being over the top and common enough to avoid garnering attention. I wasn’t sure if she was living alone, but I couldn’t really see her maintaining a villain career under parental supervision, and my passenger seemed to back that up. I might be able to nail down the exact apartment if I circled a few times or got inside the building, but I was already at the limit of what I was comfortable with in terms of violations of privacy and the unwritten rules.

Instead I pulled off and started towards the docks. From my sense of the hairpin I was certain it was either in the PRT headquarters or somewhere very close by. The last two points I wanted to check were the knives I’d made for Taylor and Rachel.

My route took me through the residential area of Downtown. Really it was only considered Downtown to set it apart from the economic conditions of the Docks. This was where upper middle class homes slowly merged into the areas of truly ridiculous wealth and borderline mansions that made up the south edge of the city. The stark wealth divide was probably as much of a driver of the unrest in this city as any of the parahuman gangs. The shift from the shipping industry to tech firms may have only resulted in a slight net reduction of the city’s economy, particularly if cape tourism was taken into account, but it resulted in that money becoming much more concentrated. The way the city had gone from largely having a common cause and identity to being driven by a few high power individuals and corporations almost felt like an analogy for the impact of capes on society as a whole.

Huh, maybe driving by the college had gotten me in an essay mindset again. That was definitely the kind of thing my parahuman studies professor would have eaten up.

We approached the kind of upscale version of a strip mall you would find in this part of town, the kind filled with big box stores and chain restaurants. It reminded me that I still needed supplies for my potions. Well, for both of my new alchemy powers. There were enough stores that I’d be able to find everything, but there’s also no way Garment would be allowed inside with her helmet on. I was ready to give it a pass, but she must have seen me looking because she gestured for us to pull into the parking lot.

I found a decent spot roughly central to the stores I’d need to visit and turned to Garment. “There are some things I’m going to have to pick up for my next projects. Are you alright waiting out here?”

She gave me a dismissive wave and gestured towards the other shoppers. In this area the general public tended to be slightly more fashion forward than the docks. Garment seemed perfectly content to hang out and people watch while I shopped.

“Alright. Will you be ok if someone tries to talk to you? I’ll be as fast as I can but...”

Garment shoed me away and I took the hint. I left my helmet on the bike and headed for the stores. I needed supplies and materials for potion making. Let’s add that to the list of sentences I never thought I’d say as a tinker. Really all I needed was a heat source and a container, plus a set of ingredients. The components for these potions were already fairly mundane. With the benefit of my Deranged Alchemist power my options expanded in terms of what I’d be able to use in the brewing process. When you considered my transmutation ability I could probably pull this off with a camp stove, handful of condiments and some soft drinks.

That may have sounded irreverent, but I was totally going to try that. I doubted even the most ardent monitoring for tinker purchases looks for suspicious quantities of sugar and mustard. I mean, most of the potions would end up tasting like barbeque sauce, but trust me, that’s one of the better possibilities I was looking at here.

I started with the camp stoves. They were easy enough to find along with some tins of Sterno. I grabbed a few other odds and ends that would let me set up a remote lab as well as what I’d need for my transmutation rituals. Well, most of what I’d need. Enough to manage. I’m not going full dark acolyte over this. I accept the necessity of the candles, ritual markings, chanting, and reagents. I’m not dressing like Emperor Palpatine every time I want to prep some titanium stock. I can take the efficiency drop in exchange for not having to do this nonsense in a dress. It wasn’t like I was working with a limited supply of base materials.

Really I would have done best with a dedicated ritual space and properly equipped chemistry lab. The problem was both were off the table for the immediate future. Barring a lucky connection with the Celestial Forge I was at the limit of what I could manage with my extradimensional space. Setting up a facility in the real world would require a secure location, acquisition or manufacture of all the necessary equipment, and trusting I would be able to access it without being discovered. While that wasn’t impossible with my skillset I was also under a time crunch. I had no idea about when Bakuda would strike, which meant I couldn’t afford to sink time into convenience projects that wouldn’t yield direct results.

The full shopping trip ended up requiring stops at a hardware store, housewares chain, and briefly ducking into a sporting goods outlet. I was on my way back to the bike with a set of bags when I felt the Celestial Forge move again, this time bringing the Size constellation within reach. The strength of my power had grown to the same level as when I was able to connect to the Life Fiber Spool and had just enough reach to form a connection to one of the larger motes in the constellation.

Unlike with the Life Fiber Spool there was no doubt about the applications of this power. The mote was called Master Builder and may have actually been underselling itself. It represented an absolute mastery of an entire field, no, innumerable fields of science and technology from an entire galactic age society. The information covered everything from new theories of spatial dynamics to mind numbingly advanced designs for robotics and computers. There were theoretically perfect energy storage medium along with more weapon systems than I could count. The technology on display ranged from mundane to world shattering and had all been dumped into my mind at once.

That was actually the problem. With most of these powers the information I received came in a largely human context. It was either raw knowledge, experience, instinct, or something similar. This information didn’t take any of those approaches. This was raw data burned directly into my mind in a manner that I could barely process. If I was trying to manage this without my intelligence booster powers I might have been floored on the spot. As it was I was still left reeling as I tried to process the sheer breath of information that my power had granted me.

There was one aspect of this ability that would have left me absolutely livid if I had gotten it at any earlier point. Most of this technology was dependent on a very specific material. Cybertonium was an incredibly advance engineered metal that was crucial to the production of just about every level of technology granted by this power. It was an amazing material by any metric. The fact that it functioned as a room temperature superconductor was one of its less impressive qualities, especially when you considered what was possible in terms of transwarp integration. The absolute nightmare involved in producing it would have relegated most of this information to background theory for my other projects. However, that was before I became a true alchemist.

I would be able to transmute base metals into cybertonium. When I said ‘would be’ I meant it was technically possible and therefore took this technology from a series of projects which could only tantalize me to something I could actually accomplish. I just had to get very, very good at transmutation.

For this I could live with the Emperor Palpatine cosplay, no matter what Garment ended up doing with it.

If I could seriously get this technology off the ground it opened up more options than I had ever thought possible. Aside from the personal equipment I would be able to make or the massive potential for upgrading of my other technology it would be ‘relatively’ easy to build a scaled down version of an interstellar teleportation array. That would allow me instant access to any point on the earth’s surface. It would be a massive project, but also a complete game changer in terms of mobility and S-class threat response. And sadly something I would not have anywhere near enough time to accomplish before Bakuda decided to go bomb happy.

The stress of managing so much new information had me stumbling along the final stretch to Garment and the bike. Fortunately she saw me coming and was able to rush over to help me along.

“You doing alright there?”

I shifted my attention to a blond man loading what looked like an unassembled boxed up crib into the back of a nearby minivan.

“Yeah,” I did my best to pull myself together. The information was still burning in my brain in all its inhuman glory, but I was able to put on a somewhat normal front with a bit of effort. “Just a bit dehydrated.”

I fished a sports drink out of one of my shopping bags and cracked it open. I had actually bought it to have a convenient potion container, so this was as good a time to drink it as any. Probably better seeing that it would buy me a few more precious seconds of recovery time.

The man nodded and shut the trunk. “You have to watch out for that.” The day wasn’t particularly hot, but it was bright enough that the excuse didn’t fall completely flat. He gestured towards my bike. “Not a bad machine there. That a custom job?”

“I’ve had to put some work into it.” I agreed. There was a faint buzzing from my passenger but between keeping up with the conversation, putting on a brave front, and dealing with the fact that my mind had just been filled with enough machine coded blueprints to sustain an entire civilization I was having a bit of trouble figuring out what the problem was.

He walked over and took a closer look. “I’ve got a BMW R1200 myself. You should really stick with German engineering. Better performance and a quarter the upkeep you need with these rice rockets.”

I shrugged. My passenger was still trying to get something through, but the information from the Master Builder power had barely settled and it was all I could manage to keep up with what this guy was saying.

“I enjoy the upkeep. To be honest I’m probably better at that side of things than I am on the road.”

He seemed to be considering something. “I can respect that. If you can keep this thing running I have a friend I should introduce you to. I know he’d love to meet someone as skilled at you.”

There was a spike of alarm from my passenger, but I was still having trouble placing his concerns. Blissfully we were interrupted.

“Justin, can you give me a hand with Aster?” A shortish woman with mousy brown hair had pulled a stroller alongside the van and was lifting a baby girl out of it.

“Be right there, Kayden.” I did my best not to show how relieved I was for the chance to recover. This information, the way it was being delivered, it was like it had been designed for a computer, not a human being. Actually, even with the immense array of technology there was a stark lack of biological applications, not even the inclusion of basic life support in most of the designs. I was developing some serious questions regarding the context of this information.

The man, Justin, helped Kayden with the stroller while she secured Aster into a car seat, then took to account to store it in the trunk. There seemed to be some kind of professional relationship between them, but it didn’t appear to be affectionate. Were they work friends or something like that?

“Got caught up in bike talk.” He gestured to my motorcycle. “You know how it is with gear heads.”

Kayden nodded, but there was a slight pause when she saw the model of my bike. Still she pressed on and smiled at Garment. “I guess you must be used to that kind of thing?”

Garment gave her a shrug and a dismissive gesture. At Kayden’s confused expression I broke in.

“Sorry, she doesn’t speak.”

The woman’s expression darkened. “No English?” Her eyes were jumping between Garment, the bike and myself with a concerning look to them.

“Uh, no. She doesn’t speak at all.”

“Mute.” The muttered word came from the blond man who immediately looked embarrassed for having said it. Kayden shot him a warning look and he cleared his throat and turned away. As I watched the exchange between them my head cleared enough that I was finally able to piece together what my passenger had been trying to communicate.

Empire.

Somehow I had managed to stumble across two Empire capes in their civilian identities. I wasn’t sure who Jason was but the complex arrangement of emotions surrounding the woman perfectly matched up with Purity. I was about eight feet from the most powerful blaster in Brockton Bay. The baby in the minivan explained some of the conflicting feelings from my passenger, but I doubted that made her any less dangerous.

More pieces from the earlier conversation were falling into place. I was fairly certain that ‘friend’ Jason wanted me to meet would be Victor. There was a lot of concern around Victor. Too many of my powers didn’t follow standard tinker rules. I really wasn’t sure how much that skill thief would be able to take if he got a free shot at me. I was fairly certain my magical skills and anything directly facilitated by the Forge would be beyond him. I believed that a lot of my seriously advanced technology required support from my power for part of the fabrication process, but I couldn’t be sure. Even without those abilities there were enough ‘mundane’ skills to take someone within spitting distance of a tinker rating, and I wasn’t about to give the Empire that advantage.

It also occurred to me that I was standing in front of at least one senior Empire cape, even if her current membership was a bit debated, with a hyper advanced motorcycle and shopping bags full of eclectic supplies. And the motorcycle was registered to me with my home address. I was a single guess on the part of either of these capes from a forced recruitment attempt.

It would be against the unwritten rules, but within that technical area where people are willing to dance if it means serious advantage, and the Empire was desperate for a tinker. After the debut of “Lord Khepri” the only two parahuman teams in the city without a tinker were the Empire and Faultline’s crew. I was confident I could personally resist any recruitment attempt, but if my identity was exposed that meant they could try to coheres me through family members. That is, providing they were willing to completely defy the unwritten rules, not just dance on the line. I wasn’t willing to take bets on the restraint of a bunch of white supremacists. I might not have the best relationship with my family at the moment but that was a long way from wishing super Nazis upon them.

Could I take these two? I had no idea who Jason was. The best I could say was probably not Victor. Possibly Krieg, Crusader, or Fog. I wouldn’t really want to test my passive defenses against any of those capes. Purity was an offensive nightmare. My only hope of countering her was my Reflect formula, but unfortunately I only had reagents for some healing alchemy, and I’d grabbed those mostly as an afterthought. I needed to maintain a better loadout. Depending on who I was facing my power armor might be able to handle them, but the A.I. was so green I wouldn’t trust it to walk in bipedal mode, much less fight. This was a bad situation all around.

Miraculously Kayden seemed to interpret my borderline panic as offense rather than rushed combat assessment. “I’m sorry about him.” She sent the man another glare. “He has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth on certain topics.”

“Don’t worry about it. We should get going anyway.” I handed Garment the bags and mounted the bike. “It was nice meeting you.” I lied.

“Like wise.” She gave me a half-hearted wave as I pulled out of the parking lot as fast as I could without attracting suspicion.

There was some irony at my panic over the Empire potentially disregarding the unwritten rules while my power blatantly flaunted the secret identities of every cape I came across. I guess when you get down to it the knowing wasn’t the problem, it was what you did with it. Hopefully the fact that Purity had a baby daughter at home would be enough to keep her from trying her luck with the conventions that prevented this city from turning into a warzone.

I kept moving until we were well into the South Docks. Garment had picked up that something was bothering me and was reining in her usual enthusiasm, though that was probably helped by our transition to a part of the city that was significantly less prone to enthusiasm. My power missed a connection to the Clothing constellation as I pulled into a quiet alley and opened a link to my workshop. I stored the purchases and sealed the door before turning to explain things to Garment.

“They were Empire capes. The woman was Purity, I’m not sure who the man was.” That got me some confused looks. Right, how much did Garment know about the local situation? “The Empire are the local Neo-Nazi cape team. Purity is one of their stronger capes, flying blaster. She has a body count, enough for the three strikes rule but not as bad as some of the other capes. She’s split or on hiatus with the main group or something like that. I’m not sure how much risk we’re at from that encounter, but I don’t think she suspected anything.”

Garment proceeded to make a series of complicated and difficult to decipher gestures that seemed to be indicating a level of disapproval over Kayden’s fashion sense and how that implied unfavorable things about her character. At least that’s what I was able to take away from her movements. I mentally added sign language lessons alongside the typing course I needed to arrange for Garment.

I gave her a smile and we mounted back up. “There are a couple more places I want to drive past, then I think I know where we can find a storage place for your clothes.”

That lifted Garment’s spirits and we pulled back out onto the city streets. As we made our way through the docks I started closing in on the enchanted blade and baton I made for Taylor. It was in one of the older neighborhoods of the docks, full of family homes that were mostly going into disrepair or being sold off for whatever they could bring in. Honestly it was about what I expected when I first saw Taylor. I made a point of not actually driving past her house since I was even less subtle here that I had been on the boardwalk, but with a couple of passes I had a relatively good idea of where it was located.

After that I followed the sense of my Bowie knife north into the more industrial areas. As we rode I considered the implications of my latest power. It was clear this was a big one. It was the strongest power I’d gotten so far both in what it cost and the level of technology it provided access to. It made the best technology my Grease Monkey power could put out look like a joke. This was the stuff of literal science fiction. There was actual faster than light technology possible through this power.

The problem was I would be running into the standard tinker dilemma, where I had to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools to build my technology. Even if I managed a stable supply of cybertonium I would estimate I was at least four layers deep on that particular nesting doll before I could start breaking out the serious tech. And that steady supply of cybertonium was not guaranteed. The best I could say at the moment was that it was technically possible to produce with alchemical transmutation.

If I did manage the higher level technologies this power could put out then that would be a game changer. The GroundBridge alone would be revolutionary, but there were unbelievable advances possible in robotics, energy management, weaponry, transportation, and more fields than I could name. This was a fundamentally disruptive power, I just needed to last long enough to pull it off.

Without some resource or assembly power I would be slogging through this tech base for weeks, and I didn’t have that amount of time. The whole city was on a ticking clock, so I needed to focus on what I could accomplish with what I had, not the dream technologies I wished I was able to produce. The level of robotics knowledge provided by this power was immense. In fact a lot of it felt almost... medical? Anyway, I would be able to refine the previous work on my bike a great deal. Adapting this to integrate with magitek would be a challenge, but it should be possible, especially for the mechanical portions of the upgrades. There was also the potential for serious refinements in A.I. development and my computer hardware setup, both in my bike and for what I was using generally. More than enough space for improvement there. Human computer science was a joke.

Ok, how concerned should I be that I just felt the need to classify every other computer system on the planet as being a product of ‘human computer science’ and didn’t automatically include myself in that category? That seems like something I should keep an eye on.

My sense of the Bowie knife spiked and I shifted my attention back to the surrounding area. The location became clear when we passed a house with obvious signs of numerous dogs. The kind of signs you get from dogs that are let into a yard as a substitute for taking them on walks.

I sped past before anyone could recognize me, and also ignored the Celestial Forge as it missed a connection to the Size constellation. I didn’t know if she was still there or if she would connect me with a random biker seen outside her house, but the bike stood out glaringly in this environment. Fortunately my next destination was a strait shot past Rachel’s home/hideout/dog shelter.

There were sets of storage lockers scattered all over the city. During the first economic crash they had acted as temporary housing for people who couldn’t afford rent but had just enough not to end up on the street. Given the entrepreneurial spirit of Brockton Bay you had dozens of cheaply made storage facilities spring up all over the place. Given that these were being treated as apartments without plumbing, sanitation, or security the inevitable happened and a series of high profile disasters led to the city cracking down on the pseudo apartments. By that point there were more than enough abandoned buildings to fill the need and the population migrated to even cheaper and less secure accommodations.

The consequence of this is the city having a ridiculous excess of storage facilities. They aren’t terribly profitable but probably bring in marginally more revenue than whatever else the land could be used for. When your primary competition is abandoned warehouses pretty much anything is a step up.

Brockton University isn’t exactly internationally renowned but we had enough students from out of state that storage over the summer months was a concern. I’m pretty sure the storage facilities charge students as much for a summer as locals paid for an entire year, but that revenue is probably the only thing keeping these places from turning into derelicts. The fact that they actually advertised on campus pretty much proved that.

I was heading to the most remote of the storage places I remembered from my time as a student. It was past the train yard and probably saw less traffic than any other facility in the city. Lord knows what was stored here since I’m pretty sure everyone who came out this far had something to hide. I only remember it from the horror stories of people who considered using it. The place ended up as something between an urban legend and inside joke for my class after that.

I put it out of my mind as we approached the storage facility. I seriously felt it would be the most remote and secure place to store both Garment’s wardrobe and various pieces of spillover from my workshop. My passenger begged to differ.

As soon as I saw the place dread started building. It was like something out of one of the stupid stories that would circulate around my class, only this was coming from a cosmic being with access to information beyond my understanding, not the guy who didn’t know when to let a joke die. I took one look at the collection of storage units and decided whatever was going to happen here I wanted no part in it. I was within spitting distance of being able to build a subspace pocket. Now was not the time to be taking chances on the storage yard of deadly portents.

So that wasn’t going to work. I could try to find a more centrally located storage unit to tide me through, but those had things like attentive staff, security cameras, and foot traffic. One of those I could bypass with no effort, the other two would be more of an issue. Ultimately my best option might be to follow the Undersiders’ lead and start an offsite base in an abandoned building. I had the advantage that I would be able to manufacture most of my equipment onsite or sneak it in using my workshop key. The trick would be finding something unlikely to be disturbed, but still accessible.

I actually had no idea how the Undersiders maintained any semblance of security in their base. Yeah, it would be stupid to approach the lair of that many supervillains, but someone must have noticed the foot traffic and been tempted to investigate. At the very least moving in that much high end electronics must have attracted some attention.

The answer was most likely tied to their boss. I wouldn’t be surprised if everything in that area was owned by him through shell companies. There were probably ways to decrease the chances someone would wander upon them. If every other building in the area was both abandoned and inhospitable then the odds of someone investigating that particular factory in enough depth to find their hideout was remote. Tattletale probably had something to do with it as well, likely some kind of prediction based on appearance and the local character or something like that.

So where did that leave me? I needed a place where I could set up a, and I still can’t believe I’m saying this, potion lab. I also needed somewhere to secure Garment’s clothes. Those were not likely to be the same location barring extensive renovations or a very lucky find.

Actually, for potion brewing the factory I’d used for the first access to my laboratorium could do the trick. It had enough chemical smells that I doubt any more would be noticed and was big enough that I could obscure the potion vapors with a minor amount of engineering. I had no idea what its ownership status was, but the place had clearly been abandoned since the first crash of the local economy. Subtle access might be a bit dicey, but the industrial estate was big enough that I’m sure I’d be able to rig something. The obvious chemical contamination was a concern, but I had safety equipment from my workshop and extensive healing abilities beyond that. I also had enough alchemy knowledge to put together a decent idea of what sort of contamination I would be dealing with.

As I was heading back towards the docks the vehicle constellation swung towards me and my power connected to a small mote called Mechanic. It was another mechanical skill booster with some additional electrical understanding, this time particularly geared towards criminal enterprises like hotwiring or bypassing security systems. The big aspects of this power were the ability to rebuild vehicles perfectly even after they had been nearly destroyed and a drastic reduction in the complexity of tools required for the maintenance of anything, not just vehicles. A basic set of handheld tools from a portable kit would be able to manage the most complicated maintenance procedures of the most advanced systems imaginable. It didn’t help me with manufacturing, but being able to use the same basic toolset to maintain everything from computer systems to energy weapons to spacecraft would be an incredible advantage.

I decided I was probably overthinking things with my secrecy concerns. Access might be dicey, but for the moment all I was going to be storing was Garment’s spill over wardrobe. Someone happening upon that wouldn’t find it any more remarkable than the contents of any other storage locker. To that effect I headed towards a storage facility in the same general region as my apartment, not close enough that I’d be running into people I knew, but close enough for convenient access.

They had a locker available. Every storage facility has lockers available. It’s the advantage of having such an overbuilt industry to draw upon, even if it started from such a bad place. I picked out one that was as deep in the maze of storage units as possible to minimize the chance anyone would stumble upon us while we were loading the unit. I had to fill out a rather extensive form with a lot of agreements about what could be stored, liability for violations, and notice of seizure in the event the terms were breached. It was incredibly comprehensive, but the manager didn’t even look at it when he took my deposit for two months and didn’t even spare a glance at my driver’s license. He gave the two of us a slight squint as he handed over the key, then shrugged and went back to his paper. I guess there were advantages to the general level of apathy the economic downturn had created.

I figured two months of storage should be more than enough. By that point I’d either have subspace pockets figured out or have secured better accommodations. I led Garment through the rows of storage units to the one matching my issued key. When I unlocked it and pulled up the sliding door Garment was less than enthusiastic at the sight of the stained concrete floor and cracked celling.

“No, I’m not asking for another one. Look, you can tell the stain was from the previous tenant. There’s no sign of water ingress at all. You’ll be fine.”

There were questioning gestures and a vague indication towards the north side of town.

“That was because I was getting a bad feeling. Something’s happening there and I didn’t want anything to happen to your things.”

She seemed to indicate that this was at best a marginal step up from my previous assessment.

“Look, every storage facility is going to be like this. The only ones that might have better units will be the places Downtown that are designed to be climate controlled for antiques and stuff...” She started gesturing excitedly. “...which we won’t be able to book tonight, probably don’t take cash, and likely need an accounting of everything stored in them.”

Garment still seemed to be indicating it was worth the trouble.

“Also I need to start alchemy tonight. So either we use this storage unit or your clothes end up next to the room where I’m mixing transmutation catalysts.”

Garment looked more conflicted than I’d ever seen her before, constantly glancing at the storage locker, then away, miming the shifting of her weight from one foot to the other.

I took a breath. “I’m not asking for you to just dump them in there.” She perked up. “You can have a budget for tarps, garment bags, those kind of things.”

Garment rallied, and immediately jumped into negotiations. She may have had more luck if I didn’t know what she’d been able to pull together for a frankly insultingly meager amount of cash. In the end I talked her down to under a hundred dollars and still felt like I was overpaying. I was also a little concerned on how my default solution for dealing with any problem involving Garment had me throwing money at it. It wasn’t as bad as it seemed seeing as she was basically a link to a worldwide marketplace of clothing and clothing related raw materials. It just seemed like the kind of thing I should be careful about.

I accessed my workshop through the door of the storage locker opposite ours and kept watch while Garment summoned what was almost certainly an excessive amount of protection for her wardrobe before loading it into the locker. The number of layers and quality of the tarps and protective sheeting meant it would probably outlast the storage facility itself.

As she worked I considered the monumental amount of power I had acquired on this trip. What did it say when the least significant ability I’d been granted allowed me to grow human beings in jars? My Master Builder power was so strong that you’d think it would make everything else I’d received irrelevant, but it seemed my powers didn’t work that way.

Every power I had stacked with every other power. You’d think multiple powers that gave mechanical aptitude would become redundant, but every one opened new applications and skills. Even though I could now work on cosmic level machines my early powers were still providing benefits. Even abilities that would otherwise provide me the skills of a mechanic or just give basic repair abilities now let me apply that level of experience and aptitude to the insane levels of technology that were within my reach. There was a myriad of ways that skills and knowledge could express themselves. Each supporting power subtly improved my ability to work with all the other technologies I’d been given access to.

I guess it made sense, really. Earlier skills hadn’t become redundant when Grease Monkey gave me the power to build anything the cyberpunk genre could come up with. It looked like even taking things all the way up to space opera didn’t create any serious irrelevancies.

There was also the possibility to combine and integrate the technologies of different powers. Grease Monkey might not have any technology that could touch what Master Builder was capable of, but I could integrate that higher level of tech into everything from hard suits to cybernetics. In fact, the technology of Master Builder seemed unusually sterile. It tended to ignore organic life outside the odd containment vessel or analysis system. There was some information on technorganic technology, but it was treated with a level of caution that fell just short of it being considered blasphemy.

Combinations had immense potential but I was a long way from being able to pull off that kind of technological integration.

As Garment was moving the last of her creations and securing them with a care and thoroughness you didn’t normally see outside hurricane zones the Forge moved again and missed a connection in the Quality constellation. I checked my watch and saw we had killed the last of the afternoon. Actually, I was due to check the messages on the phone Tattletale had given me. That thing had been scanned for tracking devices, powered down, and secured in my workshop. Before now I’d had to rely on insane levels of caution in place of technical skill. Fortunately that wasn’t the case anymore.

Garment agreed to watch the entrance of the workshop while I worked. Well, she agreed to stay in the entrance, though seemed to be gazing forlornly at her packed up clothing rather than standing guard. Fortunately this wouldn’t take long.

Even when not working with the most sophisticated technology I was capable of my level of understanding had expanded to the point where I could assemble an advanced device almost instantly. It took some effort to break down and reconfigure the cell phone, but compared to what I was now capable of working with this was child’s play. I was altering the integration with the cell network to obscure the location of my call. Also adding a stronger signal, improved call quality, and extended battery life. What I was doing was almost certainly a violation of electronic communication guidelines, but the odds of it being exposed were slim in the extreme. Still, I had a phone that I could carry with me without worrying about being tracked by anything less than a serious thinker power or a tinker specialized in communications or surveillance.

I felt a weight lift from my shoulders as I exited the workshop and resealed the door. My bike may have been my first real technical project but this was proof that I would be able to bypass the fears that had haunted me since I got caught up in this mess. I wasn’t ready to take on the Undersiders’ boss yet, but this was one point of vulnerability I had been able to completely patch. There were other points of weakness I was still justifiably paranoid about, but this was proof that I could deal with them, eventually, with the help of my power.

Garment sadly helped me lock the storage unit and I powered up the phone. A list of voicemails and text messages jumped out at me. Ok, I’d been expecting this, and I still stood by my actions from the previous night, but it was time to face the music.

Most of the texts were some variation of ‘call me’ or ‘call me immediately’. Not a lot of creativity, and frankly I expected better from a thinker of Tattletale’s assumed caliber. There were a few from Brian that basically amounted to ‘please call Lisa’ with an increasingly pleading tone.

Well, we were in an empty storage facility and I had an effectively untraceable phone. I pulled up her number and placed the call. Might as well get it over with and find out how well she was taking this situation.

Her first words upon answering the call served to resolve that mystery.

“What the fuck did you do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Deranged Alchemist (Van Helsing) 300:  
> You have mastered the medieval forerunner of chemistry, and know the transformation of matter via elaborate rituals and mysticism on top of your scientific approach. The greatest secrets of Alchemy still elude you, such as the fabled Panacea, but that can be found in due time. (Hint: Nobody’s found it. At all.) However, you are capable of transmutation of many materials (although it requires that said materials be the same base) and can create Homunculi from following Paracelsus’ studies into alchemy. 
> 
> Master Builder (Transformers) 400:  
> You’ve been programmed with mastery of Cybertronian science allowing you jury rig any tech you see, as well allowing you to quickly build even the most complex Cybertronian tech within a reasonable time period. Smaller devices are almost instant, larger devices take some time and more components. However with enough material you can build a temporary space bridge. Despite your mastery of Cybertonian science, creation of a Spark and therefore intelligent life, organic or inorganic is beyond you. 
> 
> Mechanic (Fast and Furious) 100:  
> Machines, especially ones that go fast, just speak to you. You have no problem fixing up and tuning any motor vehicle, and can rebuild them after the most devastating crashes. You can keep anything in top condition with just a few simple tools. Of course, you also need to understand the electronics, so hotwiring cars (and sometimes, alarm systems) is not a problem either.


	15. 12 Conference

I pulled the phone away from my head to give my ear a chance to recover from Tattletale’s borderline scream. I made a note to recalibrate the speaker. My custom work on the device had boosted the output a little too much, though it did an excellent job of conveying the thinker’s mood.

“I’m guessing this is about my visit to the hospital last night.” I kept my tone level as I spoke. This didn’t feel like the time to push my luck.

“You’re God damn right it is. Do you have the slightest idea what you’ve done?”

I took a breath. “I told you, I knew what I was signing up for, but things weren’t sitting right. I took it upon myself to resolve them.”

“Resolve? You seriously think you resolved...” She cut herself off and I swear I could hear teeth grinding through the phone.

“What?” There was a spike of anxiety worming itself into my mind. I knew there would be repercussions to this, but from the way Tattletale was acting I doubted it was something as simple as a new cape revealing himself without alerting her in advance.

“We need to meet. I can’t do this over the phone. There are things I need to ask and apparently a lot more things that you need to know.”

Well, that didn’t bode well. This was clearly more than just petty frustration. There was an actual note of concern to her voice that contrasted uncomfortably with her usually smug demeanor. I still didn’t believe that Tattletale had my best interests at heart. That said we were entangled enough that if something was bothering her this much there was no chance I would be insulated from the fallout. And vice versa, I suppose.

How bad could this have gone? Revealing a new tinker and healer was big news, but it shouldn’t have cause any major disruptions. Othala had been active for years without provoking any major response. Even Leet was rumored to have some level of healing tech, if just to explain the shorter recovery times from the massive array of injuries he and Uber were usually sporting after their broadcasts.

Something else was going on here. Was it connected to the rest of our conversation? The only thing that jumped out at me was my predictions about Bakuda. If anything was happening on that front I needed to find out immediately.

“I can head over now. Should we meet at your place?”

“God no.” There was a frustrated sigh through the phone. “Alec figured out something was wrong and has been making an ass of himself all day. I can’t deal with that right now. Meet me at the courtyard two factories over.”

“I’ll be there...” The call cut off. Okay, how comfortable did I feel going into this? Not very, but when calibrated to the usual level of discomfort I felt on things surrounding the Undersiders it wasn’t that bad. I was less concerned about an ambush than I was about how serious this news could be. I was acutely aware of how much of a ticking clock I was on in terms of the ABB’s response. Really I should have pressed Tattletale for information on them earlier, but I had been both exhausted and heavily preoccupied yesterday. I was going to have to make up for lost time.

I turn to Garment who seemed to have finished saying goodbye to her locker full of protectively cocooned outfits. “Change in plans. I’ve got to get to a meeting.”

She gave me an affirmative gesture and we headed through the maze of lockers back to the entrance. The attendant raised an eyebrow when he saw us but didn’t say anything as we climbed on the bike and pulled out of the parking lot.

The sun was getting heavy in the sky as we headed towards the docks and our shadows were beginning to stretch across the road ahead of us. I sped along a rough approximation of the route I had trudged the previous day and felt relief over no longer being shackled to the sidewalks and bus. Still, all good things must come to an end, particularly if you weren’t willing to parade your new transforming super bike in front of a thinker with questionable loyalties. I started looking for quiet alleys when we were a few blocks away from the Undersiders’ base. Fortunately this area was rife with them and was low traffic enough that I didn’t need to worry about running into anyone while accessing my workshop.

With Garment’s clothes and most of my furniture removed the entry room was looking cavernously empty. A five meter cube was actually a serious amount of space, which was evident by how easy it was to park the bike. I could probably have ridden it straight in with no real issue.

I considered my next move. I was fairly confident about this meeting not being a threat, but I didn’t want to get caught off-guard like I’d been with the Empire capes. Even if Tattletale wasn’t a threat at this point there were any number of other things that could go wrong. I needed to bring some reagents with me, and my motorcycle jacket wasn’t a good vehicle for that.

Actually it would be best to leave the jacket all together. I didn’t know how much information Tattletale would be able to pull just from my presence. Leaving my motorcycle and showing up with a jacket that says ‘I own a motorcycle’ would be kind of pointless.

That did leave me with my earlier problem. The consequence of bespoke clothing was distinct lack of baggy pockets. I might be able to manage the reagents for a few formula, but they would be blindingly obvious in these clothes. Using any of my belt pouches or bandoleer would only be more blatant. It looked like I would have to go into this a bit under equipped for my liking.

Garment gave me a quizzical gesture when she saw me removing my jacket.

“Tattletale is really good at picking up information. I don’t want to tip her off more than I have to.” I folded the jacket over my hand only for Garment to take it and store it with much more care. “I don’t want to give her any concrete hints about the bike, and since I don’t have a change of clothes that means going in a t-shirt.”

She made a signal for me to stop and moved over to a storage trunk that had been spared her purge of the entryway. If I remembered correctly it contained a few books, loose writing supplies, and various other items I couldn’t find a place for. It was basically my junk drawer.

None of those items were present when Garment opened the lid. Instead the trunk was filled to the brim with clothes which proceeded to float out and circle around me.

“I thought you left all of that at the apartment.”

Garment seemed horrified by the thought. Apparently she’d taken the precaution of ensuring I’d have an adequate wardrobe in the event something like this came up. Well, adequate by Garment’s standards, positively excessive by the metrics of any reasonable person.

The various items were spinning around me as Garment looked on in considerations. She seemed to be leaning heavily towards the suit, and while that may have been a power move for most negotiations it wasn’t something I wanted to get into with Tattletale.

“Look, I just need a different jacket, one with enough pockets that I can take some reagents with me incase anything happens.”

Garment seemed a bit disappointed, but relented and produced a dark grey jacket with epaulets on the shoulders and two sets of front pockets. Also another shirt because apparently my current one didn’t go with it at all. Given my history her constant criticism of my appearance and dress sense seemed like the kind of thing that should bother me more than it did. That was probably because, unlike what I was used to, it came from this odd place of encouraging improvement rather than leaving things at the insult. It was kind of weird, but in a good way.

The jacket was still slightly fitted, but the pockets were enough for me to carry a few sets of reagents without being obvious about my loadout. It occurred to me that I could have just asked Garment to make me something new. With the speed she had demonstrated when sewing her current outfit she would probably have managed a coat that could conceal half my stock of reagents while also being incredibly fashion forward. I guess I still wasn’t used to having someone that capable and dependable at my disposal.

I checked the time, then nodded to Garment.

“Right, I need to get moving. I’m going to have to leave you in here for now.”

Garment placed an arm in front of the door and shook her helmet before indicating towards herself.

“Uh, no. Definitely not. I can’t take that risk. There’s no way Tattletale won’t be able to see through this.” I indicated to her biker outfit. “If she finds out then that means their boss finds out. I’m not putting you in that kind of danger.”

She mimed thinking for a moment, then indicated an idea. She reached up and pulled off the glove from one ‘hand’, then folded it and indicated the inside pocket of my coat.

Right. Of course. I had gotten caught up in the illusion. Garment didn’t need to hold this shape. I could take her as the gloves and she wouldn’t be impaired in the slightest. I didn’t know if she’d be able to see or hear anything from inside my jacket, but I didn’t know how her senses worked to begin with. Or what the range of her telekinesis was. Or the limits of its strength. Or exactly how much information she could get with her fashion divination thing. Actually the only power that had even been close to properly explored was her ability to exchange money directly for materials. Everything else was still kind of nebulous.

“Okay, that works, but you have to stay quiet.” She made a sarcastic motion towards where her mouth would be. “You know what I mean. Don’t do anything to give away your presence. I don’t know how good her thinker power is. She might be able to pick something up just from how I’m behaving, so please don’t make it any easier for her.”

Garment nodded, then appeared to take off the other glove with an invisible hand. She placed them in the inside pocket of my jacket and ‘patted’ the outside of the coat. Crazy precise telekinesis. Which apparently could extend through fabric because instead of having the biker outfit collapse in a pile she started to mime taking it off, which prompted me to turn my back to her again. I’ll give her credit, she could really sell that illusion.

When I turned around her helmet and outfit were neatly placed on the desk with the boots sitting on the floor next to it. It was a little odd still knowing she was there but not having anything to focus on.

“Garment?” In response my jacket straightened itself and I felt wrinkles smooth out of my clothing. “Alright, good. But none of that when we’re outside.” There was the slightest tug on my sleeve in response.

I sealed my workshop and entered the docks in an outfit that, while less flashy, was still leagues above my normal style. While covering the last few blocks all my previous concerns flowed to the forefront of my mind. Was there any chance the ABB had an inside line on the PRT? I would give better odds of the Empire having a mole, but you didn’t stay a successful gang without some information sources. If they had gotten tipped off that a tinker was working to counter them they could have accelerated their plans. One thing everyone knew was not to give a tinker prep time. My knives had more than proven themselves and if they expected to be facing that level of force I could see them doing something drastic and stupid.

What about the rest of what I’d said? There were barely any details on the Undersiders, so if Tattletale was upset about that I had little sympathy for her. They had ditched their low profile with that public job and the breadcrumbs of information I shared were nothing compared to their public demonstration.

This could be about my rushed debut. I had made a pretty strong statement by taking credit for the knives and demonstrating my formulas. Without context on their requirements or limitations they could have come across as a lot more dangerous than they actually were. Escape might have looked like a serious and unrestrained teleportation power and Force Field could be mistaken for total invincibility if all you saw was the first hit being negated. I had been keeping that formula up continuously as a precaution ever since. The hope was that it would buy me enough time to get something else deployed in the event of an attack. What kind of brute rating would tanking a hit from Glory Girl net you? God, I hoped they weren’t going wild with the threat assessment.

As I neared the meeting place I put those thoughts out of my mind. I needed to be on point for this discussion and dwelling on hypotheticals wouldn’t help now. It was easy enough to figure out which of the industrial buildings Tattletale had been talking about. This area of the Docks was littered with them. I made my way into the large loading yard of what had probably been a supply building for a nearby abandoned factory. The yard had high concrete walls and reminded me disturbingly of one of those old style prisons, the types that were built like fortresses. The sinking sun stretched the shadows of the walls over the area leaving only a sliver of the far end illuminated. The blaze of light served to highlight the form of Tattletale, perched on top of a loading dock and staring down at me as I entered the yard.

I wondered if she made a conscious decision to go for the most dramatic placement possible, or if it was something she instinctively defaulted to. Was it part of her power, or did she just have a personality that liked to make the biggest impact she could? Either way the fact that she seemed to be trying to at least subconsciously create a power dynamic in this discussion wasn’t a good sign.

As I approached I was able to make out the long skirt and tightly buttoned jacket she was wearing along with an expression that did not look happy in the slightest. She waited for me to reach her side of the courtyard before even acknowledging my presence. Slowly she descended the steps from the loading dock, but stayed high enough to let her keep a height advantage over me. It was a transparent power play, but this close I could see a disheveled edge to her appearance. It was enough to make me a bit nervous. Whatever she wanted to talk about had clearly been weighing on her, and would probably be weighing on me in short order.

She stood there seething for a few moments before finally speaking. 

“You healed Panacea.”

There was a serious amount of stress on the word ‘healed’. I kept my expression neutral and nodded in response.

“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

I watched for her reaction. It was hard to tell where she was going with this. I couldn’t conceive of a situation where she would want Panacea to stay injured. She seemed to be struggling to determine just how to handle the situation.

“Do I have a problem with Panacea no longer being hurt? No, I do not have a problem with that. That might be the only part of this that I don’t have a problem with.”

I didn’t like where this was going. “What, did people have a bad reaction when she showed up without injuries?”

There was a brief flash where Tattletale seemed to return to her usual smug expression before the weight of the situation bore down on her again. “Panacea didn’t show up without injuries. She hasn’t shown up at all. That girl hasn’t left the PRT headquarters since you pulled your little stunt.”

“What? But that...” I checked my watch. “that was like twenty hours ago. What kind of debrief are they doing?”

“Debrief.” Tattletale muttered the word under her breath before turning back to me. “You hit her with an unknown healing effect.” Her tone shifted slightly on the word ‘healing’. “Did you really think they were going to let her walk out of there without checking for every possible complication?”

“Oh, right.” Ok, that made sense, but even with all the tests they could perform and assuming they would have called in specialists, what could possibly be taking this long? “What, are they holding her for the results of blood cultures or something?”

“No, they finished the tests in a few hours.” I waited as Tattletale stood on the steps to the loading dock looking down at me and clearly enjoying my confusion. It became obvious she wasn’t going to provide more information without prompting.

“So why hasn’t she left?”

“She’s being held under Master Stranger protocols.”

She was clearly delivering the information to maximize the impact. I wish I could say that I was above the manipulation, that I wasn’t letting her get to me, but it was so shocking I just didn’t know how to react. I ignored her obvious pleasure at seeing the effect of her announcement and pressed forward.

“Why the hell are they using Master Stranger protocols?”

“Do you want the reasons chronologically or in order of significance?”

I grit my teeth. “This is serious.”  
  


“Yes. Yes it is. I’m glad I finally have you on the right page.” I gave her a harsh look and she let out a sigh. “That ‘debrief’ you mentioned? It took place under Armsmaster’s new lie detector. Apparently she had an adverse reaction to some of the questions. ‘Emotional Instability’. It was enough for them to order a Voight-Kampff assessment and a period of isolation.”

“They can do that?”

“They can if your guardian consents. Brandish has been dealing with the rest of the fallout from your little chat. She was more than happy to hand her daughter off while she played damage control.”

“What fallout?”

She gave me a condescending look. “Here’s a hint. Brandish and Photon Mom aren’t speaking to each other and Manpower moved out of the Pelham house.”

I blinked. “They actually got into that stuff?”

Tattletale grit her teeth. “They got into everything.”

“Everything? Seriously?”

She seemed split between enjoyment of my confusion and frustration at my ignorance. “An unknown cape shows up with claims of serious power including thinker insight that provides information on other capes and the Protectorate. What did you think they were going to do?”

Not this, which was clearly stupid. I figured they would be focused on the Undersiders more than me. A new parahuman appeared that not only has some serious power but also the ability to gain inside information on hero teams? Of course they would freak.

“You’re getting it now. Good.” She gave me a hard look. “They got the closest thing to a transcript that they could squeeze out of Panacea, then set about verifying as much of it as they could. As an ‘assessment of the claimed thinker power’.”

The full weight was starting to hit me. “How, how bad is this?”

The blond girl let out a slow breath. “It’s not good. Their ‘verifications’ have probably caused more chaos than the information ever could. Not just in New Wave, the Protectorate’s scrambling.”

I tried to remember what I’d done that could have set them off, but Tattletale cut in before I could piece things together.

“Here’s one tidbit. The Protectorate is going to do a Ward exchange. Aegis and Gallant are being cycled out to give them ‘time to recover’.”

“Ok, you can’t blame me for that.” I may have made the knives but I didn’t plan the bank job or put them into action. The thought of it brought back the waves of frustration connected to that particular debacle. The absolute stupidity of the Undersiders’ plan. The moronic response from the Wards. The insanity of a system that let teenagers manage something that serious. Kid Win’s artillery based attempted murder. Taylor’s excessive force. Glory Girl’s recklessness. Taylor’s other excessive force. Tattletale’s clandestine activities. Panacea’s threats of inflicting terminal illnesses. Taylor’s third excessive force. Regents destruction of property. Taylor’s forth internet famous excessive force with a side of ‘Oh God, why did I give her a magic weapon?’.

“No, I’ll give you that one.” She conceded. “Something like this was probably coming anyway, they’ve just accelerated things. The point is who they’re exchanging them with.”

Once again Tattletale seemed more than happy to leave me trying to figure things out until I ended up begging her for information. She was probably doing everything she could to get me to bear some of the stress she’d endured over this mess.

“So who are they being traded for and why is it my fault?”

“Aegis is being sent to Boston in exchange for Weld. Case 53 ward, living metal guy. Gallant is going to New York and the Brockton team is getting Flechette, a striker/blaster.” She looked me square in the eyes. “Boston and New York. Can you think of any reason those teams in particular would be eager for some outreach?”

Yes, God damn it. Was every random statement I made being picked over by the PRT.

“You can probably count on every random statement being picked over by the PRT.”

I hated when she did that, and from the look on her face she probably knew it.

“So in addition to changing the local roster and throwing New Wave into chaos you managed to get Director Piggott under review, both for questioning her mental competence and that stuff about ward actions. They’ve got priority action from the Think Tank to assess this. Oh, and someone leaked all of this to the Youth Guard, so they’re up in arms and probably mobilizing for a full investigation.”

“Ok, I get it. I’ve kicked the hornet’s nest here. Everyone’s up in arms and I probably screwed myself over six ways from Sunday. Why are you so upset about it?”

“Because they think I did it!” Her voice echoed around the small courtyard. I let it die down before I even tried to piece that together.

“Sorry, what? How the hell does that make any sense?”

She grit her teeth before replying. “The prevailing theory is, rather than dealing with two thinkers appearing out of nowhere, they just have a single powerful one. That debrief included everything they could get out of her, including what happened in the bank.” There was just the slightest hint of regret in her tone. “The idea is I sent you in with a script of things to say in order to cause disruptions, since it apparently fits my ‘modus operandi’.” She shook her head. “Which also means all the chaos you unleashed with your stupid stunt is being attributed to me as well.”

Tattletale didn’t seem like the most humble person in the world and I had a hard time seeing the problem she’d have with being thought smarter than she actually was. “Is that a bad thing?”

She gave me a sour look. “They’ve provisionally increased my rating by two points. Thinker 8.”

And things fell into place. “That’s bad.”

She actually laughed. “Yes. ‘Bad’. That’s what you could call it. Engagement only by full teams of parahumans. PRT priority on evacuating civilians. Oh, and I get specific countermeasures.”

“What are you looking at?” I’d heard about some of the custom measures in place for high rated capes and they were universally severe and unpleasant.

She looked grim. “At the moment it’s mandatory audio blackouts. Noise canceling earplugs with radio link between team members. Zero engagement permitted. In the event of capture complete mute and blinder restraints.”

God, that was severe. No wonder she was pissed. Countermeasures of that level were just asking for something to go wrong. “They’re going to dial those back eventually, right? Classifications need approval, it’s not like local directors can just hand out anything they want.”

“Eventually can take a hell of a long time. And meanwhile I get to live with all the fun that new classification brings with it.” She gave me a vindictive look. “We both do.”

Right, the girl stuck in the PRT because she got nervous during an interview, which was apparently enough for them to assume I had mind control powers. “You know I don’t actually have master powers.”

Her expression softened slightly. “Yeah, I picked up on how you felt about that. Panacea, she’s kind of messed up.”

I nodded. “I got that from my powers.”

“Yeah, but like specifically messed up.” She gave me a direct look. “Amy’s in love with her sister.”

I stared at her. “Glory Girl? Seriously?”

She nodded. “Probably tried to keep from admitting it and got flagged as an outside influence. There was wonky stuff around it on the tests, so it came across as unnatural.”

Suddenly things fell into place. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“Fuck, so that’s what it was about.” I grit my teeth as the full implications hit me.  
  


Tattletale gave me a very annoyed expression that from her elevated position came off like an irritated cat. “Care to share with the rest of the class?”

The act of directly asking for information seemed almost physically painful for her. I considered if I should share what I’d figured out. Well, at this point it couldn’t do much more harm.

“My power warned me about being close to Glory Girl. I wasn’t sure why, I figured it was either some specific power interaction or it meant that her aura...”

“Her aura induces emotions. Long term exposure, especially for a developing brain, changes emotional response and conditions reactions. Holy shit, Glory Girl brainwashed her sister.”

I cringed at how excited she was over this. I could only imagine what she was planning to do with this information. Still... “You think if that comes out I can avoid being labeled as a master?”

She took a breath. “Probably not, at least not before my ‘engagement procedures’ get rolled back. This is going to take ages to get sorted. Even if tests came back clean they could still have held her for up to twenty four hours. With this level of uncertainty and the fact that there actually is a mental effect in play it could take days, potentially even weeks before they figure out what’s going on and clear her for release.”

God damn it. That would weeks with the best healer the city, actually probably the entire country, out of commission. A disaster in any situation, much less when there was a bombing spree in the works. And with suspicion on my abilities I doubt they’re going to be comfortable if I try to step up and fill the gap.

Tattletale was watching the dance of emotions across my face with more enjoyment that was probably appropriate. “Plus, even if you get cleared for Panacea, there’s still that thing with Persephone’s Rainbow.”

I looked at her blankly. “I’m sorry, Persephone’s what?”

She grinned at that. “You haven’t been online since Alec showed that thread. The PRT were too slow with official statements so the cape fans started coming up with their own details. They’ve got names for everything you’ve made.”

I felt a twist of concern. “The internet named those knives? The internet?”

Tattletale seemed way too happy about this. “Oh yes. Taylor’s knife was dubbed the Scarab’s Fang.”

“That name makes absolutely no sense.”

“And baton is the Lance of Ammut.”

I cringed. “Which is clearly not a lance. And what does it have to do with a crocodile lion thing?”

She ignored my questions and happily continued down her list.

“For Alec and Brian you have Usurper’s Plot and Perdition.”

Those weren’t completely terrible providing you could get past how over dramatic they were. “What about you and Rachel?”

She showed her teeth. “Mine was named Ad Hominem.”

“Attacking the person, not the argument?” Tattletale seemed quite pleased about that. “And Rachel?”

“Well, it was going to be something along the lines of Bastard, but another name won out in the end.”

I took a breath. “Which was?”

“Clarent.”

“Clarent. As in the king Arthur sword Clarent?”

“It did bring down a knight and sent him scurrying to New York to try to buy some new armor, though he’s probably dressing that up as a noble quest or something.”

That broke me out of my train of thought. “Hold on, buying armor? I thought he made that himself?”

“Oh, right. Gallant’s not a tinker. Empath who can shoot emotion blasts. The armor was made by Kid Win. He just had the money to pay for it and the maintenance. With Kid Win both on review and trying to rebuild what he lost in the fight Gallant needs to find somewhere else to buy his powers.”

The phrase ‘buy his powers’ triggered something from my passenger, but I didn’t have the time to figure out what it meant at the moment. From Tattletale’s reaction she clearly saw it, but elected not to comment on the matter.

“This is getting off topic. What the hell is Persephone’s Rainbow?”

She really seemed to be enjoying this. “PRT techs seem to follow PHO threads and decided to stick with that naming convention. Persephone’s Rainbow is what they dubbed that little token of affection you gave Panacea.”

I felt my guts twist. That stupid over decorated little trinket. Why hadn’t I just handed over a material sample?

“Alright. So they named it something stupid.” I ignored how she was grinning down at me. “What does that have to do with mastering people?”

“Apparently...” She drew out the word. “Some technician spent fifteen minutes staring at the thing while ‘fascinated by the iridescence of the petals’. It was enough to raise warnings of a possible memetic object and triggered containment protocols with staged and controlled assessments.”

I stared at her blankly. “They think I can tie mind control effects to objects?”

“Yes, that is the theory they’re working with.”

The weight of the situation was bearing down on me. “I have to deal with a master rating because one girl didn’t want to admit a crush and somebody else stared too long at a piece of jewelry?”

“That’s right.” Her tone had absolutely no sympathy in it.

Well this was horrible. “So they think I’m a master tinker.” She shifted to an expression with a cruel edge to it. “What?”

“Right now they have you with provisional ratings in master, thinker, mover, brute, and shaker.”

I ran through the list, connecting the classifications to the various abilities I’d demonstrated. “All that on top of tinker?” She stayed silent. “As a tinker sub-classification?”

“Nope.” She gave me a vindictive look. “There’s no tinker classification.”

I looked at her in shock. “How the hell did that happen?”

“Apparently, according to Armsmaster’s assessment, the items he was able to examine didn’t demonstrate conventional signs of workmanship. Furthermore there were indications that suggested the ‘direct application of a parahuman ability’. His recommendation was for a shaker classification.”

Damn it. This is why I’ve been holding off any public announcement. They’d only seen the magic bullshit, not all the work I put into those things. “What, they think I just willed these things out of the air?”

“That’s about it.” She grinned wider. “Oh, and they’re also suggesting the power profile indicates a second generation Empire cape.”

Well, that was just... “Fuck.”

“Ex-act-ly.” Tattletale was looking vindicated, but there were signs of exhaustion leaking into her expression. I knew she had some inside access on the Protectorate. How long had she been digging into this? I was guessing this meeting was as much about sharing the pain as it was about informing an ally to pressing developments.

Did we even count as allies anymore? She was clearly irate, but nothing indicated she wanted to break off our arrangement. I could only guess at what her boss thought of this mess, but if he was using the Undersiders as a cat’s paw then that elevated threat assessment would be nothing but an advantage for him. Response procedures like the ones they’d approved for Tattletals could let him bait the Protectorate to a level that just wasn’t possible with a conventional team. Depending on the length of his reach I could see him taking steps to keep the classification from getting resolved.

I looked up at Tattletale and considered my next move. I still didn’t particularly like or trust her, despite my passenger’s feelings on the matter. Still, her self-interest was probably served by keeping me in the picture. I could count on that at least.

“So, where do we go from here?”

She deflated a bit at the question. “For the moment? We both try to avoid the fallout. Oh, and you need to get yourself a cape name post haste.”

Right, they had a tendency to come up with their own labels for new capes. I grimaced at the possibilities that could be in the works. “Have they stuck me with anything yet?”

“Officially you currently have an incident number, but if you don’t get a proper debut within the next few days there’s a good chance you’re going to get stuck with Mammon.

I blinked in surprise. “Seriously? Isn’t that like a greed demon or something? How the hell does that work?”

“Remember all that online nonsense? The discussion somehow made it over to a jeweler’s forum. That started a debate over the appraisal of the workmanship on what you made for us.” Her tone was vaguely accusatory. I had the feeling she still wasn’t that happy with my personalizations for the knives. “And it was a big number. That got posted back on PHO. Between that and you’re stunt with the hairpin there’s this association with corruption and wealth. That led to somebody thinking it would be clever to mash the concepts together. Hence, Mammon”

I felt almost ill at the idea. Taylor hadn’t looked that happy with her cape name, but Egyptian god was a lot better than demon lord. Honestly I was surprised that name was still on the market, what with the Fallen running around.

“I’ll make sure to come up with something.” Suddenly finding the perfect name was a lot less important than just getting a non-villainous one. Really, anything would be better than being stuck with that moniker.

She nodded and looked me in the eyes. “As for our arrangement we have something to discuss.” She walked down the steps and closed the last of the distance to me. “Healing. How much?”

I couldn’t’ hide my surprise. “Excuse me?”

“Terms of arrangement. Price and schedule negotiation for services. What do you charge for healing?”

I blanked. “Aren’t you upset I kept this hidden?”

She shook her head. “I knew you were keeping some things from us. I didn’t push on the subject. If I had maybe I could have given some advice that would have let you avoid this mess. That’s on me, but it’s not what we’re talking about here. Things are going to be harder for all of us going forward.” She said the last sentence through gritted teeth. “So, what is it going to cost us for that thing you threw at Panacea last night?”

I looked down at her, but only saw the stress that had been clearly wearing on her for the last day. I didn’t particularly like our arrangement, or how naturally manipulative Tattletale was. With my passenger reigning in his reactions I could process that better. Still, I needed support to make it through the coming storm. She had illicitly sourced but essential information I absolutely required. Plus Taylor was still important. I couldn’t afford to cut off my support.

“Market.”

“Market?”

“Yeah, market rate. Work out what the cost of the medical care would have been for whatever the issue is. That’s what I’ll charge. You’ll just get it all at once instead of needing weeks of recovery.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You know that’s robbery right? That you could get away with charging so much more for that service?”

I nodded. “Call it a good relationship discount.” I glanced towards the exit of the yard and the city beyond it. “Maybe it’ll be incentive to keep me informed enough to manage what’s coming.”

She seemed to understand and took a moment to consider things. “Piggot? She’s blacklisted you. Even beyond suspicion over your healing. No support, resources, or collaboration from the local Protectorate. She ordered limited contact and priority dispatch response for any appearances. Officially you’re wanted for questioning, which is as much as they can do now, especially with the scrutiny she’s under.”

Well that was awful. I think my passenger was probably right about his assessment. Still, I hadn’t intended to poke that particular bear this early. I put that out of my mind and shifted to the topic that was my original concern.

“Thanks for the heads up.” I swallowed. “What about the ABB?”

Tattletale thought for a moment. “Piggot doesn’t want to take any action that would validate your predictions. The other departments have eyes on her now, and her reputation was pretty shaky to begin with.”

Right, and that was before I questioned her sanity. Shit, if I had accidently made things worse by trying to warn Panacea...

“Do you have anything on the ABB?”

She shook her head. “They’ve been unusually quiet. Some feelers going out, but whatever is happening they’re still preparing for it.” She looked directly at me. “Your power says it’s going to be bad.”

It was barely a question, but I nodded in response. “One of the worst I’ve gotten so far.”

“I’ll see what I can find, but it might take a few days. Lung isn’t planned to be moved until next week, and the Protectorate is mostly focused on tomorrow’s presentation of the new Wards.”

“Thank you.” I fished out my cellphone. “I’ve managed a secure line, so you can reach me if there’s an emergency. I can work on something for the rest of the team...”

“Don’t worry about it.” She let out a sigh. “You really put your foot in it, you know that right?”

“Yeah. I’m not sorry about healing Panacea, but the rest of it could have been handled better.”

She scoffed. “That’s an understatement.”

“But I’ll deal with it.”

“If you say so.” She didn’t sound convinced.

I nodded grimly. “Call me if anything comes up.”

She gave me a reserved nod. “Take care of yourself.”

We went our separate ways as we left the factory yard. I took a longer route through the docks than was necessary as I picked over the conversation. Things were significantly worse than I’d feared. Just twenty hours after I’d given the first hint of my power and things were going off the rails. I hadn’t thought I would have a good reputation with the Protectorate after working with the Undersiders, but a blanket contact ban seemed counterproductive. Even if the goal was to bring me in that kind of thing would just make it harder.

Enough questionable decisions had come out of the local PRT that I had seriously wondered if they were compromised. My passenger wasn’t giving me that sense and you should never attribute to malice what can be blamed on gross incompetence. At any other point I would have called the local director being under review a good thing, but we were headed into a disaster and needed all the help we could get.

Then there was the Undersiders’ boss. This nebulous criminal overlord who I knew nothing about. There were only a few types of parahumans who consistently worked from behind the scenes. Nothing I’d seen indicated he was a master or tinker, so that just left thinker.

A thinker making a power play meant things would get complicated. What’s more, the fact that he had a stream of information on me when I knew nothing about him was nerve wracking. Really I only had one defense, and it’s the same one used as a standard PRT countermeasure for thinkers. The same one I’ve been employing against the strongest thinker on the planet.

Limit available information.

See, there’s a terrifying element to being a tinker, particularly a strong tinker. Most people would assume that your top concern should be a visit from the Slaughterhouse Nine. They had a serial killer who specifically targeted tinkers with the power to change the world. They also had Bonesaw, who not only permanently tainted wet and medical tinkers in the eyes of the public, but took an active interest in anyone working in that field.

That was terrifying, and something I was certainly concerned about, but it wasn’t my biggest concern. The problem wasn’t Mannequin. It was the person who had turned Sphere into Mannequin. The Simurgh.

Endbringers were largely thought to be random in their attacks, but there were signs of direction. Hits to vital resources, major initiatives, or even specific individuals who had a chance to change the world. It didn’t always match up, but then who could track every possible cape in every city? When one of the Endbringers could see the future what hope did anyone have? What could a normal person do against someone with the power to predict their every move?

This was the kind of thing that ended up debated and discussed extensively online. There was one solution that was believed to be at least sort of effective, and anyone could do it. No matter what, no precognition was perfect. There were blind spots. Scion was the best known one. There was anecdotal evidence about being able to disrupt foresight powers by timing your actions based on Scion sightings. The Endbringers were another, but no one wanted to try to base their plans around them. There was a third that was significantly less well known than the other two.

Apparently precognition couldn’t predict the effects of a trigger event. There was even less evidence for this than the other two possibilities, but rumors suggested foresight thinkers had been stumped when they encountered a fresh trigger. Still, that wasn’t the kind of thing you could count on to disrupt precognition. It wasn’t like a person got new and unknown powers with enough frequency to be able to use it as a determining factor for their future actions.

That is, unless they were connected to a massive celestial array of powerful tinker abilities that were continuously being granted to them.

I didn’t know what my next power would be. My passenger, who had the capacity to predict future events, didn’t know what my next power would be. From the look of things Tattletale couldn’t figure out the array of powers I was being granted, much less predict what was coming. Everything I knew about how this operated suggested that it was my only hope to disrupt precognition.

The principle was simple, do nothing that would attract attention until you got enough power to handle the situation, then act immediately and without restraint. For the Simurgh that meant avoiding anything that brought down Endbringers. So no commercially released tinker tech, no global scale projects, and no mass uplift. As appealing as the GroundBridge project was it would be limited to personal use, not mass transport or deployments. There would be no wide scale deployment of technology, not until there was no doubt that I could handle whatever they could throw at me.

It wasn’t a guaranteed strategy, but it was the best idea I could come up with. If it didn’t work then there was nothing stopping that bitch from dropping out of the sky, destroying everything I’d done, jacking all of my technical knowledge, and mind warping me past the point of no return. It was the only plan I could come up with to get the slightest bit of agency over my life.

If that strategy was good enough for the Simurgh then it should work on any thinker. It didn’t matter if they worked by analysis, precognition, spying, or modeling. I was basing my actions on something that I could not predict, that to the best of my knowledge no one could predict. With the Undersiders’ boss it was the only plan I could come up with to deal with the anxiety over my complete lack of information. Endure his presence until I was sure I was strong enough, then strike immediately. It might not work perfectly, but it was the most thinker proof stratagem I could come up with.

Once I had taken enough turns through the city to be sure I wasn’t being followed I found another alley. I picked a convenient door and accessed my workshop. There was a tug at my sleeve and I took Garment’s gloves out of my jacket pocket. They floated in a way that gave the impression that someone had taken them from my hand, and then appeared to be pulled onto the hands of someone in front of me.

Once again the biker outfit started being picked up and put on in a way the made it feel intrusive to watch. I diverted my eyes until I saw the helmet get picked up by a now fully ‘dressed’ Garment.

“So,” I turned to her. “What did you think of Tattletale?”

Garment’s gestures seemed to indicate Tattletale’s jacket, skirt, and shoes with a fairly negative take on them.

“Really? I thought she looked pretty fashionable.”

Garment patted me on the arm in a gesture that suggested she was dealing with a particularly slow child.

“Alright. Anything else?”

She gave me an irreverent motion. Fashion had been critiqued, so what else was there? The sense I got was less that she didn’t care about any of the other aspects and more that she trusted me to be able to deal with it. It was actually a pretty big vote of confidence and came across as fairly reassuring.

I changed into my other jacket and wheeled the motorcycle out into the alley. Garment jumped onto the back as I sealed the workshop. As I was getting ready to mount up I felt the Celestial Forge again. It was another mote from the Size constellation and a big one at that, the same strength as Life Fiber Spool or Master Builder. When the connection was made I found out exactly how strong it was.

The mote was called Nanite Removal and Control. It was tangentially connected with Nanite Sciences, but much more powerful. This wasn’t information on nanites, this power actually filled my body with them. Innumerable atomic scale machines were now bonded to me at a molecular level. There was even some aspect of the power that would continually replenish my supply if it was ever depleted. The nanites were unprogramed so if I wanted to use them for manufacturing, physical enhancement, or more esoteric functions I would have to find a safe method of extracting them and code the functions into them directly. However, there was one nanite application that I could manage. I had the full breath of nanotech healing at my fingertips.

Direct application of my nanites could address almost any medical issue, up to full mutations. Shockingly I might actually be a better healer than Panacea. This kind of healing could easily address brain damage and even managed to cheat on conservation of mass by rebuilding body parts from nothing but nanotech. She would still have me beat on whatever her other biological control powers were, but this healing was massively more potent than what my Light Alchemy could manage.

The third aspect of this power was just as powerful. Nanite Removal and Control. That was the name of the ability and completely described its core aspect. I could control any nanobot or nanite based technology I encountered. I could even absorb nanites into my body in massive volumes. It was an even more flagrant violation of conservation of mass than what my healing could manage. Unfortunately it was an aspect of the power rather than a technology that could be recreated. It would remain on the same level of mystery as my workshop key or Fashion reinforcement.

With that control aspect all my fears regarding rampant nanotech were suddenly a lot less significant. Even if I decided to make something catastrophic like gray goo I would be able to directly control the technology in the field, or just absorb the nanomachines for later reprocessing. This one power shaved months off of my schedule. The only remaining elements of the nanite project were the construction of the containment vessel and the programming of the specific application.

I looked down at my hand and focused on activating the nanites in my system. There was a sound reminiscent of an electric motor as glowing blue lines spread across my arm like printed circuitry. I could feel the tiny machines inside my body checking for damage and making incidental repairs. That was another point. I could heal myself. It took focus and wasn’t as good as regeneration, but it addressed every possible medical issue from injury to infection to poisoning. As long as I was conscious I could manage a complete restoration in a matter of seconds.

It was a powerful ability and a big step forward, but it wasn’t enough. Not enough to act against the Undersiders’ boss, not enough to take a stand against the Endbringers. Not enough to oppose any of the other major factions that were operating in the world. But it brought me a bit closer. There were more powerful motes than this one. With enough of them I could afford to make a real change.

Until then I would have to endure. I would make what difference I could at the level where it was safe to operate. I didn’t like it, I wished I could do more, but it was my best chance of being able to make things better, someday.

I mounted my bike and rode off in the direction of my apartment. I was going to have a busy night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Nanite Removal and Control (Generator Rex) 400:  
> Many in this world would consider this is your most important ability, you can control nanites and absorb them into yourself, reverting dangerous mutations and can help people regain control of themselves. At first however this power will only work on willing targets, and will not work on incurable, especially virulent nanite infested EVOs. However with training and time, your powers can grow to circumvent these rules. Your greatest limitation is the fact that as you absorb nanites your reservoirs fill to the breaking point, causing dangerous flare ups and renders your abilities unstable. You can purge these nanities, but figuring out how to do so in a safe way with a large amount of unstable nanites may take some effort.  
> After this Jump your nanites can be used to heal people, whether of wounds, diseases, or possibly even mutations or others turned into a monster. Success will vary depending on factors, a mystical curse is probably beyond your nanites, a really out of this world super virus might be cured, but that's iffy.  
> If you happen to run into other nanites in other jumps, you could control and manipulate them as well.


	16. 12.1 Interlude Thomas

Interlude: Thomas

In one universe Thomas Calvert sat in his office. The door was sealed twice over and the only people in this area of the base were Mr. Pitter and his pet. Here he didn’t need to maintain the vestige of a supervillain. He could relax somewhat, but was far too paranoid to ever let his guard down. After all, paranoia was a virtue.

Unfortunately it was a virtue that had been enthusiastically adopted by his Tattletale. He had left her to resolve things with the new tinker after she had failed to predict his actions the previous night. She had of course chosen a meeting place that was unobservable from vantage points, blocked directional listening devices, and made laser microphones useless. It was one of her petty acts of defiance even in the face of his displeasure. She would have her little chat unobserved, and then he would debrief her on the table. You could never really trust information until it had been verified by a visit to the table.

In another universe Coil worked in his command center coordinating his men. The acquisition was going poorly, as his pet had predicted, but he had the luxury of examining exactly how poorly it would turn out. He had the advantage of learning his opponent’s capacity without risk.

“Conventional weapons are clearly having no meaningful effect. Does the squad have any explosives left?”

The comms technician, a weasel faced little man, turned to him with deference. “Four fragmentation grenades and two claymores.”

“Set up the mines and try to drive it into the kill zone.” He doubted they would get anything close to a kill, but this was about learning and establishing the limits. The shambling mass recoiled as troopers started flinging grenades to try to drive it towards a nearby alley.

In the first universe Thomas reviewed PRT correspondences. His Tattletale was marvelous at ferreting out passcodes and backdoor accesses. What portions of her investigations she wasn’t openly willing to share could easily be extracted during one of their little debriefing sessions. As entertaining as it was to watch the girl’s shock at realizing her carefully concealed sources were open to him he did have to be cautious. It was clear she was beginning to suspect the true nature of his power. Even a full understanding would do her little good, but there was no reason to make things easy for her.

She’d been running herself ragged ever since word of the new tinker’s encounter with Panacea had reached her, desperately searching for answers and trying to find a path through the chaos. Thomas himself may have been in the same mindset were it not for the reassurance of his pet. Dinah’s predictions had confirmed his safety and the integrity of his long term plans, leaving him free to watch the aftermath and poke things in directions favorable to himself.

So many things that would have left him livid were no longer pressing concerns now that he had his pet. The tinker, for instance, would never have been allowed to remain in play. Such a late addition to the situation at such a critical time had caused no end of apprehension. Tattletale’s assurances had mitigated things somewhat, but regrettably he had yet to get the boy on the table. You just couldn’t trust someone without seeing how they behave after a few hours of ministrations from a skilled professional.

Thomas remembered his first attempt at interrogating the boy. A throwaway timeline had been used to check the tinker’s touted durability. Whatever it was capable of in combat it failed to help him against a high velocity sniper round fired through the windshield of the van as he pulled out of the Undersiders base. Well, not completely failed. His head remained largely intact, which was something of note. Unfortunately the tinker had the sense to not carry anything identifiable with him on that particular endeavor. His men had found nothing but a pittance of loose cash and a key ring.

It was frustrating, but his identity was hardly secure. Between the information Tattletale had provided and searches of local records every aspect of his life would be uncovered within a few days, if not sooner. Once that happened things would fall into place. Everyone had their levers of control, whether they were vices, fears, loved ones, or just pride. And with this tinker there were unlikely to be many obstacles to bringing him in line.

The follow up attempt to capture the boy had confirmed Tattletale’s predictions about his character. If he proved to be bold, adventurous, or daring that could have led to any number of wrenches being thrown into the machinery of Coils operation. Fortunately he was none of those things. The boy was a pure coward.

His highly active and possibly precognitive thinker power was an incredible risk, but only if it was directed properly. The boy did not captain his power, he was driven by it, and primarily driven through fear. It was a lofty claim, and one that would have been hard to accept if Thomas hadn’t seen the results himself. At the first sign of his men the boy had fled. With no hesitation he abandoned thousands of dollars’ worth of precious equipment in a desperate attempt to escape.

He’d had to use multiple timelines to confirm it, but the mere hint of the presence of one of his men sent the tinker scampering for safety without the slightest delay. It was fascinating to watch. Nothing could draw the boy from his flight. Even arranging situations where civilians were being slaughtered before him bought nothing more than a second’s conflict before the boy bowed to his power and fled once again.

Thomas knew how strong his power was. It had cost him everything and put him into such debt that years of perfectly manipulating the markets had barely been enough to pay it off. Even after that considerable fortune in payments he still owed a week of service at a time to be chosen at the discretion of the power brokers. He had hopes of gaining enough influence to resist their demands, but that was still a lofty and distant goal. Despite the significance of his power its nature demanded he work in secret, deriving silent enjoyment as his opponents were outmaneuvered without even knowing how they had been beaten. He’d never had the pleasure of watching someone cower before the full might of his strength as a parahuman. That is, not until now.

This boy’s power feared him. It drove him to flee the slightest hint of Coil’s presence. The tinker clearly had no idea what he was running from, but he moved like the gates of hell had opened before him. An opposing thinker power saw the might of Coil in his full majesty and decided immediately that the only paths open to them was terror and submission. It gave Thomas a sense of satisfaction he had rarely been able to experience.

It still wouldn’t have been enough to let the boy operate with impunity. Fear can drive people to strike out as often as it causes them to cower. Only his pet’s insight had saved the boy from being resolved with the other loose ends. The percentage chances of opposition on any front were pitifully low regardless of what revelations the boy became privy to. Thomas remembered his pet’s face as she cycled through the chances of the tinker attempting to rescue her in increasingly obscure situations and watching the numbers change by less than a percentage point.

He hadn’t maintained that timeline of crushed hopes and tears. Thomas wasn’t a NEEDLESSLY cruel man.

In the other universe squads Delta and Epsilon had arrived with improved munitions. The detonation of the claymores had barely phased the creature and what little damage they’d been able to cause to its shambling mass quickly repaired itself. One member of Beta squad had gotten himself entrapped, leading to a squad mate acting against orders to try to cut him free. Of course this failed and resulted in both men being lost. Coil would have to separate them for future missions. Comradery in defiance of the mission was unacceptable.

“Launch incendiaries and distribute extra battery packs to all active men. I want them prepared for mass laser fire.”

The attack proved to be nothing more than a waste of good phosphorus. As Coil directed his men to maximize the damage of the opening salvo Thomas attempted to pick through the chaos still unfolding amongst the city’s heroes.

It was a wonderful symphony of panic on every front. The tinker’s works had already elevated what was intended to be a disastrous encounter for the Wards to a tragedy that would live on in the memory of the public for years. Had he done nothing else it would have still caused massive upheaval, investigations, and probably put Emily’s career on life support. Instead, while they struggled with damage control for the previous incident, he had blundered in with such a perfect mix of power display, accusations, and speculation that Thomas could barely believe it. Still, he was never one to let a serendipitous situation pass him by.

He skimmed over a PRT assessment of the tinker’s abilities. The display at the hospital had answered more questions about the boy’s abilities than even Tattletale had been able to guess. The previous working theory was that he had a material science specialty. Hardened materials, reactive metals, and advanced metallurgy neatly addressed most of the feats attributed to him. His display in the hospital has disproven those assumptions. It also answered the question of how the van he had been issued was found emptied in the bottom of a parking garage when his men had been watching every exit.

They weren’t dealing with a materials tinker, they were dealing with a matter tinker. A tinker with the ability to alter the substance of the physical world. A colossally powerful specialization, potentially only equaled by the legendary Hero, yet too meek to do anything of note with his abilities. In his short time he had been able to demonstrate teleportation, reinforcement, medical alteration, and material enhancement. With the slightest initiative any one of those could have yielded ten times the amount he had charged the Undersiders for his services. He would have been offended by the waste of potential if it were not so useful to him.

Of course the PRT was behind in their assessments. Thomas smiled to himself as he re-read their theories on the matter. Armsmaster’s insecurity was a blessing on that front as the man would rather pull out his own teeth than admit a novice tinker was responsible for every feat that had been displayed. He had seized on aspects of the boys work to prove his case. Apparently the alloys used could not exist without corroding to uselessness in a matter of hours. Since there was no detectable effect at play the most likely explanation had to be a shaker power. And of course the idea had been snapped up by the entire organization as increasingly unlikely theories were proposed.

Some of that had been due to Thomas’s interference. After her handling of the bank robbery and the Dallon girls interrogation there was a real risk that Emily would face suspension. That posed the unacceptable prospect of someone competent being assigned in the interim. No, the more attention placed on the tinker the less she would need to contend with, at least until the truth came out and the speculation would be another black mark against her. Thomas was confident he could hold off that particular event until it would be most beneficial to him.

Once the theories started flying it took barely any effort to keep them going. A cast pebble of supposition resulting in an avalanche of conjecture. He had nothing to do with the second generation Empire theory, though it had a certain logic. The Empire had more than its share of metal manipulators, durability powers, and the only healer cape in the city outside of New Wave. The idea was helped by the boy’s decision to decorate his costume with metal plates and claim his first cape battle against the ABB’s enforcer in defense of three Caucasian capes and one whose ethnicity remained unconfirmed.

He hadn’t created or encouraged the theory, but he did make sure a complete copy of it found its way into the hands of one of the Empire’s PRT moles. Whether anything would come of it, who could say? Perhaps Kaiser had an adventurous youth and didn’t keep track of his paramours. It was a free opportunity to send rivals on a wild goose chase and Thomas wasn’t one to let opportunities slip past unexploited.

“Concentrate fire on the humanoid portion. Ignore the lower mass.” The purple beams were amassing some damage, but the penetration was shallow, the holes they burned into the creature quickly resealed themselves. Coil’s men shifted to closely grouping their shots, but that only resulted in a shift in the creature as it brought more mass in the way of the laser fire. It lashed out at some of the troopers who we’re too close or behind insufficient cover. One man was snared but managed to empty his power pack onto the unnaturally tough tether before he could be entrapped and scramble back before a second lash could reach him.

“I want a full analysis of damage, response, and a proposal of countermeasures. Immediately.” Around him technicians and support staff scrambled while in the field more explosives were spent uselessly against the creature.

In the first universe Thomas perused a triply classified assessment from the Think Tank. Protectorate thinkers were tripping over each other in their work on this case. It would get sorted out eventually, but lasting damage and nonsense assessments would stay in circulation long beyond that. His Tattletale’s increased threat rating was just one such example. He took even more pleasure in her frustration at the countermeasures she’d be facing than he did at the gift the PRT had handed him by rating his team as a priority threat. Between the spectacle at the bank and the presence of a thinker 8 their mere presence would demand the level of response usually reserved for the city’s major gangs. That level of action couldn’t sustain itself, but until someone saw to correct it he would be able to steer half of the city’s protectorate with nothing but the appearance of his team.

Armsmaster truly deserved the credit for setting the thinker pileup into motion. It was turning a moderately confusing situation into a cyclone of chaos. The power dynamic between the director of Brockton’s PRT and the leader of its Protectorate branch was anything but healthy. The man did a poor job of concealing his enjoyment when Panacea relayed the boy’s prediction that Armsmaster might be difficult to work with, but Emily was insane, incompetent, a danger to her employees, and actively hostile to parahumans. The hint about their shared history in Ellisburg was just icing on the cake.

The Protectorate leader had decided to try to score some cheap points against Emily by sending the records of the debriefing to virtually every verification channel available to him. Half the thinkers in the Protectorate must have access to it by now. The absolute idiocy of that man is breathtaking at times. It’s debatable if he even understood how his technology assisted interrogation came across, though the Youth League will no doubt be happy to inform him. The point is he deliberately took a video record of a teenage girl being grilled for information she either didn’t have or could barely process and sent it to a group of people who largely triggered due to not having or being unable to process information. The fool had galvanized those capes to a level rarely seen outside a national crisis. This event did not warrant priority attention from the Think Tank, but after seeing the nature of the interrogation capes were volunteering their time.

Of course, that meant it was being conducted without the level of direction necessary to keep the team’s lofty minds on track. There was no telling when or if they would yield anything useful regarding the situation. More likely they would drop off one by one as their outrage settled and other projects drew their attention. For the moment they were spinning theories that made the most ludicrous predictions of the local PRT look rational and sensible.

In the second universe Coil coordinated a sustained bombardment of anti-armor weapons that had finally arrived with Zeta squad. Much longer and the battle was certain to draw the presence of capes. While that would be informative it could be troublesome to sustain information flow in that situation. Regrettably the anti-armor weapons seemed no more effective at causing sustained damage than any other munitions tried against the creature. He started looking through the more exotic options brought with Zeta for testing.

Back in his office Thomas opened a newly arrived email. It was both simple and concise in the extreme. A picture and a number. It seemed Accord had become privy to the events of Brockton’s Protectorate and was making a polite request, most likely with the implication that an impolite request was also a possibility.

It had been trivial to encourage lines of thinking that would become troublesome for the boy. Any fool could see the master concerns were a false positive, but they provided an excuse to prevent any outreach to the tinker. The Dallon girl was a wreck from her experience in the bank. Her encounter in the hospital may have mended her broken bones but it did little for her frayed nerves. Armsmaster had limited testing and only tenuous approval for the use of his lie detector. In any other situation its results would be immediately discredited. However Emily was desperate for any excuse to keep the girl contained, Armsmaster was overly proud of his technology, and poor Brandish was desperate to attempt any measure of damage control.

The woman’s face was a sight when they informed her that they had chosen to independently verify details of the accusations with other members of New Wave. The poise of a lifetime practicing law couldn’t prepare a person for the moment their world decided to fall apart. Manpower had apparently elected to confess everything to Lady Photon the moment they questioned him. While their marriage had spent years as a façade for the sake of public appearances the leader of New Wave apparently still had enough affection for the early days of their relationship to be devastated by the revelation. It ended with Manpower departing the household and Brandish being left to take the brunt of her sister’s rage. That combined with the accusations of Brandish’s mental health, parental skills, and some dark secret involving Marquis meant she would probably have signed her adopted daughter up for a witch trial if it would have let her get out of that building five minutes sooner.

Once one accusation of master effects had been leveled it opened the door for less well founded allegations. That brought things to Sebastian Slight, a notoriously unprofessional PRT lab technician who decided to cover for the fact that he was wasting time staring at a trinket by claiming to be fascinated. At least half the fault was on the lab manager who instead of reprimanding the tech decided to file an official report. With the recent charges and the rumors already flying suddenly a hairpin was being treated as a memetic object. Images of said hairpin seemingly were included in standard briefing packs, at least one of which was intercepted by Boston’s most powerful villain thinker.

Thomas didn’t see the appeal of the object, but he could admit his own limitations when it came to evaluating artwork. Thankfully his power hadn’t caused the obsessive mannerisms that Accord was forced to deal with. He could appreciate the workmanship necessary for the level of detail displayed on the hairpin, as seemed to be included in every item the tinker produced. As signature styles went it was certainly more striking than the typical tinker drive to recreate the look of a Flash Gordon serial or Star Trek episode.

It seemed that whatever his own thoughts on the matter were, Accord had decided that the item was sufficiently elegant to be worth acquiring. It was incredibly rare for the Boston thinker to acknowledge the adequacy of another person’s workmanship, much less express an interest in obtaining it. The price quoted was no doubt carefully calculated to ensure it was sufficient to be worth the trouble he would have to go through to acquire the item. Additionally, there was the unspoken implication in the message. This was an acknowledgement of Coil’s rights in Brockton Bay. Should he reject the offer it would be a tacit approval for Accord to launch his own operation in the city to retrieve it. Given the complexity of the man’s plans it was doubtful that would be his only objective. If he wanted to keep the Ambassadors out of his city he would need to complete this job.

The price wasn’t ungenerous, and upon completion would recoup the investment he had made in the new tinker several times over. It even presented opportunity for some small alteration to the PRT staff composition. The accusation of master abilities was a crippling drawback for the boy, but it would never be sustained. However, should a PRT tech who personally examined his work happen to vanish along with the item in question it would cast a shadow over every item the tinker produced for the foreseeable future. The removal of Mr. Slight would take some work to arrange, but would leave a position open in the heart of the PRT. One that could be filled by someone more malleable to outside influence. There was another technician who had been considered for promotion on the grounds of the excellent quality of his work and due to the fact that he had kept his financial problems well concealed from his superiors. Thomas had profited heavily from high risk investments, but had seen the markets destroy men with callous indifference. For many it was just a more dignified version of an addiction to the track, and just as exploitable.

He replied to the message with a confirmation and estimated timeline. He would also have to take steps to frame this event in a way that served to validate some of Emily’s public concerns. While her inevitable fall was part of his grand plan for the city this incident had the potential to accelerate matters to an unacceptable degree. Should she be removed before he was able to secure his power base there was a remote chance someone competent would be assigned to the Director’s office.

There were a number of areas where he would have to act, and in most of them he wouldn’t even need to be subtle about his support. Emily was callous enough to assume ulterior motives for any action that favored her, but he could just present her with a few advantageous contracts when she confronted him on the matter. Additionally, she would assume that he would be even more eager to conceal the events of Ellisburg than she was. A consequence of his former comrade’s insistence on seeing the worst in everyone was a failure to look deeper once she had found the first defect. It was an odd mix of being both excessively and insufficiently paranoid.

On the subject of paranoia the battle in the second universe was proving to be completely futile. The full brunt of Coil’s arsenal, both conventional and tinker tech, had accomplished nothing against the creature. His men had been worse than useless as the number of captured rose higher. The thing moved through jerky shifts of its lower mass as if trying to drag itself across the ground. It contrasted harshly with the speed at which it was able to strike out at his men or act to defend itself.

One trooper moved forward with a last ditch effort, a chemical sprayer loaded with a combination of corrosive and highly toxic compounds. Under the cover of the last of the heavy weapons and final charges of tinker tech lasers the man rushed forward and hosed down the humanoid portion of the mass with caustic and poisonous fluid.

Finally the creature reacted as if it was actually threatened. With what might have been genuine panic it flailed, bringing up parts of its lower mass to shield its upper form. It was too late, the chemicals completely coating the creature’s humanoid portion before it could react. Then it all went wrong.

The chemicals exploded off the surface of the creature as outer layers of its mass were flung free. Once separated they lost their exceptional toughness and were quickly consumed by the caustic substances coating them, but that didn’t affect the trajectories which seemed directed towards every location his men had elected to use for cover. Coil heard screams through the com links as his troops were splattered with the most virulent mix of acids and toxins he had been able to mobilize. That was nothing compared to the fate of the attacking trooper.

The creature lashed out, not with the tethers it had used throughout the rest of the battle but with razor thin sinews that ensnared the chemical trooper. They were as thin as threads but had the same unnatural toughness as the rest of the creature’s body. Unlike the previous entrapments these were fine enough to cut into the trooper’s flesh and equipment. The man screamed as he was pulled into the shambling lower mass, caustic liquid pouring from ruptured feedlines into the open wounds the wire like material had dug into his skin.

He shifted to one of the wider video feeds and reviewed the situation. His men were scattered and struggling to regroup. All munitions had proven useless, with their one marginal success quickly turning against them. In the center of the scorched and broken street their opponent remained, unfazed by the attacks and repairing the damage of the chemical strike. The multilayered hooded robe was quickly restored to its unmarred state, creating the impression of a shrouded figure suspended upon a billowing mass of fabric. Half a dozen of his men were entrapped within the flowing folds of that material, restrained with thick ribbon like bands. Most had stopped struggling when it became clear they had no hope of escape, with the exception of the flailing screams of the chemical trooper. The substance of the creature was stronger than steel and composed of multiple layers that acted as ablative armor against any attack. It was a marvelous and impressive defense and quite the unexpected trick for the new tinker to have been keeping in reserve. Interestingly his over designed style was still apparent in the monstrosity, with the material wrapped and folded in elaborate drapings and bearing striking coloration and markings that hinted at embroidery.

Coil pulled up records of the start of the attack. His pet had been invaluable in enlightening him to the nature of the boy’s defenses, but it was still useful to see them in person. Sniper rounds were not predicted to be as effective as in the previous encounter. Coil remembered the first timeline where his men had charged the courtyard. The first round stopped dead against the boy’s head without the slightest reaction and follow-up shots merely knocked him down until he was able to activate his teleportation and flee from the encounter, taking Tattletale along with him. Use of explosives had a better success rate, but it was essentially a race against the tinker’s ability to deploy countermeasures, and none of the attack scenarios resulted in a live capture.

Interestingly his pet had predicted that dispersed tranquilizer gas had a high chance of subduing the tinker, but a negligible chance of capture. She had been unable to illuminate the reasoning behind that contradiction, so it was left to Coil to see the results for himself. There is no simple or guaranteed way to safely deploy knock out gas. It is not chosen as a method of crowd control for a very good reason. The concentration that would incapacitate one man would be lethal to a smaller person or only marginally effective against a larger one. The quantity deployed to subdue the tinker had most likely been lethal to his Tattletale, but taking risks like that were a privilege of his power.

Coil watched the events play out on the video records from the start of the encounter. As predicted the boy quickly collapsed under the effects of the gas. On the surface everything appeared to be going perfectly. It would have been a simple matter to transport the boy to the base, administer a counter agent, and spend a few hours of spirited discussion regarding his motives and capabilities. Instead the extent of the tinker’s paranoia had revealed itself in a defense of last resort.

As Coil’s men approached the boy’s clothing began to twitch, as if it was trying to drag him to safety. Before any of them could react a shroud of material spun itself around the tinker in a protective cocoon. With seemingly infinite resources of matter to call upon it extended the length of the robe, holding the boy’s protected form above a billowing mass of layered sheets. The substance appeared thin as cloth but was infuriatingly tough and resilient. Damage done to it was quickly repaired and attempts at close engagement only resulted in the unfortunate trooper being entangled in ribbons of the same material before disappearing under the folds of the cloak.

The technology on display was fascinating. Whatever was directing the mass had the ability to demonstrate basic decision making and threat assessments. It was mobile, but just barely. The construct seemed to move through momentum of its summoned material rather than being able to exert force directly on its passengers. Folds of the fabric like mass would be pulled to speed and either drag or collide with the passenger to cause movement. It was fascinating, and potentially evidence of a Manton limit at work. The result was a lurching motion of the cloaked humanoid shape containing the tinker and stumbling dragging motions of the lumps representing his captured men.

Whatever sluggishness affected the motion of its passenger was not applied to its control of its own material. Billowing masses a dozen layers thick were able to move with the speed of a flag caught in a gale. The ribbon-like tethers that extended from the lower portion of the creature cracked like whips as they lashed out at anyone who ventured too close. There was little strength to the tethers, but the speed and toughness was enough to batter his men at long range and entrap any who dared to approach.

It was a fantastic defense and a true demonstration of the boy’s exceptional cowardice. The technology that created this spectacle could have allowed him to become the most feared tinker in the city in short order. Instead it was used for a desperate last defense. How many resources had he committed to this? What was it that caused such power to be committed to desperate cowering?

There was a potential explanation for that behavior. Buried in the assessment of the Dallon girl’s report was an offhand mention of a specific tinker principle, one everyone involved was pointedly avoiding mentioning out of fear of what it could mean. In his babbling regarding Gallant’s supposed tinker status and the reconstruction of the boy’s armor he had mused on tinker classifications. Focal tinkers and hyperspecialists, terms that most people don’t ever bother with. Following that the boy alluded to another kind of tinker. Specifically those with a ‘physical or mental cost’ to their work, casually referencing something people either are ignorant of or avoid mentioning. The worst class of tinker; the mad scientists.

Before Ellisburg Thomas had put in his time as a PRT agent. You saw things in that line of work that did not bear repeating. A list of the worst momments would have to include any encounter with a mad scientist tinker. Tinkers whose work drastically exceeds that of their contemporaries, but at a vicious cost. He remembered a raid on the lab of one particular tinker who paid a literal pound of flesh for all of his creations. Another who descended into madness each time she began a project and never made it all the way back, the cost of multiple sessions compounding until she completely split from reality. Mad scientists were the reason for the existence of the Three Blasphemies and vigilance against them was the only reason there weren’t eight or ten of the creatures.

No one talks about mad scientists. It would foster unrest in the public and drive capes towards dangerous actions. The best possibility was that the boy’s thinker power allowed him insight into the nature of tinker abilities. A less appealing prospect was that he had personal experience with that kind of tinker, a situation that could easily lead to a trigger event. That posed the concerning question of what had happened and how far the damage went. The worst possibility was the boy knew the classification from personal experience, that everything he built was a step towards madness.

His pet didn’t indicate that scenario was likely, but it was difficult to frame queries about the tinker’s abilities in a manner that she could quantify. She needed to picture exact situations to give her numbers, and some things were difficult to present in that manner. In the first universe he skimmed through various thinker reports on the subject, most as garbled as the nonsense circulating the local PRT. Nobody was directly commenting on the possibility because it wasn’t the kind of accusation to be leveled lightly. Fortunately Coil had the ability to put those fears to rest.

Put to rest for himself, that is. It was fully in his interest to keep the local authorities distrustful and fearful of the new cape. All he needed was a way to get the boy on the table and things would be sorted one way or another. No defense was perfect and everyone had their points of vulnerability.

In the other universe the Protectorate was beginning to mobilize against the boy’s defensive construct. Velocity and Dauntless were the first to arrive on the scene. A shame. They were the most likely to be reasonable and the construct’s programing had shown capacity to evaluate threats. It would have been enlightening to see Armsmaster try his luck against the boy’s work. The construct wasn’t standing down, but it was not attacking either. His men had been forced to retreat, cutting off his surveillance. It was unlikely he would be able to learn any more from this timeline.

In the first universe a report reached him. His spotter confirmed his Tattletale was concluding her meeting with the tinker. He dismissed the second timeline and began changing into his costume. It looked like it was time for them to have another chat. She could be so enlightening when provided with the correct motivation.


	17. 13 Exposure

13 Exposure

As I rode back towards my apartment I started tallying the work I’d need to do. I probably had a few days before anything serious happened with Bakuda unless she decided to jump the gun on Lung’s transfer. I tightened my grip on the handle bar as I thought about how much I was banking on that assumed schedule. Putting those thought aside I focused on the pile of new technologies I needed to start experimenting with.

First priority needed to be nanites. My healing abilities were phenomenal, but there was so much more I could do with them if I could manage proper programming. Even without that I could still control them directly, though that would be ponderous and I’d need to monitor them through every task. To accomplish any of that a nanite containment unit needed to be my immediate priority. Once I had that I could start syphoning nanites from my body and amassing enough to actually complete one of my projects.

Not gray goo. Safer projects. Well, safer by nanite standards which was still pretty dangerous. This was really the ultimate dual use technology. I was going to have a hard time explaining how I developed nanite healing without going through all the intervening steps that would allow aggressive mutations or complete biological destruction.

There was a lot I could do with properly programed nanites, but my priority should probably be those life fibers. I might even be able to manage to make some progress on the problem of how to use them with my current nanite resources. Given how strong, how incredibly, overwhelmingly strong Master Builder and Nanite Removal and Control were I could only imagine what the ultimate potential of the life fibers was. I just needed to be able to safely experiment.

I also needed to check on my fleet program’s development. I had a full day of driving and navigation to call upon. That might not be that much experience, but it was a big step up from the previous simulations that had been running. Also, I needed to upgrade the bike’s hardware and software. After what I had learned from Master Builder the custom control system I’d developed suddenly seemed horribly outdated. I wouldn’t be able to build top end processors without cybertonium, but with even basic nanite assembly I’d be able to yield massive improvements.

Right, cybertonium. I also needed to get to work on my alchemy. That meant setting up a ritual space, still not too comfortable with that concept, for transmutations and find a safe location for potion brewing. Damn did I need a proper base that wasn’t just crowded around my workshop. Unfortunately I also needed the trifecta of security, anonymity and ease of access. At the moment I wasn’t even at the point of picking two of the three. I’d be lucky to get one.

Case in point, we were nearing my apartment and I had to find another alley to store my bike. That was going to be trouble before too long. I couldn’t rely on the apathy of my neighbors forever. Eventually someone was going to take an interest in where the overbuilt superbike was being stored each night. Additionally, while I had enough financial resources to resolve some of these issues, everything I would need to purchase would be a large enough commitment to attract serious attention. My bike was pretty much the limit of what I could get away with. Moving to a bigger or more accessible place would cause all kinds of problems of a tax and money laundering variety.

The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Magic constellation as I was pulling into the alley. I ignored it and found a decent door to access my workshop. The fleet program had advanced enough that once I got it through the door it was able to navigate the rest of the way to the workshop. That was a very good sign for both pathfinding and AI development.

I said a temporary goodbye to Garment and re-sealed the workshop. In the later part of the day with shadows stretching out I was suddenly feeling a little uncomfortable in the clothes she had provided. This was not a well to do area and I had no idea what this outfit would have cost if it hadn’t been manifested by a spirit of fashion. The fact that the colthes fit in at the boardwalk was probably not a good sign. I was confident I’d be able to handle anything this area could throw at me, but it was certain to attract more attention than I would want to deal with. Of course I’m confident that if I told Garment I couldn’t wear clothes like this in this neighborhood she’d immediately start digging through rental listings for better parts of the city. I could probably at least find something less flashy than the white bomber collared motorcycle jacket I was currently wearing.

Thankfully I made it back home without more than a second look from my neighbors. When I opened my workshop Garment had changed back to her red evening dress with gloves in opera mode. She immediately headed to the laptop and opened up Youtube. My attempts to check on her were dismissed with a polite wave as she caught up on new posts from her subscribed channels.

I made my way through the unusually empty entryway of my workshop. I’d need to move the rest of my furniture back at some point. At least Garment had left the mattress, even if it was propped up against the wall. It hadn’t been not fun the first time I had to move that thing in here from my apartment. I could handle interior decorating later, I had a nanite containment unit to build.

Actually, that joke about interior decorating reminded me of something. My Decadence power wasn’t all about aesthetics. It could do interior decorating to an almost inhuman level, but could also optimally attune a space for any purpose. My workshop was still largely in the arrangement it had arrived in with the odd stapled on space for the pieces of equipment I’d gotten from the Undersiders. I’d been meaning to rearrange things since I started work on those knives, and that was before I was supernaturally skilled at efficiently utilizing space.

Probably what had been holding me back from rearranging the place was the size of the things I’d have to move in order to manage that task. The workshop came with its share of heavy machinery, not particularly advanced, but still serious industrial milling machines. I would need a forklift to shift them. Or a magically driven suit of power armor.

I could probably count this as additional testing. It was certainly needed. The Fleet A.I. was still massively unsteady when directing bipedal movement. Considering it was eight feet tall and close to five hundred pounds ‘unsteady’ was not an adjective you wanted to be dealing with. I had to take things ponderously slow and carefully shift the equipment in short bursts. It was like doing one of those sliding block puzzles, only more frustrating and without the picture at the end. The one definite benefit was the steady progress the Fleet A.I. was demonstrating. As the work progressed I could see the small corrections it was able to make in motion and placement. It was a long way from being independently combat ready, but I could probably trust it to walk across a room without tripping over anything.

When I finished I decided I needed to reevaluate my statement about not getting a picture at the end. The workshop looked amazing. It had that kind of sleek elegance that comes with efficiency, but also somehow ended up with both pleasing site lines and easy access paths. I don’t think I had any of that tinker obsession going on, so the relief I was feeling was probably connected to how much easier my work would be from now on.

I heard a clapping from the door and turned to see Garment standing there with approving gestures. Actually, with the combination of my other abilities the workshop was now much cleaner and had a slight elegance to it. Still, I wasn’t sure what had pried Garment from her videos.

I shortly found out as she pointed at an icon on the page of one of the Youtube channels she had been watching.

“Twitter?”

She gestured enthusiastically.

“Garment, Twitter is different from Youtube comments. Are you sure you want to do this?”

She switched to the next tab, a twitter account for a fashion journalist. I couldn’t make any sense of it, but Garment seemed excited. At that point I noticed the rest of the open tabs. She must have had seventeen different twitter threads loaded.

This could go very wrong. On the other hand if she kept to her brief comments and didn’t give any personal information the worst she was likely to endure was some nasty comments and a series of blockings.

“Alright, I’ll get you set up, but be careful.” She gave me a series of affirmative gestures as I started setting up the information for her account. It was easy enough to link to her Youtube and keep the information consistent. She also directed me to another open tab for her profile picture, some classic Hollywood actress. After a bit of her framing things with her hands I figured out she wanted it cropped down to the gloves.

Well, at least that was consistent.

As soon as things were set up she practically tore the computer from me as she immediately began typing out a response to a tweet on celebrity spring fashions.

Typing slowly, while continuing to search for each letter in turn. Even when she needed to type the same letter twice she would hit the key, then hunt through the entire keyboard looking for the key she just pressed. I was beginning to suspect there was something going on here that a typing course wouldn’t be able to address.

Still, she seemed to be enjoying herself, so I left her to the commentary and headed back to the workshop. Nanite containment vessels are not that easy to build. I had to cannibalize the magnetic suspension rigs I had used to make the monomolecular blades in order to assemble a proper restraint field. I also couldn’t get anywhere close to the vacuum conditions I’d need for optimal transfer, meaning every loading period would be extended from seconds to minutes. Finally the volume I’d be able to manage with my resources was severely limited. At best it might contain enough to program a group of nanites for a very specific application.

All those were problems I could address later. Just getting any active nanites out of my body would be a victory considering what I could do with them. Yes there were incredible things I could accomplish if I could program them for autonomous function, but even the direct piloting from my latest power would be incredibly useful.

When I was finished the results sat on a table in the center of my workshop. It was roughly the size of a bar fridge and composed of large plates of reinforced metal spaced with supports and power cabling for the internal magnets. The input port was a pair of handles that looped out of the front, hollow pipes with the closest thing to a vacuum I’d been able to rig. In theory I could activate my nanites and have as many as possible drawn through the conduits to the comparative small containment chamber in the center of the apparatus.

It was time to give this a try.

The nanites in my body were essentially dead weight. The ability to direct them to heal was completely independent of their programing or lack thereof. Because of that I couldn’t direct them to anything else, so my only option was to flood my body with the largest activation I could manage and hope the containment unit could syphon them into the chamber.

I focused and blue circuit like lines began to spread across my entire body. They formed on clothing as easily as the surface of my skin, but my awareness showed them going much deeper than that. People have no idea just how small a nanite is. They hear the word nanobot and assume it’s something along the size of a germ. Maybe a bit smaller, but somewhere in that area. There’s a good reason for that, people just aren’t designed to think on the atomic scale.

Each of my nanites was a roughly twenty nanometer diameter sphere of crystal surrounding a computational core running entirely on quantum effects. There were a few nano structures extending from the sphere, but they were unbelievably delicate. As in you could count how many atoms thick they were on one hand. These nanites were able to rewrite DNA on an atom by atom basis. That requires a level of fine manipulation most people can’t even picture. Without my power I’m not even sure devices like these would be physically possible.

The activated nanites were much more responsive to magnetic fields than dormant ones were. The miniscule machines flooded through my body making tiny and incidental repairs to cells, breaking down pathogens, and processing toxins. The glowing bands near my hands bent slightly towards the handles of the containment unit as nanites were pulled through the vacuum tubes and into the central chamber. It was an odd sensation and not an entirely pleasant one.

I maintained a white knuckled grip on the conduits until the flow dropped off, the concentration of nanites falling below the threshold the system could affect. I took a moment to compose myself before reviewing the data. It looked like I had managed to transfer a little under three percent of my nanites. I could feel them being replaced by my power, but that would take the better part of an hour. At this rate of transfer and ignoring any refinements I was able to make to the system it would take roughly a hundred and fifty transfers to get a cohesive colony that I could start programing.

So roughly a week, and that was assuming I kept up the transfer schedule. It wasn’t that bad. As I built up a higher concentration of nanites I would be able to start directing them through independent control. It would be a bit tedious, but there were all kinds of applications for that kind of work, especially with the rest of my crafting abilities.

I took a breath while I considered what to try for next. Alchemy, life fibers, computer upgrades, weaponry. It was too much to handle all at once. What would I normally be doing right now?

I’d be going to the gym. That wasn’t a terrible idea. With everything Tattletale had told me I had some stress begging to be burned off. I’d skipped two days between my crafting blitz and the aftermath of the bank battle. That was something I’d absolutely promised myself I wouldn’t do. I had options for physical enhancement now, but one of them was a week of nanite transfers away and the other was based on some questionable alien symbiosis. Neither of them would help me develop combat skills.

I needed some time to work out the details of my next project and let my nanites replenish. A quick workout would be a good way to handle with that.

It took me some time to find my workout clothes. It seemed Garment had rebuilt them along with the rest of my wardrobe. They weren’t as intricate as some of the other things she’d made, but they had an air of dedicated exercise clothing rather than the old shorts and t-shirt I usually went with. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Time constellation as I was getting ready to leave, with Garment continuing her slow typing and barely bothering to wave goodbye as I made my way out the door.

I had missed two full days of workouts. It wasn’t that bad all things considered. I’d been following online workout advice and allocating one rest day per week, so my missed time could be counted towards that. With the prospect of physical enhancements on the table I might be able to skip my conditioning work and focus on entirely technique. My God, I might actually be able to avoid my early morning runs. That life fibers project suddenly received a significant jump in priority. Of course I had no idea how I was going to hide super strength from people at the gym. I might end up having to cut ties with the place entirely.

The thought affected me more than I anticipated. In the time since my trigger this gym had quickly transitioned from being a discount fitness option to something of a refuge. It was actually nice to have a chance to blow off steam and clear my head at the end of the day. It was just social enough to be a comfortable point of contact while having enough of a directed purpose that it never got uncomfortably personal. Frankly I wished I’d found this place two years ago, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to motivate myself to train like I had after my trigger.

That was a concern for later. I had over a week, probably closer to two, until I had a complete set of nanites ready. It was tempting to direct them for physical enhancement, but there was also all kinds of potential applications in construction, manufacturing, diagnostics, or enhancement of my other projects. There was enough draw on this resource to cover what I’d be able to generate for months, even if I was able to increase the efficiency of my storage and extraction system.

Instead I dove into my workout, focusing on footwork and combinations. I rhythmically struck the heavy bag as I considered what my next step should be. After the second offload I should have enough nanites to manage some micro-assembly. With the rest of my knowledge base I would be able to directly manufacture computer components. Not the best components I knew how to make, but the best I could do without a superconducting material with resonance patterns that extended beyond the material universe. With those complete I could improve my computing resources, accelerate the development of my A.I., and maybe even advance my interfaces for better direct control. It was a project that would start yielding results instantly and have serious advantages to getting deployed immediately. Thanks to the conservation from my Rationing power I would even have enough materials to work with so I wouldn’t need to resort to alchemical transmutation.

My thoughts of computer architecture were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Aisha Laborn. I had the remote hope that she’d given up this nonsense after the last time, but apparently I wasn’t in the clear yet. She had taken nearly fifteen minutes after my arrival to show up and I still had no idea who her informant was. I made eye contact with Doug who shrugged slightly. It seemed he was at least assuming I had no bad intentions, but was going to keep an eye on things just the same.

That was probably for the best because right from the start I could tell something was wrong. First off her outfit was completely different. It was still vaguely the same style, but she had switched the loud neon colors for a spectrum of grays. She had fewer pieces of jewelry with all the bracelets and lose pieces absent and even her piercings were more sensible. It almost looked like she was actually here to work out.

This could not be good.

Her behavior only compounded my concerns. Unlike last time she wasn’t prancing in front of me trying to get my attention. There were no over the top pseudo-stretches or showy work outs designed to provoke a reaction. Most of the time I couldn’t even see her, but she could see me. She carefully cycled through workouts and watched me like a hawk. It was so out of character for what I had learned to expect that it was actually a good deal more unnerving than if she had jumped straight into her teasing. I wondered if that was her plan, but Aisha didn’t seem like the type of person to play mind games with that many layers to them.

The rest of the gym had picked up that something was wrong. The members who knew what to expect from Aisha were reacting to her drastically altered behavior and the newer members were reacting to the reactions of everyone else. It said something that Aisha had managed to pretty much shut down the entire place just by acting slightly less eccentric. Doug was actually looking seriously concerned and I’m guessing he was weighing the pros and cons of calling her father. I’m not sure how Mr. Laborn would react to a receiving call along the lines of ‘Something is very wrong. Your daughter is behaving herself.’.

I tried my best to ignore her and focus on my projects. I still had to work out the alchemical transmutations I’d need for rarer elements in addition to the formation of cybertonium. I had a loose idea of how to form that super metal, but it would take something like sixty eight steps of incredibly precise transmutations. If I wanted any to work with in less than a month I would need to refine the process significantly. Unfortunately I wouldn’t be managing any of that here.

There’s a very disturbing element to the feeling that you’re being watched. It involves this building sense of dread, subtle changes in the behavior of people around you, and a gradually ramping up of stress. It’s one of those base instinctual things that was probably designed to allow our species to avoid being eaten by saber toothed tigers. The fact that it also triggers under the observation of a moderately difficult thirteen year old girl is either a bug in the survival programing or evidence of more foresight from natural selection than I ever gave it credit for.

The second half of my workout was thoroughly unproductive, not even helpful as a means of stress relief. Eventually I made a tactical withdrawal and ducked into the locker room when there was no chance of being intercepted. I stood under a borderline scalding shower and tried to figure out what the hell was going on here. Either Aisha had upped her game significantly or there was something new and concerning in play. I had no clue what it could be, and from the looks of things I doubted the rest of the gym had any idea either.

I stretched my shower as long as I reasonably could before I bit the bullet a, got changed, and packed up my things. I slipped out of the locker room ready to make a break for the exit in the event of an ambush. Instead I found the gym had returned to a semblance of its normal activity and Aisha was nowhere to be found.

“She just left.” Came a rough voice. “You doing alright?”

I turned to see Doug in all his gruff glory leaning against the wall. The students he had been working with were packing up their things with the usual half-shell shocked expression Doug’s training seemed to inspire.

“Uh, yeah.” I took a breath. “Do you have any idea what that was about?”

The big man shrugged. “Best guess, she’s playing with us. Girl’s been in and out of this place since she moved back in with Laborn. She knows he has the regulars looking out for her so she tries something to throw us off every now and then. This is a bit more subtle than her usual plays.”

I nodded. I hoped that was the case, but it seemed like there was something else going on. The idea that someone as seemingly random as Aisha would show up, treat me like a research specimen for half an hour, and then vanish didn’t sit right, but I didn’t have a clue what she was up to.

“Missed you the last couple of days. Some of the guys thought she managed to run you off.”

I forced a laugh. “No, started a new job.” He quirked an eyebrow. “It was a bit of a last minute thing, but the pay was good so I had to take it. Decent money but terrible hours.”

Doug nodded slowly. “People need to take what they can get in this city. You’re a smart kid. Make sure you look after yourself out there.”

It took me a second to figure out his meaning, but by that point he was half way across the gym. I wished I could dissuade him of that notion, but I actually had been working for a gang, one in service to some kind of parahuman crime lord. Trying to downplay that wouldn’t do either of us any favors.

I really hoped I hadn’t just tanked my reputation at this gym, but then again probably a third of the older members had what looked like prison tattoos. The implication that I was doing some kind of illicit work on the side would probably just make me fit in better. How Mr. Laborn would react I had no idea, but he seemed like the kind of man who could tolerate a lot as long as you held up your obligations.

The city was entering twilight when I made my way outside. The streetlights were on, but it was at that weird point where they weren’t any brighter than the dimming ambient light and basically did nothing to improve visibility. That was probably why I didn’t get any sense of the person sneaking up on me as I left the shadow of the gym.

“Hello Jozef.” The name was as over-pronounced as the last time I’d heard it. I spun to see Aisha leaning against the mouth of an alley, a slight grin on her face as her eyes shone in the half-light of the early evening. She was wearing her workout outfit with a light jacket and one of those overly small backpacks on her shoulder.

“Oh, Aisha. Hi.” It was unnerving. She had dropped all the teasing mannerisms and jovial attitude. It was like dealing with a completely different person.

She shifted slightly to block the path I was taking back to my apartment and looked me up and down. It occurred to me that her waiting in this location meant she knew the route I would take on my way home.

“Heard you missed training the last couple of days.” There was a knowing gleam in her eyes.

“Yeah, something came up.”

“First time since you started, right?” She looked at me dead on. “Heard you signed up one day and started training like mad. Like you were working towards something. What was the deal? Something happen that got you all fired up?”

God damn, I thought this girl could be unnerving when she was just being inappropriate. Somehow when she went serious it was a whole other level of unsettling.

“I just decided to give it a try.” Damn it, I was bad at this. Yeah, I had been desperately training to try to get ready for cape life. Why was she picking at this? What the hell was she working towards?

She glanced off to the side and quirked her lips in a faint grin. “Lot of stuff happened while you missed your training. You hear about that thing at the bank downtown?”

I kept my face neutral, but I could feel blood draining from it. “Wards fought some villains, ended up losing, right?”

She nodded. “Wards fought the Undersiders. They showed up with a new cape and a bunch of weapons and shit. Went through the baby Protectorate like they were made of paper. They’re calling it the worst loss in the history of the team.” For some reason she seemed almost proud of that statement.

The Magitech constellation approached in the Celestial Forge and my power just failed to connect to it. I cursed internally, I really needed a better grasp of the powers from that constellation.

“Hey, what was that?”

I shifted my attention back to the girl in front of me. “What? What was what?”

“That thing you just did. It’s happened every time we talked.”

She picked up on that? How observant was this girl? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She gave me a flat look. “Uh-huh. What’s that thing they say? Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence, all that shit. So what, is it part of your power?”

I swear I felt my heart stop. “What do you mean?” I was doing my best to play dumb but felt like I was doing a shit job of it.

“Your face looks good.”

The non sequitur threw me for a loop. “Uh, thanks?”

“Really good.” She moved in closer and my discomfort started to override my fear of being exposed as a cape. I wondered, if I just ran for it would that do anything to throw her off? Probably not, but it was looking like a better and better idea.

“I, uh.”

She smirked. “Bruises like those should have stuck around for a couple of weeks. You were fine the next day.” She glared as if daring me to challenge her knowledge of facial contusions. “Also, you took that beating really well. Better than you should have.”

I desperately tried to come up with some explanation while also dealing with the implication of exactly why Aisha would have such a thorough understanding of those kinds of injuries. What the hell was I supposed to say? I heal fast? It wasn’t as bad as you thought? I had been sparring with Vince. By every metric my face should have been hamburger by the end of the night. I was probably only saved from worse speculation by the fact that everyone minded their own business at this gym. Everyone but the unusually observant daughter of the chief coach who was apparently badly underestimated by everyone who dealt with her.

She looked at my poorly concealed distress and smiled. “Your acne scars are gone.”

A hand flew up to my cheek before I could think to stop myself. I didn’t have the worst case of acne scarring, but there were some flare ups when I was a teenager that I didn’t manage as well as I could have. My fingers ran across smooth unblemished skin.

Light Alchemy did not deal with scarring, but medical nanites did. Boy did they ever. With the scale at which they worked breaking down and rebuilding collagen was trivial. My nanite healing is fairly precise and directed so it’s not like this is a default effect, but if you happen to be ramping up every nanite in your system in the hopes of being able to syphon off a decent amount the effects can get away from you. At this point I doubted there was a shred of my body that hadn’t seen some medical attention. The clearing up of years old pockmarks was probably the least of its effects.

Aisha’s expression had turned smug. She was clearly confident in this, and that was largely helped by the terrible job I was doing at covering things up. The part of this I didn’t get was why? Why was she confronting me? She wasn’t going to the Protectorate, or the gangs, or the press, though most of them wouldn’t touch a story about a cape’s identity. She was confronting me alone in a rapidly darkening street with nothing but implications about my durability and potential involvement in a federal crime.

“If I was a cape...” She grinned at that. “It probably wouldn’t be a good idea for you to confront me.”

“Right, because you’re SO dangerous.”

“Capes are dangerous. This city, the things that are out there, you have to be careful. If you tried this on the wrong person who knows what could end up happening.”

She gave me a critical look. “Are you telling me you’re dangerous?”

“If I was a cape I could be.” It was a paper thin denial of my status as a parahuman, but she didn’t even focus on that part.

“I’ve been coming to this place for two years. That ‘look out for Aisha’ thing you’ve been doing? You’re not close to the first. My Dad’s recruited dozens of guys to his little protection detail, and plenty of them were scum. Some of them, they just wanted an excuse to hurt people while feeling good about themselves. Some of them wanted to get on my Dad’s good side. Some of them just like the idea of having someone under their control. I’ve seen dangerous.”

Her stance was completely unthreatened and she gave me a look that made me feel uncomfortable. I’m not sure why, but for some reason her not considering me a threat felt vaguely insulting. I mean, I fought Oni Lee. I could hurt people. Her just making a blanket implication that I wouldn’t somehow felt intrusive. It was also a bit harrowing to think about the kinds of experiences that would build up confidence in that kind of ability to judge character.

I was at the point where a denial would do me no good, but at least I wasn’t going to admit to anything. Nothing was going to be accomplished here, and she didn’t seem to be pressing for any kind of extortion. “Look Aisha, you should get home. I doubt your father or brother would want you messing with capes.”

The look she gave me was complicated. “You never met my brother?”

“No, he’s never been here while I’ve been at the gym.” I hadn’t heard anything bad, but I wasn’t really here to gossip and hadn’t been a member for that long.

Aisha’s grin widened until it looked like it might split her face in half. “Right.” For some reason she seemed to be holding back a fit of giggles. “Well, I better get back to my brother. See you around Jozef.”

She sauntered off leaving me standing there hoping this wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass. Of all the people who could have figured out my secret identity... well okay, there were a lot of possibilities worse than Aisha, but at least with them I would know what to expect. I had no clue what that girl’s next move was going to be. She didn’t seem keen on exposing me, and didn’t have anything but incidental information. Enough to indicate I was a cape but nothing that would tie me definitively to what I’d done so far.

My passenger still liked her. In fact, he wasn’t really worried about this whole situation. Whatever she was likely to do, running to the Protectorate was probably not on the table. Also, I think I could safely eliminate the chance of her selling me out to the Empire. She also seemed way too comfortable with the idea of dealing with a cape. I knew she had a hard life, but how far into the parahuman side of things did that go?

I could find out. I had more technical knowledge than anyone in the city, probably even beating out Armsmaster at this point. Once I finished my computer upgrades I could tear through the joke of digital security that was human telecom networks and find any information I wanted.

Ok, that was another case of me thinking of conventional technology as ‘human’ and not including myself. I really needed to keep an eye on that. The knowledge from Master Builder wasn’t at risk of flooring me anymore, but there was no denying that is was from a decidedly mechanical perspective. Working with the technology of that power made it easy to fall into that mindset. I needed a way to remind myself. Maybe get a pickle jar and start putting quarters in it whenever I slipped up? I could call it the mental dysphoria jar.

Setting aside the obvious power related alterations to my mind, I needed to become more active in tracking what was going on in this city. I might be bribing analysis from Tattletale with criminally cheap medical care but that was too unreliable to be my sole source. If I had a better monitoring system I could probably have headed off some of the chaos in the city’s hero community, or at least been prepared for it. They might have tinker level security on cape related systems, but there’s no practical way to protect the entire internet, especially if I can get a serious computational set up.

For that I need to build a neural interface. I’ve had the theory for the technology since my Grease Monkey power, but now I actually have the capacity for it. Getting that rolled out would actually let me take advantage of the kind of hardware I can build, plus be a huge improvement for my A.I. development. I just need to make a series of sensors and transmitters delicate enough to target and read individual neurons along with an advance enough computer system to be able to map, process, and transmit data in a meaningful form.

Wow, a few days ago that would have been borderline impossible. Now it’s just a matter of doing the drudge work.

When I got back to my apartment Garment was still slowly typing responses into twitter. I half wondered if she was still working on the same tweet, but a glance confirmed she seemed to have adopted the policy of single word replies she’d been using for Youtube comments. It might seem a bit odd, but this was twitter. I’m pretty sure someone runs a joke account from the perspective of Armsmaster’s halberd. A glove account making single word statements to fashion tweets is basically par for the course.

I got a half-hearted wave as Garment continued slowly typing a reply to some account with a medusa head inside a circle for their profile picture. I left her to it and opened up my workshop.

The first thing I did was check on the nanite confinement. There was no degradation in the field strength and the nanites had maintained their integrity. It looked like this would actually work! I was a matter of days away from every nanite application I could ever want. I just had to keep maintaining the transfers.

On that note I prepped the chamber for extraction, grabbed the input port and activated my now restored nanites. I should have seen that detail with scarring coming, but it wasn’t like they could cause any more changes. This was just going to be a regular medical overhaul every time I attempted transfer. The ‘damage’ had been done and at this point it was at most a preventative measure against pathogens.

Once again my skin lit up with glowing blue circuitry with the lines on my hand bending towards the containment vessel. I stood there, counting down the time as the process would ran its course. After a few minutes the transfer petered out and I checked the progress. Once again it was successful and now I had a high enough concentration in the chamber to actually attempt some nanoassembly.

This was going to be delicate work. For one thing I hadn’t experimented with direct nanite control before. I had a solid understanding of the capabilities of the nanites, but there were so unfathomably many of them that wrapping my mind around the idea was a challenge. I basically had to avoid thinking about fine mechanics and only focus on objectives. Additionally I had to modify the containment chamber to give it access to raw materials. This had the risk of causing a containment failure and dispersal of nanites, but I was confident in my ability to make it work. It just meant I had another construction project before I could actually start the nanoassembly.

I elected to work directly in the containment vessel rather than try to manage a nanite transfer system. I was basically jury rigging most of this with the help of my Master Builder power and there was a lot of places things could go wrong. The easiest option turned out to be a pseudo airlock that I could attach to the vessel and use as an entry point for raw materials. Fortunately at an elemental level computer parts weren’t that difficult to source. The doping agents were more of a challenge than the silicon, but easy enough to acquire in the miniscule quantities I’d need.

It took some creativity and another couple of high powered magnets to manage everything, but eventually I managed to fully load my raw materials into the containment chamber. With some apprehension I laid my hand on the side of the vessel and concentrated. Glowing blue lines spread from my hand across the casing of the chamber. I could feel the multitudes of nanites floating inside the containment chamber. I could extend my will to them and direct their actions. I could feel them strip the materials down to their base elements. I could feel the assembly process begin, layer by layer of silicon wafers manifested at the atomic level. I could feel the exhilaration of controlling the world on a scale that to most people is just an abstract theoretical landscape. And I could feel the Celestial Forge move again because it had absolutely no sense of propriety.

I scrambled to stabilize my crafting as all the reach I had built was used to connect to a larger mote from the Size constellation, one the same strength as Master Builder or Nanite Removal and Control. It was called Hybridization Theory and the power let me literally combine two machines into one. I could basically mash a pair of disparate devices into a single functional mechanism with twice the power they had individually. It was mind boggling what this was capable of.

There were limits. Hybridizing something that I had already hybridized would get complicated to the point of probably not being worth it. Merging two items with independent A.I.s would just be asking for conflicts. If I tried to work on items of significantly different scales there could be issues with power distribution that would require extra work to resolve. Beyond that this was flawless. It was the perfect combination of the features of any two machines I could want without impacting size, weight, power use, or any aspect of their individual utility. I could combine a tank with a fighter jet and not lose any functionality or advantage of either form. 

This one power had effectively doubled the utility of everything I could make. Hell, if I just hybridized an item with a copy of itself I could instead just double the power of everything I made. I didn’t even need a separate machine, I could build the hybridization in from the start. It would even be less resource intensive than constructing both items independently.

I looked down at my current work, the largely awkward set up from my attempts to merge a nanite containment and fabrication chamber. This power naturally lent itself to combining vehicles, weapons, and other large scale machinery, but it was just as effective at small scale applications. Applications like allowing a containment chamber to function as a manufacturing facility without compromising the integrity or function of either device.

I focused on finishing the processor I had been working on. Knowing the equipment I could now be using made the previously wondrous process tedious. Yes, I was doing near atomic scale construction of what was a true tinker level microchip, but I could now see every extra step that would be eliminated when I was able to overhaul the containment unit. The inconvenient placement of resources, the poorly positioned assembly space, even the tedious manner I had to use to extract my finished product from the chamber.

I looked down at the square inch of plastic coated silicon wafers. It was a good processor, but it was mind boggling how much design and careful assembly had gone into such a tiny object. Despite my best efforts I hadn’t been able to get the transistors smaller than three nanometers. With my current supplies there were some limits I couldn’t break. Maybe I should move on to optical processors? They were a big step up from what I was working with, but a lot more difficult to integrate into conventional electronics.

Also my design powers had run a bit rampant when I was finishing the casing. Most microchips made due with a plain plastic casing and printed label. They typically didn’t have quite so much engraving in their design and I’m fairly certain the use of illuminated script for processor labels was against some standard industry practice.

I set the chip aside and got to work on my first hybridization project. It was strange watching this work with my level of technical knowledge. This appeared to be mechanically sound, but actually it was entirely facilitated by my power. Effectively it didn’t matter how different or contradictory the devices were, I would still be able to perfectly integrate them. That’s why stacking hybridizations wasn’t possible. In order for that to work I’d need to reverse engineer the first hybridization and somehow get it to function without my power facilitating things. It was possible but would get more difficult the further apart the machines were in function and principles. I could probably merge two guns, look at the result, and build something that would function without my power holding it together. That example of a combined tank and jet would be significantly more difficult. Also, the more I nested the hybridizations the more complicated figuring out the necessary engineering would be.

None of that was an issue for this project. In short order I had a successfully combined nanoforge and containment vessel. This was something I could probably have managed with some design work and careful assembly, but with my new power I could basically mash it together and call it a day. I could easily feed in raw materials for assembly and extract finished products without any of that nonsense with attached vacuum canisters. Right now the only limiting factor was nanite concentration and my ability to direct them.

The new apparatus neatly fit in with the other equipment of my workshop. Once again I was thankful that this place seemed happy to cover the power requirements of anything that counted as crafting equipment. Without that the electricity draw of the magnetic suspension field would have been crippling. It was easily the most advanced fabrication device I had access to, even if the build volume was barely a hundred cubic centimeters. I was limited to very small objects, but considering that I essentially had to direct nanites on an atomic scale I’m not sure I could handle anything bigger. Not until I managed to devise some kind of automated construction programing.

My nanites had nearly recovered from the previous transfer and loading a third allocation would make construction substantially easier. Eventually the limiting factor would shift from availability of nanites to my ability to direct them, but that was a ways off and there were some potential methods to address it. I would just have to maintain transfers as my nanites restored themselves, which could get tedious, but the results were well worth it.

A nudge from my passenger made me realize I had forgotten to eat dinner. Weirdly I wasn’t that hungry. Was that the nanite activations? I knew they cheated on conservation of mass and could work directly on chemical compounds. In theory they could restore a person’s blood sugar, available nutrients, and energy reserves. I hadn’t been thinking about it, but I hadn’t really been thinking about anything but activating as many nanites as possible. I had gotten kind of complacent thanks to my understanding of the principles at work rather than the practicalities.

On reflection I wasn’t feeling that burn in my muscles that I’d grown used to after a hard workout. I really needed to use my Laboratorium to start picking through exactly what this healing was doing to my body. Instant recovery was great, but there was a chance it would be effectively erasing the benefits of my workouts. It was too late for that now, but the next time I did a post workout healing blitz I needed to make sure I was under the best scanners I had.

Still, food was important. Even if my nanites were helping I didn’t want to rely on them until I knew exactly what was happening and any limitations or side effects they might cause. I slipped out of my workshop past Garment who half waved at me while continuing to type. I moved into my kitchenette and checked what I had available in terms of provisions. There was a stark divide between my earlier supplies of cheap high protein foods, beans, lentils, canned tuna, and plain yogurt, all blankly labeled generic brands in bulk portions, next to the set of brand name and flavorful foods I had splurged on after my first payment for criminal services.

A better person than me would probably feel some guilt or conflict over this. But that theoretical better person probably hadn’t been eating discount health food that tasted of wet cardboard for the better part of two weeks. I dove into the good food and felt no remorse.

Also, master level alchemy knowledge partially transfers to cooking skills. At this point I probably could have managed something decently appetizing even with my earlier ingredients, but with my ill-gotten quality food the result was positively succulent.

As I plated the results of my cooking spree I turned to find Garment waiting with her laptop held in front of her. I glanced at the screen and winced.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She excitedly tapped the open page, then gestured at me.

“Look, that’s a whole different beast from Twitter, much less Youtube. I know you’re excited, but maybe give yourself a bit more time to get used to things online before you try it.”

Her body language looked devastated and she made a forlorn motion towards the screen.

“Look, how did you even find that?”

She navigated to another tab. Okay, cape fashion Twitter accounts. That made sense. And wow, Garment had retweets? Who was retweeting single word commentary on fashion topics? Apparently cape fashion twitter accounts, obviously. Still, it seemed a bit odd even for social media.

Actually, checking her activity for the night she seemed to be handling herself fairly well. Considering how caustic these communities could get I was kind of impressed. I looked at the other tab and Garment’s expectant motions.

“Alright...” She looked positively electrified. “But you have to be careful. I mean you need to review full terms of service, community guidelines, don’t get into arguments. All that. And everything from before still applies, but even more so. No personal information or revealing details that could lead back to you.”

All through my lecture Garment was making excited gestures of affirmation. I sighed and started filling in the sign up form. I confirmed her email and updated her account with the picture from her Twitter profile. Just to be sure I brought up all the site rules and guidelines and went through them with her. Finally, it was all set and I was certain I had done everything I could to prevent this from ending in disaster. I loaded the up main page for her new account.

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.

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I handed over the Laptop and hoped for the best. Garment was practically skipping on her way back and settled in with a level of focus I hadn’t seen from her outside of clothing design and assembly. She was still typing with the speed of a glacier. It was kind of odd seeing such excited body language contrasting with the slow methodical searching for letters on the keyboard.

My cooking proved appealing enough for me to finish despite a lack of appetite. Afterwards I cleaned my dishes and made my way back to my workshop. The first thing I did was complete my fourth nanite transfer. Once this computer project was complete I needed to work to improve the efficiency and draw rate. It was still a novel experience, but I’m fairly sure after the twentieth time I had to spend three and a half minutes grabbing transfer conduits while focusing on activating every nanite in my system at the same time it would wear a bit thin.

Once that was completed I started work on my computer system. The night was getting on and I would probably have to put my alchemy work on hold until tomorrow. Those potions might be amazingly useful, but there was a serious time sink involved in getting to a place where I could make them without being discovered. The abandoned chemical factory remained the best idea I had, but it took a long time to make that walk. Taking my motorcycle had been my plan, but in that neighborhood I would probably attract less attention if I showed up in full cape costume.

Weirdly, that unmarked van the Undersiders boss had provided would be perfect for that application. That is, it would have been if it wouldn’t have exposed the location of my secondary base to a parahuman crime lord rather than just to the residents of one of the more run down areas of the Docks.

The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Clothing constellation as the transfer finally concluded. With four transfers worth of nanites and a proper assembly structure I was able to fabricate computer parts at a greatly accelerated rate. My Rationing power was still effective at the nano scale and was proving to be incredibly useful. A major portion of this kind of work involved stripping down other materials. Since I wasn’t working with pure elemental samples that meant I had to pick apart my feedstock to remove impurities or hunt for trace elements that I needed. Rationing let me make sure that any odd elements or useful compounds were properly squirreled away for later use. If you think that kind of thing is handy in vehicle manufacture imagine what happens when you’re working on an atomic scale.

The real problem with working at an atomic scale was, well, you were working at an atomic scale. I could construct incredibly advanced components, but the more complex they were the longer it took, especially if I was building anything bigger than a grain of sand. I was manually directing everything. Holding the complete plans for a processor in my mind was hard enough. Without external reference I just couldn’t manage construction of the more complex items I knew how to build. Actually, without the mechanical mindset that came with Master Builder I probably wouldn’t have been able to manage this at all.

I could still handle assembly of processors, sensors, and various computer components. With some creative integration with the server parts I still had available and a bit of abuse of my latest power I was able to complete a combined computational core/neural interface. The work took long enough that I was able to make another transfer of nanites before I finished and it was close to midnight when I finally finished everything.

Despite the somewhat improvised and rushed job the project came together well. With my style powers it basically looked like a chrome throne positioned to overlook my workshop. Decadence had more than saved my rough work from looking anyway sloppy or unpolished, and that wasn’t even counting the effects Bling of War and Stylish Mechanic were having. The point was that I now had a properly powerful central computer for my base, not that human crap I’d had to work with before.

Okay, that was another one. Probably time to start putting quarters in a jar.

Alien mindsets aside I had a proper mind-machine interface directly hybridized with the most powerful system I could build. That is, could build without getting into exotic physics applications. It was close to the level of those ancient church computers from my Laboratorium and much less creepy. There was still a little creep factor with the read/write access the thing had with the brain of anyone who sat in it, but that was the point. Proper speed-of-thought access to a digital system.

It was late and I needed sleep, but there was no way I was going to leave testing this until the morning. I climbed into the seat and started the neural mapping. It was a complicated process even with how technically advanced the system was. I had a conventional interface to help guide things and was working in machine code to build the framework that would let me directly access the computer with my mind.

Process came in a series of flashes. I was effectively writing and reading directly to my brain, an insanely dangerous process for anyone who didn’t know what they were doing. Each calibration triggered a bout of synesthesia where I could suddenly hear the color purple or thought the room smelled like a fog horn. But with each flash I felt the connection grow deeper and more substantial until the room fell away and suddenly I was existing as a computer system.

The difference between building the interface and computer core separately and combining them with my Hybridization Theory power was immediately apparent. This wasn’t directing commands to the system, it was like the entire computer was an extension of my body. I could feel every process running and sense its connections to every other system in the workshop and apartment, from the still running driving simulations on my motoroid to Garment’s continued meandering through cape forums. If I could scale this interface down to a reasonable size I would be able to assume direct control of any vehicle I could create like it was my own body.

I needed to check on the development of my Fleet program and this was the best space to do that. I partitioned a section of processing resources and connected with the now laughably primitive control system piloting my bike. I was able to gain remote access through a virtual environment and see how the software was developing. I immediately found a major problem.

In a world where any tinker can churn out a shockingly well programed drone most people wouldn’t expect there to still be a place for robotics engineering. Most people think that about science in general and are kind of blind to the fact that conventional technology advancement continues even when people are building laser guns and teleporters in their garages. Trying to get an actual non-tinker robot to develop certain skills can be challenging, particularly when you leave exploits in the environment for them to take advantage of. Try to teach a robot to avoid obstacles and it starts driving in a way where its sensors can’t detect collisions. Train it to pick up green marbles and it will find a way to point its optical sensor at its own power LED. Those kinds of blind stupid exploits are all over the place and my A.I. had found its way into one.

It was designed to simulate piloting a bike effectively. It was also responsible for programing the test environment it was using to run simulations. In short it had managed to learn to perfectly drive a motorcycle without crashing provided it was on a perfectly flat straight road that was about fifty thousand miles long.

This was probably a consequence of leaving the program running without input for so long. With the processing resources of the core computer I could accelerate development, but there was still the problem of it potentially optimizing along another stupid path. It needed some kind of counter agent to actually drive improvement.

And I needed data management resources. Maybe this could present a solution to both problems. I set aside the Fleet A.I. and started work on a new neural network. It was basically a survey program, designed to analyze and simulate environments. I could initially feed it map data for it to create virtualizations of roadways for the Fleet program. It would help the other program’s pathfinding development, and prevent those errors that grew in isolation.

The work came together slowly, but in many ways better than when I had set the basis for my fleet program. I was working with a lot more technical knowledge at this point and was able to make subtle optimizations that it was too late to include in the other program. It started basically, with a generation of flat 2D maps for the Fleet A.I. to develop on, simple geometric shapes. Eventually the two programs were playing off of each other with Survey designing simplified models of entire cities with rough three dimensionality and Fleet picking its way through them.

The development was fascinating to watch. Survey was pulling data continuously and starting to extrapolate details from incomplete sources, generating estimated road conditions and visibility estimates. Fleet was massively improving as well, actually stressing its handling and navigation skills.

I was in the middle of all of it. Incredibly I could practically sense the development of both programs and the feel of the artificial world being constructed around me. It was easy to get caught up in the sensations, but eventually the exposure became uncomfortable. There was an off-putting sense of motion, and disorientation in something like a rhythmic sense, almost as if I was being shaken.

Hold on.

I disconnected from the interface to find a frantic Garment standing over me. Concern spiked as I took in her appearance. I had never seen her this upset. It wasn’t just the way she was moving. There was a slight delay in the way her clothing synchronized with her glove movements. It was like she was having trouble literally holding herself together.

“Garment? What’s wrong?” She made some frantic gestures towards the workshop exit and I followed her trembling form as she led the way back to the apartment. I quickly checked my watch. 3:34am. Somehow I had completely lost track of time while connected to the system. What could have happened while I was out of it?

There was no obvious sign of disruption when I exited the workshop. The apartment looked fine, but Garment was frantically gesturing towards the laptop sitting on my old desk. I approached and immediately saw the source of her distress.

You are currently logged in, GarmentGloves

You have twenty six infractions and seven warnings.

Infraction categories include:

(Spam)

(Zero Content Posts)

(Bad Faith Arguments)

(Trolling)

(Failure to observe moderator warnings)

(Failure to follow thread guidelines)

You have received a two week global ban. You may not post, comment, or send personal messages during this time. Your ban expires on April 29, 2011. Your probationary status expires in 90 days, on July 14, 2011.

You have been permanently banned from the following boards:

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You have been permanently banned from the following threads:

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If you wish to contest this ban you may appeal to a moderator

In the reply field Garment had started typing something, but had apparently given up to come get me. The only thing there was a brief string of letters spelling out “I M SORRY”.

I looked over the list of bans and infractions, then at Garment’s distraught and much more importantly disheveled appearance.

“All right,” I sighed and gave her a tired smile. “Let’s see what we can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Hybridization Theory (Zoids: Legacy) 400:  
> So one day you had a bit of spare time after your daily Zoid admiration hour. After taking a close look at your favorite Gojulas and your favorite Mad Thunder, you decided that if the Gojulas could wield the Mad Thunder's Magnesser Drills like an arm weapon, you could probably reenact that scene from the show you watched two days back on the professor's hi-def television.  
> Those mechanics can slap on parts and scavenge however they like. You can literally merge two machines together into one, with twice the processing power as before. Mind you, Zoids typically won't respond well to suddenly sharing a body with another core and another mind, but you'll have ethical uses for this...right?  
> For most mundane machinery, you don't need any power source besides your own, but be careful that should you make your machine too big, the internal power supply might not be enough to feed it.


	18. 14 Debut

I might have signed up for an argument with forum mods at an hour so late it might technically count as early, but seeing Garment literally pull herself together in response made it worth the trouble. I just had to figure out how she had managed to cause this many problems in a few hours.

As I loaded her posting history I felt the Celestial Forge pull the Vehicle constellation towards me and connect to one of the smaller motes called Fingers of Silver. It was essentially reverse engineering on steroids and would let me understand and copy the inner workings of any technology I could get my hands on. Well, provided it was actual technology and not something facilitated by parahuman powers. More advanced tinker tech would be difficult to analyze, but with my other technical powers and my Laboratorium it would be considerably easier.

That was something to deal with later. For now I had to try to sort out this mess. I started by looking through Garments posting history. There was a lot of it. It looked like she had been posting pretty much continuously since I had set up the account. There was a delay between posts, but that seemed to be based on typing speed and her ability to find content and navigate between forums. Other than that she just hadn’t stopped.

Looking at some of her earlier posts they seemed to be met with bemusement and the odd positive comment or question. The problems started when she began posting on more active forums or people tried to engage her directly. PHO was a great site, but the quote/reply set up wasn’t as good as it could have been. On an active thread someone would question Garment, then there would be a half dozen posts before she would be able to reply. This led to the reply being misconstrued, which would lead to Garment correcting herself, once again after a pile of posts that changed the tone of the conversation and turned would have been a fairly reasonable reply to something either nonsensical or provocative.

Things got worse in private messages. Garment did not like using more than one word replies, so when people started messaging her directly the conversations usually went badly. Early stuff seemed lighthearted enough with people engaging on fashion topics and asking for single word evaluations, but when people started with serious questions and just got the same there were a few meltdowns, both in her PMs and in the threads.

That was around the time the warnings started. There were accusations of her being a bot or just trolling, and her efforts to counter them were as hampered as any other part of her communication. Eventually the mods stepped in. She had actually gotten some people riled up to the point where threads were locked or specific rules were put in place. Following that there were direct messages that she hadn’t been able to answer sufficiently, followed by the ban.

It was exactly the kind of shit storm I had been worried about, though Garment had managed to pull it off in record time. I felt a little guilty since I had been dead to the world while Garment had been trying desperately to defend herself. Also I had been fully merged with a computer at the time. I had at least passive awareness that Garment was still posting, but I hadn’t paid attention to exactly what was happening. It wasn’t a question of respecting privacy, I had dumped her into the deep end and left her to sink upon her failure to swim.

The worst part was knowing there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to patch this up. I didn’t have a lot of experience with online forums but I knew this kind of thing was pretty much poison for a new member. At this point anyone who didn’t think she was a bot probably assumed she was trolling the board with a disposable account.

I looked over at Garment’s nervous movements. She was actually wringing her gloves as she watched me go through her posting history. I gave her the most reassuring smile I could manage and started typing in the reply field.

GarmentGloves:

Hello, this is Garment’s friend. I want to express her apology for what happened on the forum. Garment has significant communication difficulties and didn’t intend to cause any disruption. I have reviewed her posting history and I believe she was sincerely trying to follow the forum guidelines and moderator instructions but was unable to effectively convey her intent.

I helped Garment set up her account earlier tonight and did not check on her until she informed me of the current situation. I should have been more attentive of her actions to prevent something like this from happening so I would like to offer my own apology as well.

This forum and online interaction has become a very important outlet for Garment. She was extremely distraught by the sudden suspension and the permanent ban from topics she is passionate about. If there is any way to alleviate the restrictions I assure you I will work with Garment to help ensure there is no repeat of tonight’s events. Thank you for your consideration.

P.S. The following message is all Garment was able to compose before she came to me for help.

I M SORRY

I couldn’t bring myself to delete Garment’s typing. I just hope it doesn’t come across as manipulative. With the message sent I sat with Garment as we watched her inbox. I had heard about how vigilant the mods on this forum are, so there was a good chance of getting a ruling even this late at night. The fact that they had consolidated so many violations against Garment rather than leave things for a later ruling shows that.

Sitting there refreshing the page made the minutes seem like hours. Finally a message appeared in the inbox. Garment froze in anticipation as I loaded it.

Tin_Mother:

Thank you for your sincere appeal. I would like to express my sympathy for your situation. Unfortunately given the number of complaints filed and a lack of supporting evidence I have no choice but to uphold the ban. Upon the end of the two week period I will be willing to revisit the possibility of access to some of the permanently banned boards subject to moderator review.

I let out a breath. That was about as bad as I feared. Garment slumped beside me, almost deflating. I skimmed through the list of infractions and warnings again and reviewed the specific complaints. This was a mess. There was basically no chance of getting this resolved with what I could communicate through personal messages.

My eyes fell on the laptop’s built in camera, then swung over to Garment. That was an idea. Was it a good idea? Who the hell knew, it was nearly four in the morning and I’d spent most of the night thinking like a computer.

Okay, seriously consider this. It would resolve this issue. It would get Garment back on the forum, if not completely unbanned than at least engaged. And it would effectively give PHO a cape account, and those were always popular.

Downsides? It would mean announcing a ‘cape’ to the world. That would attract attention, but nothing as bad as what I had done for myself. Also, announcing like this would spare Garment any association with the baggage I’d built up for my own debut.

“Garment, if there was a way to fix this, but it would mean a lot more attention and scrutiny, would you be okay with that?” She immediately perked up. Oh yeah, asking Garment if she was alright with attention was kind of a no brainer. Was I okay with this? It would let Garment be her own person, and that was important. Besides, it was Garment.

Additionally, I was getting an uncertain but somewhat positive impression from my passenger regarding Tin_Mother. Not enough to completely bank on, but definitely no warning signs. I wondered if the rumors about tinkers working as mods for PHO carried any weight. The reaction wasn’t the deciding factor, but it provided a comforting level of reassurance. I opened the message and started composing a reply.

GarmentGloves:

Thank you for your sympathy. If we were able to present evidence of the reason behind Garment’s communication problems would that be enough to reconsider the ban?

Tin_Mother:

That would depend heavily on the nature of the evidence. Please don’t feel the need to share any private or medically confidential information over this matter.

I looked to Garment and got an encouraging and hopeful gesture.

GarmentGloves:

If you could temporarily remove the ban Garment would like to post a video explaining her situation.

Tin_Mother:

I am willing to unblock a single board. Please note if this privilege is abused your ban may be extended permanently.

Garment put a glove on my shoulder as I typed the reply.

GarmentGloves:

Thank you. Please unblock General ► Cape Culture ►Cape Introductions

Tin_Mother:

One moment.

There was a period of interminable waiting before the next message arrived.

Tin_Mother:

Your connection is reasonably secure. Please continue. Note that abuse of the Cape Introductions board can result in permanent suspension of account.

Well, that was slightly concerning. Maybe what they say about PHO moderators lived up to the hype.

A short time later I was sitting with Garment in front of the freshly loaded and unlocked board hosting a newly posted thread and the first one from GarmentGloves. Despite everything I had done to check things and make sure the transfer went through properly Garment was still a bundle of nerves. She probably would be until she saw the video on the site.

I navigated to the first and only post and loaded the video, which was the full sum of the post’s contents. The video began to play, showing the limited resolution and framerate of the built in webcam. I could have managed so much better, to the tune of a tiny 4k 60fps video camera churned out with a minute’s effort from my nano forge. That would have been too much. This was going to attract enough attention without Garment suddenly having access to movie studio level equipment. The webcam was recognizable as such and gave the production the improvised edge that lent sincerity to this situation.

It was the same reason this had been shot in front of the wall of my apartment rather than in a custom built set inside my workshop. My powers may have been able to assemble the ideal environment for this purpose, but in this case the ideal environment was one that didn’t look over-produced. That hadn’t stopped Garment from dressing it up slightly with some suspended drapes bordering the shot. They nicely framed the image of Garment as she stood in her evening dress and white opera gloves and waved at the camera. She made some conciliatory gestures that had an apologetic air to them. Then she raised a glove and fabric began to float around her.

I had insisted that she not show her manifestation of any supplies. Explaining the mechanism would get confusing and lead people to believe she could freely produce her materials. It was easier to avoid a misconception than try to correct one.

Even without her spinning cloth out of thin air the display was breathtaking. Everything had been prepared around her so as needed thread and cloth flew up to be integrated into her work with perfect surgical precision. Garment had embraced the opportunity for her debut with a level of flair I had never seen from her before. There were elaborate flourishes, careful placement of materials to create elaborate patterns before they were integrated into the work, and even a certain rhythmic timing to the entire endeavor. It was like watching the seamstress equivalent of a master hibachi chef at work.

It wasn’t just flash either. There was a certain pride displayed in what was she doing that you only got from master craftsmen. I could tell the times she slowed down her work to make it clear exactly what was happening, the type of stitch she was using, the paneling, the fabric compositions. It didn’t come across perfectly due to the limits of the webcam. The resolution left a lot to be desired as did its ability to change focus. Still both the level of skill at work and the sense of pride in the act was conveyed loud and clear.

Everything came together with the grandeur of an orchestrated finale. Disparate pieces were aligned and joined with perfect seams, details fell into place, and the entire item went from a complex and confusing assembly to a finished piece of clothing in an instant. All the tiny bits of workmanship from the entire process unified into a single beautiful finished product.

Garment had made a jacket. It was one of those formal looking half jacket things that go with evening dresses. There was probably a proper term for it, but I was still largely fashion illiterate. It was white with an elaborate border and embroidery. The sleeves were short enough to not quite reach the tops of Garment’s gloves in their opera form and she was able to smoothly slip into the coat. It fit perfectly with the rest of her outfit, matching the color pallet, style, and level of formality.

Most importantly the boarder coloring and embroidery matched the pallet of the PHO forums. It was blatant pandering, but that was exactly the point of this endeavor. PHO wasn’t exactly a force in the cape world, but it was an important source of information and a representation of public perception. More than a few news articles pulled directly from the PHO wiki and the forums were largely considered the best feedback medium for the general public. Making a good first impression here would be important if Garment was going to be able to operate as her own cape.

The next part of the video was the important part that would explain this mess. Garment bent down out of frame and picked up one of the spare laptops. I had loaded it with a word processor with large font that was easily visible even with the limitations of the webcam. With great seriousness she began picking through the keyboard for individual keys.

H...E...L...L...O

Garment once again had to search through the keyboard to find the letter L after she had just typed it. After the word was complete she stared at the keyboard, considered things carefully, and then finally found the spacebar. Following that she began typing again.

P...H...O

The level of pride and excitement upon finishing her message was borderline unbelievable. She turned and presented the laptop screen to the camera and enthusiastically waved as the video concluded. So there it was, Garment’s debut to cape society. She had beat me out, officially, and I needed to come up with something soon if I didn’t want to end up with that greed demon cape name.

This would have repercussions, but I could deal with them. I would deal with them. It was clear she needed more points of contact than I could manage, and operating through what was regarded as the most secure forum in the world was a good place to start.

I felt the Celestial Forge again, this time bringing the Knowledge constellation within reach. The mote I connected with was an odd one. It was a cluster of twelve motes each the size of the smallest ones in the constellation and each representing a different category of information. The entire cluster was called Skills and the one I was able to link to was Physics. It provided an incredible comprehensive understanding of not just conventional physics but high level principles of gravity, matter & energy, and even quantum phenomena.

Like with many of my skills I wondered if some of these high level aspects were actually part of the universe or if they were facilitated by my power. This didn’t provide any new technology, but applications of the principles opened up everything from faster than light communication and travel, advanced holography, force fields, weapon systems, instant matter assembly, and even effective teleportation. It would take some work to sort out the engineering, but there was an incredible wealth of potential here.

It also provided a solid grounding in research and analysis. It wasn’t just knowledge, it was an understanding of how those principles were discovered and how to analyze new unknown phenomena. That was a boon both to my other technical skills and any efforts for analysis of other technology or parahuman effects.

An announcement from Garment’s inbox broke me out of my contemplation, revealing another message from the moderator. I quickly opened it.

Tin_Mother:

Thank you for that sincere and impressive introduction. I do not have the authority to remove all aspects of Garment’s ban at this time but I will maintain her access to the Cape Introduction thread. With your permission, and based on her posting history I will open a cape discussion thread in the Brocton Bay Capes board. Also, while there is no obligation and this will not influence your appeal status, I would appreciate it if you could answer some questions about Garment’s situation and your relationship with her. Capes in a vulnerable situation, particularly those with non-human features or limitations are often subject to exploitation. It would be beneficial if I could head off any community fears around this subject.

I looked over at Garment. It wasn’t a full reversal, but it was something, and probably a path towards getting her access back. Also, the mod seemed to be coming from a place of genuine concern, which was encouraging. At my questioning look Garment gave a gesture of consent and I started drafting a reply.

GarmantGloves:

It’s my intention to keep Garment as safe and happy as possible. I would be willing to field any questions that would not compromise her security or privacy.

Tin_Mother:

Thank you. How did you first meet Garment?

Well, I should stick as close to the truth as possible. It’s not like weirder things didn’t happen in this world.

GarmantGloves:

She appeared outside of where I work. Then she insulted my fashion sense and everything I was wearing.

Garment actually seemed proud of herself when I typed that.

Since then I have tried to provide her with material for her projects and access to safe forms of communication. She is both passionate and highly skilled regarding clothing and fashion principles and I’ve done my best to facilitate her.

Tin_Mother:

When she appeared did Garment have any level of memory loss? Additionally does she have a mark resembling a stylized U or C anywhere on her body?

She was checking about Case 53s. I remembered reading that actual proper Case 53 capes were much less common than parahumans with altered features, but the terms were used almost interchangeably by the public.

GarmentGloves:

Garment hasn’t demonstrated any desire to share information about her past. I don’t know if this is related to her memory, communication difficulties, or if it is simply not a concern for her. I am not aware of her having any markings of the type you described or otherwise.

Tin_Mother:

Thank you. Finally, with the skill level she was able to demonstrate there will certainly be people attempting to contact Garment regarding business prospects. Given concerns over exploitation I would like to temporarily block incoming private messages to this account and provide you with some material on guidelines and programs for capes with Rogue classifications.

Additionally, I feel I should ask if you believe you are able to provide the necessary support for Garment given the issues she has demonstrated. I can put you in contact with organizations specializing in assistance for parahumans in similar situations.

Well, it was nice of her not to come out and accuse me of taking advantage of Garment. Still, independent operation and Rogue status would be a good fit for Garment, and there would be a flood of PMs for any confirmed cape. I should take her up on the first offer at least.

GarmentGloves:

I believe it would be good to block PMs until Garment has established a plan for how she wishes to proceed with her cape status and business policies. I will be working with Garment to address the issues that led to tonight’s misunderstanding and don’t believe any additional support will be necessary, but thank you for your offer.

Tin_Mother:

Acknowledged. Please contact me if you need any support. I will be happy to direct you to the relevant agencies and organizations.

I leaned back and let out a breath. Beside me Garment was a mixture of excitement and apprehension.

“I think it will be alright. PHO loves cape interactions. They’ll definitely roll back the restrictions once this gets out. We just have to give them some time.”

I failed to suppress a yawn as Garment made anxious gestures towards the computer. That reminded me.

“Let me see what I can do with this laptop. There’s no reason for you to be stuck with a retail model anymore.”

Once again I was struck between being objectively impressed by the technological advancement of my upgrades and how frustrating it was to be unable to build what I knew I was capable of, instead reduced to realigning human computational frameworks.

Okay, that’s it. I’m starting that jar retroactively. Four quarters in it and maybe then I’ll be able to get a handle on this.

The point was that despite the quality of what I could build I was still working with technological architecture of a conventional nature, the species which built that technology not being relevant to this line of thinking. Shifting to optical processing would be a big step up, particularly with what my latest batch of knowledge allowed me to do with isolinear circuitry. The problem was none of that would directly interface with the technology what-is-common-in-this-world so I’d have to build everything from scratch. The best option would be working with multidimensional processors, but that wasn’t possible without at least trace amounts of cybertonium for key junctions.

At this point I couldn’t even build a proper datatrax. The new laptop’s storage drive could barely hold half a petabyte of rapid access flash memory, and that wasn’t even getting into the compromises I’d had to make in terms of processing power or battery life. I was able to make up for some of it with hybridization builds, but I honestly felt bad handing this over.

Garment had been waiting patiently as I worked, doing her best to conceal her anxiety over the situation in general and her laptop in particular. The forge missed another connection to the Knowledge constellation as I put the finishing design touches on the computer. Bling of War let me personalize it to Garment’s style and Decadence ensured the workmanship was impeccable. Her reaction to the engraved and filigreed computer casing was the most positive I’d seen since this mess began.

Now came the hard part, attempting to give Garment a typing lesson. I started with basic finger placement and a keyboard guide, but that got nowhere. She would still check each letter before typing it and seemed to have trouble remembering placements with respect to her fingers. Online typing guides and mnemonic devices proved useless and just resulted in frustration as Garment struggled to decipher them.

That was when I decided to get creative. Unfortunately creative doesn’t mean effective. I thought I was being clever with the modified keyboard that had cloth swatches on the keys for telekinetic manipulation. All that resulted in was avoiding the time for the key to be pressed by a glove instead of telekinesis. The search time was exactly as bad. I didn’t understand how she could read language and understand speech but had so much trouble with writing. Then again I had no idea how she sensed the world or what her thought process was like. The results of these efforts were proving there was a much more significant barrier than I had anticipated.

The cloth type keyboard didn’t help. A color coded keyboard didn’t help. A customized alphabetical layout didn’t help. I was about ready to try putting together some kind of visual alphabet like you find on the walls of a kindergarten, only with fashion concepts instead of pictures of farm animals when I realized I’d been approaching this the wrong way.

I could try to work with Garment to overcome whatever was causing this through her own effort and with supporting equipment, but what she really needed was help. The easiest thing to set up would be an autocomplete, but those could easily go wrong and I didn’t ever want to risk a repeat of tonight. She needed an assistant and fortunately I had just began development of a data management program.

The laptop was cobbled together crap, but it should be able to run a truncated fork of my data management and survey program. It would have the benefit of allowing development in linguistic skills while providing more support than any autocomplete would be capable of. Anyway, Garment deserved an assistant.

I left Garment to admire the aesthetics of her laptop and moved to my computational throne. Once again the world fell away and I was part of the computer system. I reached out to the partition where my Survey and Fleet programs were engaged in their optimization and development routine and opened my mind to it.

Suddenly I was standing by a river on a bright summer day. I could feel the humidity in the air, the slight breeze blowing off the water, and the sunlight dappled between occasional clouds. In the distance the iconic shape of the Eifel tower rose over the city of Paris. I could see boats on the river and pedestrians milling around, taking in the weather. And in the distance the beginning of a symphony of engine sounds.

An entire pack of vehicles peeled past me at clearly unsafe speeds. It was a mix of sports cars, roadsters, six types of motorcycles and what looked like a small hovercraft trailing behind. They wove around each other and the obstacles of the road in a bid to claim the lead before swerving down a side street leaving nothing but the sounds of their engines and the screech of tires.

I pulled back from the surface level of the simulation and examined the code beneath it. Fleet was simultaneously piloting multiple vehicles through an environment being generated in real time by Survey. The entire city wasn’t modeled, just areas relevant to the track with the visuals of the rest of the landscape approximated based on internet research and iterative simulations. Factors like road surface, visibility, directional glare, air resistance, even wind and humidity were being calculated. From Fleets side the program was simulating multiple vehicles at the same time while also piloting them through the course and responding to changes in conditions. It looked like the different vehicles were approximated from available specifications with their performance extrapolated using the data from the day’s drive.

Both programs were working in competition, but were also collaborating to a greater deal than I expected. Pretty much the full sensor records of the day being used as a true to life reference point for the simulations. The programs weren’t really advanced enough to express any agency, but there was a desire for more practical data in order to improve their simulation development. I provided them with a timeline for the next probable excursions and some commentary on their simulation records, which already included a half dozen cities and six times as many vehicles.

The development was impressive, but it would soon reach the limit of their processing capabilities and be reduced to optimization cycles. That was regrettably by design since unrestrained A.I. was one of the biggest black list technologies out there. If it didn’t bring down the Protectorate on my head it could easily draw the attention of the Endbringers. It meant I would have to do staged upgrades and guide both development and any copies to be generated rather than allow them free agency. At this point it was barely a concern as both programs were too primitive to handle anything beyond their initial parameters, and just barely that.

Still, the Survey program was functioning well and would be able to assist Garment much better than any level of autocorrect. I adjusted the objectives and created a truncated copy running in parallel with an update link to the core program. After a final review I disconnected from the interface and went to check on Garment.

She was idly playing with the assorted pieces of my planned costume redesign. With everything that had happened our joint project had completely slipped my mind. I made a note to make sure to follow up with that assembly but focused on introducing Garment to the new interface. There was still a bit of work to that. Survey had access to her entire posting history, including Youtube, Twitter, and PHO. Upon the first letter typed the program was able to start making suggestions. Unfortunately Garment had a bit of trouble indicating when the suggestion was correct. I ended up adding an extra button to the computer solely for the purpose of signaling the survey program. I watched Garment work on the new system. It was still painfully slow to start, but at least she didn’t need to type the entire word before Survey was able to narrow down what she was going for.

I quickly checked PHO. The ban was still in place with the exception of the introductory thread. Despite the stupid hour that post had already seen some traffic.

“Alright, you should be safe sticking with this thread. Be careful and see how things go. I’m going to get some sleep.”

Garment made a series of grateful gestures and waved me off as I left the Workshop to try to get some rest. When I opened the door to the entry way I saw that Garment had returned my mattress to the floor. I also saw that she had assembled a complete set of new bedlinens, pillows, and comforters that looked like they would be more appropriate in an imperial court. The opulence was in stark contrast with the fact that the entire assembly was sitting flat on the floor without even a bedframe holding it up.

I glanced back at Garment who broke her attention from the computer to make shooing gestures towards me. With a sigh I got changed and slipped into bed. The new sheets were smooth and unbelievably comfortable. It was like being embraced by clouds and I felt kinks in my back I had barely been aware of, likely the result of hours on that interface throne, begin to unspool themselves. The stress was just melting off me and I could feel the fog of blissful sleep settle over my mind.

Which was exactly when my watch alarm went off, signaling the time for my morning run.

I considered a lot of things as I lay in bed with my watch buzzing at me. I considered if my earlier commitment to an exercise routine was that well placed. I considered if this cape business was actually worth the trouble if it resulted in what was now three six o’clocks in the same day. I considered the existence of Noctus capes and the massive injustice they represented. I considered the various theoretical temporal manipulation technologies I was now aware of and whether a few extra hours of sleep on demand would be worth risking irreparable damage to the space time continuum. In my current mindset I was leaning heavily towards a yes on that last question.

Eventually the strength of routine overwhelmed all other objections and I peeled myself out of bed and into my workout clothes. Coffee, toast, run. The coffee and toast part took longer than it should have and involved considerably more coffee, but I got myself out the door.

I made it half way down the steps when I realized I had left my workshop open. Well, it wasn’t that bad. Garment was there and I at least trusted Fleet to be able to intercept intruders at this point. Also the chances of a break in were fairly low given the look of the apartment and the presence of better targets in literally every direction. If I had sealed the workshop that would have cut off network access to everyone inside, meaning Garment would have had to move to the apartment and Fleet and Survey would lose access to reference data. It should be fine as long as I made this run fast.

That was actually the deciding factor in why I had chosen to stick to my schedule. I needed reference data for what my nanites did when I triggered a mass activation for transfer. Mass activations for transfers like the ones I’d forgotten to do through the night and before I left. Needed to watch out for that. It would be hard enough to assemble that nanite colony even if I adhered to a perfect schedule. Miss too many and that week could easily turn into months of work.

In order to get a good sense of how the nanites treated damage due to exercise I needed to perform an activation under a scanner following the harshest workout I could manage. That was why I was abandoning my usually measured pace in exchange for a speed usually reserved for cases of pursuit by large carnivorous predators. In short I was booking it like my life depended on it.

It nicely set me apart from all the happy Saturday joggers who looked so thrilled to be out in the stabbing sunlight of the hour of the damned. I don’t like this time of day when I see it from the front. Coming at it from the back adds a whole other element of disgust. Thankfully my desperate blitz of a pace blew past the casual morning canter of those mad people.

I deliberately ignored any claps or cheers of approval that came my way. I don’t need the endorsement of anyone who endures this time of day by choice.

I maintained the pace along the road to the bay, for the north leg of the Boardwalk, and nearly back to the midpoint before I crashed badly. It snuck up on me, but suddenly there was just nothing left in the tank. That ended with me half collapsed on a bench, soaked with sweat, and panting like my life depended on it.

Despite the less than noble posture it seemed if you were wearing nice workout clothes you were allowed to lounge on the Boardwalk while trying to figure out if your lugs had actually exploded, or just felt like they did. I even got some more of those encouraging looks from the early morning joggers. God I hated them. Stop being friendly! I’m not one of you!

It turned out to be something of a blessing that I was sitting down because the Celestial Forge circled around again, once again bringing the Size constellation into reach. My power connected to a similar mote to my previous one, but this was only two motes clustered rather than twelve. I had enough reach to secure connections with both of them at which point I found out exactly what they were and was very glad that I had not been sprinting at a mad pace when this hit me.

Certain motes had a kind of similar feel to them. For instance, any motes clustered together had a similar association. It was less common, but there were motes that weren’t connected that had a sense of familiarity. Fingers of Silver and Bling of War had some association, but I had no idea what it was. My latest power had a similar relationship, but the nature of it was blindingly obvious.

The motes were called Science! Mechanics and Science! Engineering and they were the same kind of power as Master Builder. Where that power had been a civilization’s worth of technology these two contained the theory and principles behind it. With these two powers I had a crazy mechanical society’s equivalent of a PhD in both topics. The raw information had been hard to deal with. This power brought insight, nuance, and experience. There was less information but it was so much richer that I had to struggle to keep my mind straight. It made me long for the feeling of my neural interface and the sensation was made so much worse by the way my legs and lungs were currently screaming at me.

I did my best to push aside the perspectives that were making my current existence an unfamiliar sensation and focused on what I would be able to do with these powers. Master Builder had been an incredible ability, but I was limited to the applications of technology as it presented them. My new abilities gave insight into the theory and development behind that technology. I could actually come up with workarounds for some of the obstacles and resource constraints I’d been suffering under. It would be enough for me to develop my own new branch of applications rather than use standard configurations or jury rigged human technology.

Okay, not that I needed reminding here, but that’s five quarters total for the jar. I committed to set it up as soon as I got back and worked to pull myself off the bench. Despite the difficult mental state I managed a stable jogging pace on the way back to my apartment. As I ran I reviewed the mental shifts I was dealing with. Previously I had danced around this issue with terms like inhuman mindset or mechanical perspective, but at this point there was no reason to be coy. This shit had come from robots.

I had the technology and science of an entire civilization of space age robots floating through my head. I didn’t really know what to make of that. This was a serious step away from just having an abnormal tinker power. It was full on alien conspiracy stuff. Between the Celestial Forge and the reality of multiple universes that we all lived with it shouldn’t be that hard to believe, but there’s a big difference between something as a concept and having that something as part of your own personal experience. I did my best to hold on to the mantra of the Celestial Forge. Fiat backed. It just works. That would be a lot easier to accept if I wasn’t trying to parse personal lived experience of a robotic existence at the moment.

I made it back to my apartment drenched in a layer of sweat that wasn’t entirely due to the intensity of my workout. The first thing I did was dig out an old jar, currently holding various pens and small knickknacks. I dumped them into a random drawer and set the jar on the counter of the kitchenette. This might be an empty gesture, but I needed to keep an eye on this thing. One after another five quarters dropped into the jar. The act actually made me feel a little better about the whole situation.

I hoped I wouldn’t run into any powers in the forge with worse mental effects than this, but some of those motes were terrifyingly powerful. Something that strong acting directly on my mind would have a serious impact no matter what my hopes were. I just had to deal with it. Already the new information was becoming less distracting. I didn’t know about long term effects, but that’s what the jar was for. That’s right, I might have a cosmic power warping my mind in a way I couldn’t control or understand, but I also have a jar of coins!

Sarcasm is damn essential for stress management and anyone who says otherwise is a filthy liar.

Before I moved to the Laboratorium to carry out the point of this whole endeavor I went to check on Garment. She was still typing on her laptop in the workshop, only now she would type two or three letters, check the screen, then press the approve button. It wasn’t that much of an improvement, but it probably more than doubled her typing speed.

She jumped up when I entered and gestured me over. From the look of things she was alternating between her introduction thread on PHO and her twitter account, which had picked up a few hundred followers in the time I’d been gone. She excitedly directed me to a personal message announcing that her ban was under review and she should expect an update later in the day. Her account currently had an Unverified Cape tag on it, but another message explained that was tied to forum policies regarding public appearances.

Her discussion thread also seemed to be picking up steam. I checked on the first page.

♦ Topic: Garment Discussion Thread

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brocton Bay ► Capes ►

Tin_Mother (Original Poster) (Moderator)

Posted On Apr 16th 2011:

In response to the recent announcement post I have created this thread for discussion of the newly debuted cape, Garment. Confirmation efforts are still ongoing, but there is sufficient confidence in the details that have been provided to staff to justify opening this thread.

(Showing page 1 of 23)

►SackBagger

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Fake

►Great_Divide (Veteran Member)

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Who the hell would put that level of effort into faking a webcam quality video?

► SackBagger

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Ploy to get people to buy into it. You can tell by the reflections, the whole thing is CGI.

►Tumbles

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Isn't that the guy that was trolling boards all night?

►Noddy

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Girl, by the looks of things.

► SackBagger

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Neither, it's a fake.

►Great_Divide (Veteran Member)

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

So your theory is someone joined the forum, trolled in a very specific way in order to get banned, reached out to the mods for a single thread exception and then posted a specifically prepared video with what would take thousands of dollars in CGI all for the purposes of deceiving a bunch of cape forum yahoos?

This thread came from a mod and required a ban exemption for the post to be made. Something has happened behind the scenes here that's more complicated than someone pulling a lame prank.

►Forgotten Specter

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Cape Forum Yahoos Represent!

Seriously though, shouldn't it be Garment Gloves? Garmentgloves? How is that supposed to go?

►Great_Divide (Veteran Member)

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Garment comes from the Mod, so I'm guessing that's the cape name? Could be difference between screen name and hero name, or even first name last name. There's clearly been some PMs going on here.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 21, 22, 23

Rather than dig through twenty pages of similar material just I jumped to the end.

(Showing page 23 of 23)

►RowOver

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Holy Shit, Invisible Fashion Cape!

►BB_Fashionista

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

God, read the previous posts. It's not invisibility. At 2:34 you can see a piece of lint moving through where her head and body would be. It's either selective intangibility or some kind of telekinetic projection.

►Asian_American_Doll

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

It's probably Parian. She's just doing everything from off camera.

►BB_Fashionista

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

For fuck sake, not this again. For the hundredth time there's no way this is Parian. Parian doesn't make bias cut evening dresses in a modernization of Madeleine Vionnet's 1930's style. Parian hasn't touched bias cut since her first attempt got panned during New York Fashion Week back in September 2009. I don't know if you ever watched one of Parian streams but their techniques are completely different. The embroidery alone should tell you that.

I’m sick and tired of making this point. But maybe your right, Maybe Parian decided to create a new online identity and coordinate postings at the same time she was guest co-hosting on the Fashion East-North-East podcast. Maybe she set all this up, the ban, the mod appeal, the new identity despite the fact that it's grounds for having your main account suspended, because it's not like forum rules apply to capes. Maybe she did all this to premiere an actual innovative style and show she's finally moving in a new direction.

If seriously she did all that I could totally forgive her for the fact that her fall 2010 line was just the second bustle era with shorter hemlines and no color sense, but somehow I doubt it.

►Asian_American_Doll

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

God damn, can anyone on this forum mention Parian without BB_Fashionista having to write an essay in response? And you're crazy. The fall 2010 line was her best work to date and it's sad that you can't see that.

►Dingo_Day

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Guys, we're getting off topic. Can we talk about how crazy it is that Brockton Bay has more than one telekinetic fashion cape? What do they put in the water up there?

►BB_Fashionista

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

We certainly have more than one telekinetic cape, I'll give you that.

►Asian_American_Doll

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

Ladies and gentleman, a cheap shot from BB_Fashionista that doesn't read like they're being paid by the word. Will wonders never cease?

►Tin_Mother (Moderator)

Replied On Apr 16th 2011:

I'm getting tired of saying this, but move the Parian discussion to her own thread or take it to PMs. There will be no more warnings.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 21, 22, 23

Well, that got more heated than I anticipated, but cape debates are inevitable and have a tendency to fly off the rails. I quickly skimmed Garment’s introduction thread. Fortunately with the video out there people seemed to be taking her one word replies in good humor. They weren’t getting much detail, but anyone who complained about it got shouted down pretty fast. It was incredible how quickly the tone of a site changed, or at least the tone of the members willing to post on a cape’s introduction thread.

I felt the Celestial Forge again and braced myself. Getting caught up on Garment’s reception had nicely distracted me from the impact of my last power, but now everything was flooding back to me. As I watched the approaching constellation most of my concerns vanished. Toolkits. The constellation that had given me my workshop and Laboratorium. I didn’t know how many workshop upgrades were in there as opposed to actual toolkits, but I was desperate for more work space. The only disheartening thing was how short my reach was after securing the last two powers.

Fortunately I managed to connect with something. Unfortunately it was the smallest mote in the constellation, possibly the smallest in the entire Celestial Forge. It was actually two motes, not related in any way, just bunched up to look like a normal mote. The toolkit constellation had finally given me some tools.

The first mote was called Diagnostic Tools. To my understanding it was a small set of scanners connected to a display screen that allowed diagnostic work on both simple and advanced technology. Nowhere near as good as my Laboratorium but infinitely more portable. I would have to examine it to determine the exact limits and how well it compared, but it presented opportunities in the field I just didn’t have before and might even allow rapid, if superficial, analysis of tinker tech.

The second item was called Micromanipulators. These were a set of mechanical gloves that allowed precision work to the level a single micron. While I had been working a thousand times finer than that in my nanoforge these would let me extend high precision to every task I undertook, even those outside of a crafting and research environment. Once again, the limits and potential could only be guessed at before I had a chance to examine them, and unfortunately I had more pressing concerns.

“I’ve got to run some tests in the Laboratorium. Are you alright here?”

Garment gave me an affirmative gesture and bid me farewell. As a pleasant surprise so did the copy of Survey running on the laptop. It was an impressive amount of development, though dealing with forum posts would likely do that. I would need to spend more time monitoring both programs in the neural interface, but that was on a long list of projects I was working to tackle.

I did take enough time to check on the new arrivals. A pair of new lockers had been added to the entry way. One had a nearly industrial look to it and swung open to reveal a flat screen the size of my palm. There were various ports with cables attached to them that led to an array of scanners and probes. I would need to take a closer look to get a sense of the range and level of detail of its scans.

The next locker was sleek and futuristic, just a white metal panel recessed into the wall. Rather than swing open the panel slid apart with a smooth hydraulic motion. Inside were stands holding a pair of mechanical gloves that would extend to the elbow when worn. There was a dark layer of some synthetic material covered with metallic structures that looked almost skeletal. Around the wrists, knuckles, and elbows were bulges representing the clusters of precise servos and artificial muscles that provided the level of precision that the gloves were capable of. Once again, incredibly useful, but a project for later. The longer I left this examination the less accurate the data would be.

Actually, if I was being examined I’d need someone else to operate the scanner. I didn’t want to tear Garment away from her laptop and frankly given her skill with a conventional keyboard I didn’t trust her to operate a gothic computer shrine. Fleet had shown serious improvements and should be able to manage a basic series of operations at this point. I guided him out of the workshop and through the door to the Laboratorium.

I knew my Laboratorium didn’t like magic. I knew my Laboratorium didn’t like alien lifeforms. At this point I should be used to the idea of my Laboratorium randomly freaking out over stuff brought into it. Despite that I wasn’t prepared for every skull in the cathedral sized room to start convulsing at the site of my motoroid walking inside.

Apparently the systems in the Laboratorium took issues with robots. Well, specifically artificially intelligent robots, or as the computers insisted on calling them, Abominable Intelligences. It was a level of panic I couldn’t even override. Every computer in the room was going into lockdown and cutting itself off from connections like it was about to be infected by some invisible plague. Only the skulls remained operational and they were definitely not happy.

I couldn’t understand it. I knew there were the equivalences of A.I. in some of the Laboratorium’s systems. Ok, they were referred to as machine spirits, but they were a lot more advanced than Fleet. Why were they acceptable and not my driving program?

I had to dig into the documentation to figure out what was going on. By that I mean actual paper documentation. I didn’t even know that existed, but apparently there was a hardcopy reference library included with the lab. The shelves were just usually covered with a series of murals depicting nine figures posing in heavy armor with advanced weapons. Eight men of various levels of gruffness, their armor a spectrum of colors, and one beautifully depicted woman with angel wings and golden armor. The entire assembly slid open to reveal a density of literature I hadn’t encountered since the hell that was my second year engineering research project.

Fortunately the reference library had its own set of skulls. There was something about them that just conveyed a sense of librarian. There’s a certain aura to that profession that can’t be dispelled even when reduced to a skinless head suspended on a coil of servo cables. They somehow managed to convey both annoyance and helpfulness at the same time as they directed me to a volume that would put phone books to shame. Luckily they were also able to direct me to the relevant section.

In short, in order to get the place out of lockdown I needed to confirm the limits of the program’s development to ensure that it was an upstanding automaton rather than some renegade A.I. out to devour all innocent circuitry that crossed its path. By the way, that was a direct quote. That task could be accomplished by verification of the programs resources, parameters, and hardware through an isolated terminal. Once that was passed I had to move on to the induction process.

Just to getting the green light from the analysis wasn’t enough to appease my lab systems. No, there needed to be a specific ceremony before they would accept my motoroid’s presence. Which is why I was watching a skull reverently attach a wax seal to a strip of inscribed parchment and mount it to my robot’s chassis. It seemed like pointless showmanship, but once the blob of wax was stamped with that image of a two headed eagle every system in the room immediately relaxed. It was a seemingly arbitrary requirement and while I was worried about running into any more of these limitations I wasn’t going to trudge through that entire library trying to figure out the arcane procedures for this place. Not until Bakuda was no longer a threat.

With the seal in place the skulls were more than happy to assist Fleet in operation of the Laboratorium’s systems. I stood in one of the larger bays and ran a full activation of nanites as the scanners spun around me. The faint blue glow of the circuitry lines contrasted sharply with the eerie gloom of the room’s ambient lighting. I ignored everything around me and focused on the effects of the activation.

The burning in my legs vanished almost immediately. The physical edge of my fatigue went along with it, though I was still mentally exhausted. I felt energy return to me as the machines worked. It was almost as if the effects of the run were being erased, which was actually my concern.

When I stopped noticing any more changes I let the nanites stand down and checked the sensor readings. There was a chance that I had just wiped out all the benefits of my morning exercise. If that was the case nanite extraction would get complicated and probably be limited to a single burst on rest days. Fortunately that couldn’t be further from the case.

I scrolled through the sensor data and watched the work of the nanites. Given how advanced they were I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was still impressive to watch. They weren’t just fixing damage, they were extrapolating natural recovery, including the benefits of exercise. The effects weren’t being erased, they were being accelerated. I could probably do a week’s worth of high intensity workouts in a single day, break them up with nanite repair sessions, and immediately get the full benefit of the exercise. It effectively truncated my training program.

There was also an alert from the historic analysis of the Laboratorium. It seemed the sensors had recorded a related phenomenon earlier. I drew up the record and immediately recognized the potential.

Life Fibers.

My brief contact with life fibers had been recorded by the Laboratorium’s sensors. The manner in which they stressed the body was connected with my post workout condition. Essentially contact with life fibers counted as serious strain on the body’s systems, but in a generally non-damaging way. With standard recovery periods it could function as accelerated physical conditioning. Except with my nanites I could reduce the recovery period to mere minutes. Repeated life fiber exposure could quickly bring me to peak human condition, potentially further given the symbiotic enhancement the fibers were capable of. I wouldn’t even need to used them in the field, they could be my training regimen and condense weeks or months of work down to hours.

I suppressed a yawn as I considered the implications. There would be no more morning runs. I wouldn’t have to bother with weight training. That planned calisthenics program could be abandoned. I’d have no need to run early in the day. Without having to carefully monitor my nutrition I could eat normally, saving time and money. I could abandon the planned expansions of my conditioning program. I wouldn’t have to wake up early to fit cardio training into my schedule. I would have more desperately needed time for tinkering. I would be able to sleep in.

I looked to the stasis field where the spool of life fibers was suspended and started considering the best experimental procedure for this project. Fleet would be essential since robots didn’t have any biology that would trigger or attract the fibers. With that I’d be able to devise a system of controlled exposure. If it worked the way the scans suggested then I’d be able to create a regime of brief exposure and recovery that would completely take the place of all of my physical development work.

When I had completed my preparations the final apparatus involved both myself and the motoroid in one of the larger bays with continually active sensors. The spool was locked down in an improvised vice with a carefully controlled length of life fibers strung between the robot’s arms like a cat's cradle. It would provide a large area of contact while still being controlled enough to facilitate an abort if needed. I was preparing for contact using my forearm while ready for retreat in the event of any mishaps. The fibers had been completely inert during the setup procedure, but I remembered how they moved the last time I experimented with them.

The Celestial Forge missed a connection with the Magic constellation just as I was finishing preparations. I stifled a yawn and shook the cobwebs out of my head. Nanites were great for physical refreshment, but that did precisely jack for my mental state. I should probably get some sleep after this experiment was complete.

I considered my safety procedures. I had gotten my hyper alloy shin guard, so in the event of any kind of breach I would be safe until I can contain the fibers. I doubt that will be a problem since they’re being restrained by my motoroid who’s made of the same stuff. My nanites should be able to mitigate any bodily effects from contact with the life fibers. In an emergency the bay’s stasis field controls were within arm’s reach. The narrow field configuration would catch the motoroid but also immobilize the fibers.

I braced myself, checked the scanner inputs, and laid the back of my forearm against the mesh of fibers. The glow that burst from them dwarfed the emission seen during the previous experiment. It was actually painful to look at, but that was nothing compared to the feeling of power extending up my arm and into my body. It was electrifying and overwhelmed my senses.

That was probably why I didn’t register the creak of metal until it was too late. There was a wrenching crash as the fibers snapped together, tearing the motoroid’s limbs apart and ensnaring my entire arm. The sensation of energy and power I’d been struggling elevated to insane levels as they wrapped around me. With my entangled state the stasis controls were out of reach. Even if I could activate them they would do nothing to the portion of the fibers that had pulled away from the spool. I heard a warning beep from the terminal’s biometrics and channeled all my focus to the activation of my nanites.

Blue lines clashed with red as more and more of the thread spun its way around my body, knocking me to the ground. Fleet struggled futilely with the shattered remains of the motoroid’s arms in an effort to keep the spool contained. Even if the motoroid form wasn’t crippled it was doubtful anything could be accomplished against them. The level of restraint necessary had been badly miscalculated. My analysis had been of the fibers in their dormant state. They were an entirely different beast when connected to a host.

The restoration effect of my nanites proved to be a double edged sword. It was preventing any serious harm from being caused by the fibers, but also creating an essentially infinite feast for the creature that had been trapped in hibernation for Lord knows how long. The result was a level of activity that dwarfed the reactions seen before and eclipsed even my most aggressive estimates. Steam started to fill the examination bay as sweat began to boil off my skin. My exercise clothing began to singe under the fibers grip, its enhanced durability no match for the exotic energies they were putting out. Anywhere fibers touched skin they glowed like a magnesium flare, sending waves of power through my muscles, but they were still useless against the strength of the threads. My body felt hot and cold and electrified all at the same time. Flesh bulged around the fibers as they pulled against both the strength of my reinforcement and the restorative power of my nanites.

The nanites were the only thing letting me survive this mess. Theoretically I could last as long as they held out, which thanks to their flagrant disregard for conservation of energy and mass would be until I could no longer direct them. So I was trapped here until I passed out at which point the fibers would drain me dry.

This had been a bad idea. It was inevitable really. No good ideas happened after 3:00am. I knew that before I got my powers, but it was only more evident now. Post-3:00am thinking had decided giving magic weapons to a teenage super villain was a great idea. Now post-3:00am thinking was responsible for an experiment with an alien parasite that amounted to sticking my arm into it to see what would happen. I needed to get serious about my sleep commitments if I was going to have any chance of surviving this cape thing.

My options for survival in the current situation weren’t exactly plentiful, but I had one hope. In a desperate bid I attempted to stretch the limits of my nanite control and reached out to the fibers entrapping me.

It was similar to my healing effect, but much more directed. When I said the fibers were impossibly thin I wasn’t kidding. The individual cells had a diameter that was barely recognizable on the nano scale. There was also an immediate restorative effect, so even if I could directly damage them with my nanites it would be instantly healed. But by propagating nanites through the structure of the fibers I could feel out the mass, including the complex energy discharges that passed for its cognitive processes. It took some work, but I was able to get a rough sense of what it was thinking, sort of.

Everything was instinctual, which was probably why I was able to piece it together. Any more complex thoughts would have been completely opaque. The drives were basic in the extreme. Connect. Feed. Grow. I couldn’t do anything about the first or last directive, but I extended my nanites and focused on the restorative effects I’d theorized about with my own healing.

The tiny machines flowed between the fibers and worked to supplement the energy flows they were pulling from my body. It didn’t loosen the grip, but the overwhelming surges of power flowing to and from my body dropped off and I could feel my head clear slightly. I got a sense of what might have been satisfaction from the fibers. It was difficult to understand and I wasn’t sure they were complex enough for emotional reactions, or even capable of such. Still, the current situation had definitely dropped the level of aggression I was experiencing.

It struck me again just how complicated this creature was. It was obviously sentient and had the potential to become sapient. It had its own drives and desires and the capacity for both restraint and, theoretically, reason. If it developed enough communication might just be a possibility. Of course, that relied on me being able to get out of this mess without being devoured.

Suddenly, miraculously, the life fibers pulled themselves off my skin. I watched in amazement as the entire mass uncoiled itself from my body and lifted into the air. It still glowed faintly, but nothing like the blinding radiance from before. As it departed I felt the tumultuous energy go with it, leaving me panting and exhausted, but finally safe. I lay on the floor staring at the floating assembly of thread and wondered just what had brought my salvation. Then I saw the white gloves.

“Garment?”

I twisted to see Garment’s form standing by the scanning bay gesturing casually at the massive alien parasite. The insane strength of the fibers seemed completely irrelevant to Garment’s telekinesis as she absentmindedly examined the hovering creature. It appeared that it didn’t matter what kind of force something could bring to bear. If it counted as sewing materials Garment could handle it.

“Garment.” I panted and struggled to pull myself to my feet. She reached down to gently help me up without as much as a tremble from the contained fibers. “Garment, thank you.” I glanced around. “How did you know what was happening?”

She gestured to the motoroid and then to her laptop, which was now sitting on one of the computer altars. Fleet and Survey. Of course they would be in communication. This was an excellent sign for their development. I really needed to check on that. I’d check later. Boy I was tired.

One of the skulls was reverently affixing a wax seal and scrap of parchment to the laptop’s case while Fleet looked on with what could be construed as pride. Yes that was good. Seriously, I was really, really tired.

“Thank you Garment. That was very good. Uh, be careful with those. Fleet knows where they go.” I looked at the damaged motoroid. I would have to fix that as well. Huh, I wonder if I would be able to stand on my own without Garment’s support. Ok, that’s a nope, definitely not happening. Thank you Garment. Nice catch.

“The fibers are important. If you could help me with them they could do a lot of good.” She made a dismissive gesture of consent before pointing out my current state. The fibers had managed to burn dozens of lines through my workout clothes reducing them to shreds. The nanites had kept my body from ending up in a similar state, but weren’t able to counter all of the effects from removing the fibers. My brain felt like a lead brick.

“Right, I need to deal with that. And a bunch of other stuff. I’ll get to it.” I felt my eyelids droop. “I’m just going to take a little nap first.” And with that the Laboratorium and everyone in it faded from my senses as darkness swallowed me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Fingers of Silver (Macross) 200:  
> While other kids were building tinker-toy creations, you were fiddling with your dad's car and doing a better job than him. By purchasing this, meddling with machines and OverTechnology is as easy as breathing for you. By getting your hands on something, you can easily figure out how it works and how to copy its inner workings, provided that it wasn't just bullshit magic. The more advanced something is, the harder it may be... but with time and effort, you just might succeed.
> 
> Skills: Physics (Star Trek - TNG+DS9) 100:  
> How the universe works. The law of gravity, the conservation of matter & energy, quantum physics, etc. Remember though, there are dozens of creatures in this universe that defy the laws of human physics, so you may want to try and rewrite a few of these books while your here. 
> 
> Science! Mechanics (Transformers) 100: Your programming is focused on either Mechanics, Medical, or a field of Science (Pick One), this gives you equivalent of a Cybertronian PHD in that field of study. 
> 
> Science! Engineering (Transformers) 100: Your programming is focused on either Mechanics, Medical, or a field of Science (Pick One), this gives you equivalent of a Cybertronian PHD in that field of study. 
> 
> Micromanipulators (A Certain Scientific Railgun) 50:  
> These rather delicate gloves were meant for scientific purposes. They’re reinforced with small motors and electrically contracting artificial muscles to allow you to perform delicate work on the scale of one millionth of a meter. While they’re definitely more suited to scientific experiments, they can be put to use in any situation that requires steady hands like aiming a rifle, conducting brain surgery, cooking, defusing a bomb, or even bypassing some redirection and shielding abilities. 
> 
> Diagnostic Tools (Outlaw Star) 50:  
> A small data display with numerous connectors and scanners, capable of letting you know what is wrong with simple technology and what advanced technology that has been programmed into it.


	19. 15 Recuperation

I floated back to consciousness slowly, trying to piece my way through the soft and fuzzy feelings clouding my senses. It took me longer than it should have to figure out that the feelings weren’t artifacts of my mind, but rather physical parts of my surroundings. I was in bed. I was in a version of my bed that was a great deal softer and more comfortable what than I was used to. I blinked away the last of the sleep from my eyes and sat up in the dim light of my workshop entryway.

In addition to new sheets, new blankets and new pillows I was also in new pajamas. Really well made new pajamas, which meant Garment had put me to bed after that stupid mess with the life fibers. There was a flash of panic at that. I hadn’t exactly been able to get things safely stored away before I had ignobly collapsed. Then again, it seemed if anyone could keep a handle on those things it was Garment. The idea of Garment putting me to bed complete with custom made pajamas was a little weird, but I had another pressing concern that was overriding ever one of those worries. A concern serious enough to drag me away from what seemed like the most comfortable bed I had ever experienced in my life.

I was absolutely starving.

Seriously, I don’t remember the last time I had been this desperate for food. My mouth was watering just at the prospect of some of the cardboard flavored health food I’d been subsisting on since my trigger. I was so desperate for anything to eat that it felt like I was being dragged towards the workshop door solely by the will of my stomach.

When I pulled the door open I saw garment sitting at my old desk with her laptop active in front of her. My motoroid was sitting on the floor next to her, its robot form, its arms now ending in a shattered mess. I would have to deal with that. After food. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the toolkits constellation as I stumbled into my apartment.

Garment jumped up as soon as I entered and rushed over. I waved her off as I pushed through to the kitchenette. “Yes, thanks. Really, really starving. Talk later.”

That didn’t stop her from hovering after me as I stumbled through the overly narrow shape of my apartment. My motoroid was attempting to follow as well, but between its missing hands and the magnitude of its weight compared to the durability of the apartment floor it moved significantly more cautiously than Garment.

I wrenched open the door of my small refrigerator and frantically searched for anything with nutritional value. Taste, texture, and freshness were completely irrelevant at this point. All I wanted was something technically eatable that I could get into my body.

Fun fact; if you’re hungry enough yogurt counts as a beverage, and when properly motivated it is indeed possible to shotgun a family sized container in one go.

I’m not sure if Garment was concerned by the fact that I was powering through every piece of food I had that was technically edible without needing to be cooked. Generally she seemed to be happy I was on my feet and only expressed unease when I was attempting to consume something that put the new pajamas at risk of serious staining. I had reached the point where I was seriously considering if lentils could be eaten raw when the ring of my cellphone brought me back to my senses.

The first thing that jumped into my head was the fact that I had a therapy appointment today. I had diligently not been thinking about it since Dr. Campbell had called to confirm and I had a brief flash of panic at the prospect that I might have overslept and missed it. That was resolved and replaced with a whole new level of concern as I realized the situation.

It wasn’t my personal phone. It was my ‘work’ phone.

I quickly grabbed it from the shelf. Unlike my civilian phone the rebuilt power cell would last for weeks, so it didn’t need to live on a charger. I saw Brian’s number on the display and quickly answered.

“Hello?” I tried to keep my voice level. There were all kinds of horrible things that this could involve. The best case scenario was a business call for more tinkering work, but that would be fairly short notice. I really hoped they weren’t calling in emergency medical services already.

“Joe?” Brian’s voice wasn’t panicked, but there was a bit of unease to it. “Uh, I just wanted to let you know, that thing you said would happen happened.”

God, I was too hungry for this coded language stuff. “Look, you can talk straight. I’ve secured this line against anything short of a surveillance tinker. Actually...” I gestured to Garment and she brought over her laptop. A few commands to Survey got me an inside look at the telecom network. “...yeah, we’re clear of that. If anyone’s listening it’s not through the phone company.”

There was a pause before he spoke. “Right. Well, the knife you made? It just fixed itself. I was watching it and the blade showed back up out of nowhere.”

That made sense. I focused on its location. I wasn’t getting two readings any more, just one in the direction of the Undersiders’ base. I hoped that half of the knife disappearing from the protectorate headquarters wouldn’t cause any problems. It probably wouldn’t help with that ‘actually a shaker’ misconception, but at this point that was more their problem than mine.

“Oh, good. Guess this means you’ll be missing out on that kitchen set.”

“Yeah...” his voice trailed off. “About that. I wanted to ask you about the knives.”

“Is there something wrong with them?” There shouldn’t be. I mean, they had been a rush job and they weren’t my best work, particularly by my current standards, but they should be completely functional.

“No, that’s not it.” There was another pause. “Look, I talked with Lisa about this. She told me what it meant if the knives held up like you said, with the repair thing.”

I was still ferociously hungry. My early binge had pulled me back from the point where I was questioning the nutritional value of everything in front of me, but still left me at a point of calorie deficit that would normally require a half-marathon to build up. As I spoke I started tearing into cupboards looking for anything that could be eaten without prep work.

“What do you mean by ‘what it meant’?”

There was a pause before he replied. “Look, I know you cut us a deal on those knives, and I appreciate it. I’ve seen what people are saying about them online and I know we never would have been able to afford them if you had charged what they were worth.”

I did my best to push past the growling of my stomach to focus on what he was saying. I mean, it was obvious really. Tinker gear didn’t sell that often and even if the cost of the equipment and materials was factored in, my knives had been seen trumping power armor. Well, Kid Win tier power armor. I didn’t know how they’d fare against Armsmaster’s stuff. The fact was they basically negated most brute durability, at least if it wasn’t force field based. That was what, striker 3? Striker 4? I’m not sure where it stood, but power like that didn’t come cheap.

“Don’t worry about it. I was starting out and you were mostly on small time jobs. It’s not that strange to get a good deal at that point.”

“No, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

I considered things. “Is this about the prices for future work?” I hadn’t even considered that. Frankly I’d been able to coast off my initial supplies to the point where I had independent solutions to most of my logistics issues. Aside from a need for alchemy space, which I wasn’t going to farm out to their boss, there wasn’t much I could use the money for outside living expenses. Not without front companies or significant money laundering efforts. Actually, I might be able to handle that myself at this point, since it just meant some basic manipulation of human financial records.

I bit my tongue at that and hunted around for another quarter.

“Actually it’s about what we paid for your last work.” If he heard the coin drop into the jar over the phone he didn’t say anything about it.

“Like, as a reference for stuff going forward?”

“No, look. With that repair thing Lisa told us what they’re probably worth. I figured you were giving us a good discount. I didn’t think we were paying what amounted to a rounding error on the final value.” He actually sounded upset at the concept. Brian did kind of strike me as the type of person who like to deal with people in an upfront manner.

“You’re upset I didn’t charge you more?”

“Well, I would like to know why you didn’t. I also wanted to make sure you didn’t’ think we’d cheated you out of the better part of a million dollars and end up trying to settle things.”

“It’s not a...” what he said punched through my hunger and sleep addled mind. “Seriously? That much?”

Brian sounded slightly nervous as he replied. “Probably? Even Lisa said she didn’t have a good reference point for this. Thanks to those things, apparently the whole team’s been rated striker three...” Ha, I was right. “...and there’s not much precedent for the cost of that kind of permanent power up, so best guess was a couple hundred thousand each.”

And probably significantly more for Taylor, but he wasn’t bringing that up, and probably for good reason. Based on the display from her equipment I was guessing the cost for her gear would be close to the rest of the Undersiders’ weapons put together.

I tested the edibility of a dry lentil as I replied. “So you’re wondering why I let them go for that kind of price?” It was tough, difficult to chew, and generally unpleasant. Pretty much a food of last resort. I elected to only eat half a handful as I waited for Brian’s response.

“It was a bit of a concern, yes.”

I considered what I could say. Really, I had barely considered the implications when I offered to make the knives. God, that seemed like ages ago. That had been the absolute peak of my skill when I made them, now it was something barely worth the effort. That didn’t seem like the best answer for Brian. I seriously doubted that lamenting on how worthless they were by my current standards would do much for his state of mind. I swallowed the last of the dry lentils and decided to take my best swing at a response.

“Honestly, I don’t have a good answer for that.”

“Seriously?”

“Look, I know you’re used to working with Lisa and dealing with plans five levels deep on a four dimensional chessboard, so this might seem like a step down.”

“She’s not really that bad.”

“Not my point. Really, what it came down to was I needed some starting cash and I got the sense that you would be all right to work with.” Wasn’t as convinced now as I had been then, but that probably wouldn’t do much for his state of mind.

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much? I’m not likely to offer that kind of deal again, even for you guys. Lisa’s already negotiated some incredibly cheap medical coverage, and that’s likely to be it for a while.”

“I’m sorry, what? When?”

“Oh yeah, last night. She’s probably been tied up, what with that thing with Panacea and everything. She didn’t fill you in?”

“Panacea? And no, she didn’t. Said she’d have an update for me later. We’ll need to have a talk about the importance of sharing information.”

“Well, it just happened last night. Also open communication doesn’t seem like her strong suit.”

“You have no idea.” There was a sigh. “So you have healing tech now?”

I scanned the fridge and considered the nutritional value of possibly expired condiments. “Yeah, she worked out a deal for it. You should get the details from her.”

“Oh, I will.” There was a pause. “Uh, are you doing alright? You seem a bit off.”

I blinked. “Right, sorry. I just woke up and I’m still a little out of it.”

“Late night?”

“Actually I was trying out an experiment and it got away from me. Knocked me out for...” I checked my watch. “Jesus, six hours?”

“Uh, is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. I got them back in containment.” I paused, pulled the phone away from my ear and turned to Garment. “You did get them back into containment, right?” There was an affirmative gesture. “Properly contained? In the stasis field? You didn’t just lock them up somewhere, right?” Another affirmative gesture, mirrored by my motoroid to the best of its ability. A glance at the laptop showed a report from Survey of the status of the Life Fibers suspended in one of the scanning bay’s stasis fields.

I pulled the phone back to my ear. “It’s fine. Everything’s under control.” There was silence on the line. “Hello?” No response. “Brian?” I checked the status from Survey’s assessment of the telecommunications network. “I know the call hasn’t dropped. Is there some problem on your end, or...”

“It’s fine. There’s no problem at all.” Brian was speaking very quickly as he answered. “I mean, if you’re sure you’re alright?”

I considered things. “There might be some muscle atrophy, but that’s kind of expected.” My stomach rumbled and I looked through my fridge again. “I’ll have to manage that better, but it shouldn’t be a problem in the future. So are we good?” I was probably a bit too eager to get off the call. I was already considering the nearest fast food restaurant and how big an order I could get away with without rousing suspicion. To make matters worse I missed a connection to the Magitech constellation from the Celestial Forge. Damn it, why did that constellation have so many powerful motes? Unless I had built up immense reach before it showed up there was just no way to land a connection.

“Yeah, as long as you’re okay with the knife thing then we’re good. I just wanted to make sure everything was on the level.”

I wondered if he had to do that often when working around Tattletale. How much time did he spend sorting out her nonsense? Probably too much. There wasn’t enough money in the world to get me to take his job.

And money was what this came down to. Sure, apparently I could make a million dollars’ worth of tinker tech in a day, but that was market dependent. The Undersiders wouldn’t have been able to afford the actual value, and anyone who could have wouldn’t be paying that on a daily basis. What was the actual market for purchased powers? There was something there that my passenger was trying to hint at, but I couldn’t put it together from the information I had.

I guess his main concern was that Tattletale had done something that ended up royally pissing someone off and created a situation much more dangerous than the one she had ‘resolved’. It was probably a fairly common occurrence and it made sense that he would want to make sure the group didn’t have a pissed off tinker after them for being cheated out of seven figures in commissions. Particularly one with inside knowledge of their base and who could probably hire any mercenary team on the planet in exchange for a few hours of tinkering work.

“The deal’s the deal. You won’t find me arguing about it now. Like I said, you’re probably not going to get that kind of bargain again, but for this one...”

“I understand. Thanks for being above board on this.”

“Right. Call me if anything comes up.”

“Thanks.”

I ended the call and realized that I had effectively run out of easy to access food. My options were to power through dry ingredients, take the time to actually prepare something, or completely abandon my diet and head for the nearest fast food place.

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten changed so quickly in my life. I would guess it took less than a minute for a complete turnaround, and explanation to Garment, and I was out the door and hunting for food. There were more concerns here, both physically and what was happening with the Undersiders, but those could wait until after my stomach stopped screaming at me.

The nearest fast food place to my apartment was a tiny outlet of some third party pseudo-chain that I’m not sure even existed outside this state. It was called Burger Shed, and rather than compete with the big chains on quality, price, or service it seemed to be operating under the business model of putting outlets in areas major chains wouldn’t touch. There was a certain logic to it. A McDonalds or KFC in this part of the docks would be robbed on a weekly basis. Who the hell would try to stick up Burger Shed? Yeah, the take might be roughly the same, but the place gave the impression of completely matching the destitution of the area. It was that special kind of urban camouflage that seemed to have evolved in the docks, safety by avoiding attention.

Despite being designed like it was a placeholder for a real restaurant it did have a decent menu, and fortunately almost no line. I don’t think they got that much of a lunch rush, but I seemed to have just missed it. I badly wanted to place an order that would make the Fugly Bob Challenger seem like a health conscious meal, but was able to hold myself back. It wasn’t like a big order would immediately point towards me being a cape, and there could be all kinds of reasons for it, I’d just prefer to maintain something of a low profile. I had just been lamenting on the importance of avoiding attention, and I could still get a decent amount of calories with a somewhat sane order.

Hey, if I got take out I could pretend to be ordering for two.

Thus I was walking back to my apartment with two jumbo shack combos with double fries and a pair of large milkshakes, the first of which I’d killed before I’m made it a block from the restaurant. Already I was feeling more clear headed. Despite the fact that I questioned whether anything approaching a milk product had been included in the shakes, they at least had enough calorie density that I no longer felt like my internal organs were digesting themselves.

With a break from the mind consuming appetite I was able to start evaluating the actual situation. My experiment with the life fibers, which was still a stupid move, had clearly taxed my system in a way that my nanites couldn’t fully compensate for. Hopefully it was just a matter of metabolism and my impromptu binge would address it, but I couldn’t know that until I got a look at my scans.

I entered my apartment to find Garment, my damaged motoroid, and the modified laptop all waiting for me in the kitchenette. Garment looked a little off put by my sudden departure and return, but there was nothing but blank acknowledgement from the two A.I.s.

“Sorry, whatever happened with the fibers left me starving.” I considered things. “That might have been actually starving. I need to check on the effects after I eat.” Garment shifted from annoyance to concern as I started wolfing down the combo meals. I think at least part of that concern was the proximity of grease and condiments to the clothing she had recently crafted. I did my best to eat carefully, despite the fact that I probably wouldn’t have bothered removing the paper wrappers from the hamburgers in any other circumstance. I don’t think I was even tasting half of the meal as I powered through it. If this was what life fibers did to a person’s metabolism I would probably need a giant platter of fried food each night just to break even.

I glanced over at my ‘work’ phone as I ate. There were definitely some aspects of that conversation I could have handled better. Ok, pretty much everything about the Life Fibers experiment should have been left out. It wasn’t enough to reveal anything, but I doubt it did much for Brian’s piece of mind. His reaction was understandable. If I’d gotten any other power set and found out a tinker had sold me several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gear for a sliver of the price I’d also be looking for the catch. Either you were a pawn in some scheme, or you were dealing with someone notably unstable. Regrettably I think I gave the impression that it was the second one, and that wasn’t too far off from the actual situation. There’s no way to explain my reasoning without a full breakdown of how my powers work, and that was just not happening. I’m going to have to deal with the fact that the leader of the Undersiders now thinks he’s dealing with a seriously unstable tinker.

Not a great situation, but I could work with it. At least it could buy me some breathing room. That was an interesting thought. How much of the ‘deranged tinker’ thing villains put on was sincere and how much was an act to keep people from constantly pestering them? If someone thought you were half a second from breaking out the death rays they probably wouldn’t be too aggressive about commissions or service calls. There was probably a delicate balance to it, find a point where you were still approachable for serious matters without being constantly pestered.

That was getting kind of abstract. I had more pressing concerns, like figuring what the hell those life fibers had done to me and why I woke up ready to eat a week’s worth of food in one sitting. Even after that huge meal I was still just barely sated. This seemed like the kind of situation where people would joke about hollow legs.

Fortunately I had an excellent lab with all the intrusive scanners a person could ever want, which is where I found myself with my cadre of roommates hovering around the door, and I was counting the networked copy of Survey running on the laptop in that group.

It turned out the answer to what the life fibers had done was ‘a lot’. In more detail every level of augmentation they were capable of had been exercised to at least some degree during that less than consensual hug fest that Garment had saved me from. It was easy to assume life fibers just built muscle, and there was certainly some of that, but really these things were a force of evolution. There were alterations to my bones, tendons, proportions of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles, organ function, and even my peripheral nervous system. None of it was that drastic a change, but it was complex enough that the healing function of my nanites hadn’t been able to fully supplement the investment, thus the excessive food cravings. I still felt like I could work my way through a couple of pizzas without much of an issue. If I did go with life fibers for physical development I’d have to throw out my diet plan and replace it with something more in line with the heightened calorie needs. With the way my digestive system was going to town on what I had eaten so far it seemed like quantity heavily outweighed quality as far as my training diet went. I had lost a good amount of body fat from the previous event and didn’t want to think about what would happen if I really bottomed out.

Did I want to go forward with this plan? This lab wasn’t specialized for medical work, but it had the capacity to examine biomodifications and cybernetics to such a degree that it was good enough to give me a picture of what was happening. It was a definite upgrade. I couldn’t say how much, but everything indicated a slight increase in strength, durability, reflexes, endurance, and even cognitive function. There might have been some downsides to normal use, but my nanites dealt with whatever they were before the symptoms could appear. Overall the benefits were too significant to abandon this project.

I did need a way to properly moderate the level of contact, and fortunately Garment was hovering behind me while I worked. Her attention seemed to be split between my displays and the floating mass of life fibers suspended in a stasis field. With how neatly they were packed away you’d never guess they had almost taken me out of commission this morning.

“Garment? Could you help me with this?” She cautiously approached the terminal displaying holographic records of the previous encounter. I gestured towards the image. “I want to try this again.”

I had never seen that particular flavor of exasperation from Garment before. She stood there and gave the sense that she was waiting for me to recognize the stupidity of my previous statement.

“Ok, I know it seems crazy.” There was a flippant gesture from Garment. “But. But I know what went wrong last time. With your help I know I can do this properly.”

As Garment reluctantly considered things I felt the Celestial Forge again, this time bringing the Alchemy constellation into reach. The mote I connected to was called Innate Talent: Alchemist. It considerably increased the versatility of what potions I could make. Well, it would have if not for one problem. It gave me the ability to make true instant healing potions, but also to create potion versions of any spells I knew within the system of ranked spellcasting.

I did not know any spells within the system of ranked spellcasting. I didn’t even know there was a system of ranked spellcasting. Before I got this power I don’t think the system of ranked spellcasting actually existed.

There was the considerable advantage in that now that I knew it existed I could theoretically learn magic. It would run on mana, an internal energy source that I would at least be able to measure and quantify with my magitek equipment. The problem was that without a teacher, reference material or any examples to draw upon it could take ages to learn a spell. I would be flying blind here. In ideal situations a talented person could learn spells at a rate of about one month per tier. Without that support infrastructure it could take several times longer, and someone without talent could take years to learn even a simple spell. I may have a good grasp on science, but I wasn’t sure how much of that extended to magical principles.

The healing potions would have been enough to satisfy me, but having an entire system of magic dangled in front of me but kept just out of reach was infuriating. It would have spoiled my mood if not for one consolation from this ability. There was another mote attached to it. It effectively came with a free power on the side, one even smaller than the two I had received together from the Tookits constellation. And despite effectively being free it was unfathomably valuable to me. That was because my power had finally given me an alchemy lab.

Like my workshop it came stocked with a replenishing supply of reagents. Unlike my workshop the equipment wasn’t fixed. Somehow it would upgrade itself based on my level of skill, meaning I would automatically be able to manage every form of alchemy I had already learned. If I got additional abilities or increased my skill the equipment would upgrade itself. It was incredible and made my plans to attempt to brew potions in the basement of an abandoned factory look laughable.

I had to see this.

Garment seem to have realized something had happened because she had broken out of her contemplative posture and was making inquisitive gestures at me.

“Oh, new power. Alchemy, you know, potion making? This one came with a lab. Want to see it?”

There was moderate excitement from Garment, possibly because I was shifting focus to something less likely to get me killed. I exited the Laboratorium with Garment. Fleet’s motoroid trailed after us, cradling the laptop running a copy of Survey in its damaged arms. I really needed to deal with those. At least it could move normally inside the workshop rather than that ‘thin ice’ shuffle it hab been doing in the apartment to keep from damaging the floor.

It was kind of impressive that it had figured that out on its own. Both A.I.s would be getting close to the limits of their original parameters pretty soon. If I waited until I got a new power as a trigger for their growth I could tie upgrades to an undetectable event and keep precogs blind to the development of my A.I.s. It would also let them have a steady growth rate, so I wouldn’t feel like I was lobotomizing or brutally shackling them.

My entry room remained unchanged from the last time I had seen it, so there was a serious question of where the alchemy lab was. Checking the workshop door quickly answered that question.

Essentially the alchemy lab had been added next to the workshop. The space had been shuffled around to create a small hallway/entry space with doors to each of the workplaces. On the left was my metal workshop and on the right was the monstrosity that was my alchemist’s laboratory.

Monstrosity might have sounded like an overdramatic term, but I couldn’t think of a better word for it. The space was massive, not as bad as my Laboratorium but easily more than twice the size of my workshop. The truly monstrous part of it came from how it seemed to interpret the clause about upgrading equipment based on skill level.

My proficiency with alchemy was all over the place, and that was fully represented in the laboratory. I had basic chemistry knowledge from my own education, which was supplemented by my intelligence boosting powers. I now had four different alchemy powers which ranged from alchemy in name only to very specific potion brewing to full on Frankenstein-esk life creation. On top of that I had Master Builder and Grease Monkey which, while not specifically alchemy centric, did include a lot of chemistry knowledge, even if Master Builder treated organic interactions as something of a novelty.

To describe the end result imagine taking a set of a third rate occult horror film, a chemistry lab, an oil refinery, and a herbalist shop, and cramming them all into the engine room of a science fiction spacecraft. That was roughly what I was looking at. There was a ritual space set up bordering energized chemical conduits which ran above an array of impeccably crafted alembics and retorts. Distillation columns shared space with bags of dried reagents and runic plates. The entire place was a mess of contradicting applications.

Garment certainly seemed to think so as she wandered through the new addition to my workshop, poking the occasional piece of equipment or raw ingredient with clear apprehension. Her attitude suddenly changed when she reached a corner of the lab. Excitedly she waved me over. It took me a moment to figure out what had her so excited.

“Oh, right. It makes sense that dyeing would be included in this stuff.”

From Garment’s posture it was clear she did not appreciate my lack of enthusiasm over this discovery. It was a fairly impressive set up that could easily accomplish a pretty complex array of resist dyeing and other techniques. That didn’t exactly align with any of my alchemical knowledge, but it made sense under Decadence or one of my other aesthetic powers.

“I should probably sort this out properly. Do you want to...” I didn’t even get to finish my sentence before Garment began gathering up the equipment and scouting out the ideal location for it. The whole project ended up as a rough repeat of my realignment of the workshop, and once again my interior design power came through. In the end I managed to turn the random mess of a chemical workshop into something both functional and somewhat aesthetically pleasing. Shifting some of the heavier equipment did require a rushed repair of my motoroid, and I wasn’t at the point of running new conduits, so the piping had to be worked around. Still, it was at least a functional workspace by the end of it. I was even able to get the first of my potions brewing. It was bubbling in a beaker that belched blue smoke and smelled like a cabinet of cleaning supplies, but this place actually had proper ventilation so I didn’t have to worry about asphyxiating myself.

I moved over to the workspace that Garment had claimed with the confidence and determination of a British colonialist. She had already done an inventory of equipment and was digging into some of her discretionary budget to improve the stock of available dyes. She had been working some intricate pattern into a scarf and seemed to be considering adding another layer to the design when I approached. Upon seeing me she excitedly presented the item.

“Very nice work.” She beamed. “Garment, about the life fibers…” Her attitude shifted immediately, the enthusiasm draining out of her. “Garment, it’s important. It’s the kind of thing that could make a huge difference out there.”

She looked contemplative and gestured for me to continue.

“Something bad is coming. Something dangerous for the city and everyone in it. If I’m not ready I can only guess how bad things could get. The life fibers? They could make the difference. They could get me ready for a fight I wouldn’t be able to handle otherwise. Even if all they do is save me the training time that might allow enough extra crafting to make the difference.”

She looked conflicted and made an uneasy gesture.

“I know they’re dangerous. I don’t think I can do this safely without you, but I think I need to try it. Can you help me with this?”

There were some uneasy motions as she considered things. Unlike previous requests this didn’t come with a demand for payment or extra privileges for her. No, what she wanted took a lot more effort to communicate.

Which is why when we finally assembled in the Laboratorium I was wearing four additional pieces of protective equipment. My current load out included my original hyperalloy shin guard. At Garment’s insistence it had been joined by its counterpart on my other leg, this one carrying a plate of the most chemically inert material possible. If anything happened its reinforcement would be able to intercept any reactive effects of the life fibers. Similarly my bracer had been rebuilt into a precision matrix of reinforced metal with enough compression resistance that all the force the life fibers could exert wouldn’t be able to even dent my skin. My opposite shoulder was sporting a small pauldron of a rather complicated alloy of heavy metals and rare earth elements that should be able to resist the insane radiation the fibers could put out. Finally I had a chest plate of a seriously thermally resistant ceramic that I’d had to nanoforge. There was no chance of the fibers burning me or anything I was wearing this time.

All together it was an excessive amount of protection, especially with Garment managing the fibers, but she had insisted. She wouldn’t go forward until I could show I had accounted for every warning displayed on the earlier analysis. She also insisted on the five extra-large pizzas that were stacked next to the sensor bay where we were conducting the test. That was one part I was more in favor of since I’d pretty much cleared out the kitchenette in my earlier binge.

Finally she was satisfied that I wasn’t likely to kill myself and consented to begin the test. I rolled up my right sleeve and held out the arm. The stasis field around the fibers deactivated and Garment floated the spool over to me. Slowly she drew out the glowing red strand and assembled it in a cross work above my skin. At my signal she carefully lowered it to make contact.

There was the blast of energy again, but this time there was no movement from the fibers even as they lit up. I checked the readout for the status of my biometrics. The additional safeguards were definitely mitigating some of the damaging effects, but mostly it was Garment’s ability to moderate the intensity of the contact. With access to the scanner I could see the alterations caused by exposure to the fibers. Most of them were clearly temporary and sustained by the energy they were giving off, but some had permanent effects. Mostly simple stress based growth, but there were indications of ongoing developments like I had gotten hints of earlier. Life fibers seemed to want their host in the best shape possible, even if that required borderline bioengineering.

At my signal Garment pulled the fibers back and returned them to the stasis field. I felt the exhaustion hit as the energy dissipated and activated my nanites to try to compensate. With the scanner active I could see the effects in real time. Conventional damage was repaired but the serious advancements were too complicated for the nanites to compensate for. I felt a gurgle in my stomach and instinctively gravitated towards the pizza boxes. That was a very good call from Garment, even if I had gotten a weird look from the delivery guy. Still, a questioning glance from a random pizza employee is better than drawing attention from my neighbors, like the burger shop feast could have done.

As I worked my way through the pie I felt the Celestial forge again, this time connecting to a small mote from the Toolkits constellation. The result of this connection truly proved that I had no idea how any of this was supposed to work. I foolishly thought the Toolkits constellation contained tools. Well, tools and facilities for crafting things. Sure I had gotten the Life Fiber Spool from clothing, but that was an outlier. Garment also, but it wasn’t like she counted as a tool. Then Alchemy had rolled around and given me an entire chemical laboratory. Once again, a bit of an outlier. Then this mote came along and blew all my conceptions out of the water. For what it was worth it was called Class: Engineer, Specialization: Mechanic. It sounded a lot more innocuous than it was.

I mean, I could see why this was in the Toolkits constellation. I got a wonderful tool from it. I also got a suit of armor, a pistol, and various other supplies. The serious thing was that I also got the skill and, more importantly, the experience in how to use all that equipment.

Like with Master Builder I had gotten an entire life worth of experience from this one minor power. Thankfully it wasn’t from an inhuman perspective, but it was close. It was a complete set of training and experience in how to be a military space engineer. It wasn’t the technical stuff that was bothering me. Sure there were new technologies, new principles of physics, and new applications to deal with. Despite the volume of it I could actually handle it pretty well, probably because I already had so much of it that new technical information just wasn’t that disruptive anymore. No, it was everything else that was the problem.

I had military training. I knew elementary marksmanship and weapon discipline. I had the experience of basic training and how to function in a unit. I knew, like from personal experience, how to use the new skills I had just picked up in a combat situation. I knew how to be dangerous with the gear I’d been given.

The primary and most important piece of this was my omni-tool. It was amazing and something I would have loved to get my hands on ages ago. It was a wrist mounted combination of a super computer and micro fabricator. It was absolutely incredible in its utility, but even more so in its military applications, and the model I’d been given was fully combat ready. In addition to the horrifying potential of fabricating weapons mid battle it could also disrupt other technology, discharge incendiaries, or even launch drones at opponents. And that wasn’t even getting into the hacking and ECM applications.

But this wasn’t raw information. It was like I’d been trained to do it. Like I had personal experience on the battlefield, except I couldn’t give any details about what I’d done. It was experience without context and the contradiction was maddening.

It didn’t hit me like Master Builder had, but there was enough of a reaction that Garment was becoming concerned. I waved her off, making sure to keep the half eaten slice of pizza in my hand well away from her dress.

“I’m okay. It’s just a new power. Hit me pretty hard. Uh, I got some new stuff from it that I should check out soon.” She calmed substantially. Huh, I had both my micromanipulators and omni-tool. I was just racking up high precision crafting items today.

I needed to get away from the sense that I was suddenly a veteran, so I focused on the readings from the experiment. Everything I’d been looking for was there in addition to the more esoteric developments being introduced. None of those were negative, just something I would need to account for. I can only imagine how crazy a world that actually evolved under the influence of life fibers would be.

Still, it was a tragedy that I couldn’t utilize the energy of the life fibers. It was simply tremendous. It could easily take a person to the level of a mid-tier brute, and that was ignoring the side benefits of life fiber exposure. The problem was the detriments of life fiber exposure. It was easy to see why an entire alternate skill set was required to manage this kind of thing. Without a regulatory medium exposure would be a none-too-slow death sentence for anyone without innate restoration abilities that ignored physical limits. Even with my nanites working full blast to restore the damage I still couldn’t utilize the power the fibers granted because I couldn’t overpower the damn things. The only ways I could see this working would be to basically lobotomize them, somehow advance them enough that you could strike an accord, or come up with some way to overpower them. But good luck finding someone who could pull that off.

My eyes settled on Garment, white gloves and red evening dress, casually examining the glowing red spool.

That was an idea.

Was it a good idea? At the very least it was probably a better idea than most of the ones I’d had today.

“Garment?” She perked up. “First, thank you for your help. And for saving me last night. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.” She gave a bashful wave. “But I just had an idea that might make a really big difference.”

She looked closer as I pulled up the readings. “The life fibers give an incredible amount of power, but I can’t use it because I have no way to control them.” She made a ‘go on’ gesture. “Right, so I would have to limit myself to conditioning. Maybe it would eventually let me use them properly, maybe not. But then I had an idea.”

I pulled up the record of the test. “See how you were able to moderate the shape of the life fibers when they were in contact with my skin?” She made an affirmative gesture. “If you could do that as I move around, then I would be able to use close to the full power of the fibers without getting restrained.” I turned the hologram towards Garment. “Do you think you can handle it?”

Garment seemed to be considering things, then slowly made a negative gesture. I slumped, but she signaled for me to wait. As I watched she mimed pulling off one of her gloves and offered it to me.

“You can do it if I have your gloves with me? Like the other night?” She made another negative gesture, then pulled the glove back on. “If I’m wearing your gloves?”

There was an exuberant expression from Garment. I sat back and thought about things. I had spent so much time with Garment being Garment I had nearly forgotten the core utility of her gloves. If you wore them she could share her skills, if not her power, with you. It was how we planned to work on my new costume. It made sense that it would give her a better sense of the person she was working with, it was just such a different concept that I hadn’t even considered it.

I looked at the readings, then at Garments enthusiasm. We were planning on doing this anyway, and for something a lot less important than this. Why was I feeling apprehensive? Maybe I had gotten to like thinking about Garment as her own entity rather than another tool of the Celestial Forge. Using her like this somehow felt like it was cheapening what she represented.

Still, she seemed excited about this. If I was going to handle what this city could throw at me I would need all the power I could get. If she didn’t have a problem did my hang-ups really matter? Well, they did, but I could deal with them.

“Alright, let’s do it.”

Garment actually jumped in excitement. Still, it wasn’t as simple as just diving into things. Even with the security precautions we needed to plan out the experiment properly. Without decent data there would be no point to this. Additionally, reviewing the previous experiment and the records from before I passed out led to another conclusion.

“Okay, so to minimize contact and avoid buildup of heat, steam, or life fiber energy I need to minimize the amount of coverage, both from the fibers and other clothing.” Garment made a gesture of assent.

“Yes, I get that, but this is plenty. There’s no cause for or benefit to going further than this.” Garment plainly pointed at the display showing the additional 7.35% improvement in energy moderation and sensor coverage that could be gained.

“I can see that, but it’s within acceptable limits for safety and data coverage.” Not to mention other coverage. In response Garment pointed at me with both index fingers, then pointed sharply to the ground.

“Garment, the underwear stays on. That’s final.” Garment seemed annoyed, but relented and made a casual gesture towards me.

There was a slicing sound as new seams appeared on the last item of clothing I was wearing and significant portions of it fell away. Let’s just say my boxer-briefs lost all of their boxer and became considerably more brief. I was left with an amount of clothing that would only be appropriate attire on European beaches. Garment was proudly indicating how energy moderation and sensor coverage had improved by a whole 4.83%.

God damn the Laboratorium was drafty.

With her final alteration complete Garment approached me in the scanning bay next to the life fiber spool. My current outfit consisted of my boots, five pieces of armor, and the remnants of my underwear. If I had been more buff and attractive I could have passed for the cover of one of those garbage romance novels, or one of those sword and sorcery books from the early eighties. I’m beginning to see why those books always took place somewhere warm or tropical.

Garment stood in front of me and raised her gloves, palms forward. I gingerly returned the gesture and she pressed her palms into mine. She shifted slightly to line up the tips of our fingers, and then the gloves began to turn inside out, folding over my hands.

I watched the progression as they folded off her ‘arms’ and ‘hands’ and slid down over my own. As I watched her dress was carefully folded across a computer altar and her shoes were set aside. That was only a loose distraction from the connection I was feeling.

Suddenly I KNEW fashion. I mean, I had known how to make things look good. I could control aesthetics to a near supernatural level. My crafting abilities extended broadly enough that I could have made almost any item of clothing to incredible precision. I thought I knew what I was doing. I was wrong.

With the knowledge at my disposal I could look at an item of clothing and pick apart every aspect from the fabric to the way it hung from the body. I knew how it would make the person wearing it feel, how to influence the reactions of the people who saw them, how it would affect every aspect of their daily life in ways they would barely notice but live with all the same.

And that was just the high level stuff. I could understand every possible interaction of thread, fabric, seams, cut, and accessories. I could design on a level I never imagined and it was only the faintest sliver of how Garment saw the world every day.

I suddenly had a slightly better understanding of why she had trouble focusing on a keyboard.

I shook my head clear and concentrated on the test. I flexed my fingers in Garment’s gloves, getting a feel for them. There was the slightest resistance in response, just enough to signal that she was still there.

I signaled Fleet and the motoroid disabled the stasis field around the spool of life fibers. Instead of dropping it floated towards me. Even with the link to Garment I couldn’t direct her powers, but I could vaguely feel them. She pulled on the glowing red thread and it began to unspool, slowly at first then accelerating to an incredible speed. It wasn’t flowing into a tangled mess either. Garment was weaving it into a complex mesh of red lines that were pulled to float just above the surface of my skin. I was so transfixed by the spectacle I barely noticed the Celestial Forge missing a connection to the Alchemy constellation.

Eventually the entire mass of fibers was floating just out of contact with my body. Garment had spun it into a tight pattern that looked slightly Celtic and wrapped it so that the coverage would be mostly even. I swallowed my apprehension and gave Garment a slight nod.

The entire mass crashed down on me at once. I felt the surge of energy as well as the concerning drain on vitality. For my part I focused and activated every nanite I could. It was easier than it had been before, probably because of the military discipline that I was trying not to think about. Anyway, I could manage my nanites and still remain mostly functional, though I probably wouldn’t be up for any delicate work.

Experimentally I slowly raised an arm. Despite being covered in life fibers it flexed freely. I had a loose sense of Garment directing them along with my movements to keep them from restraining me. I tried a faster motion and swept my arm across my body.

The movement was a blur and the wind of its passing shook cyber skulls and almost blew Garment’s dress off the altar. That was more force then I anticipated. I considered halting the test to look at the current data, but decided I hadn’t come this far just to back off now.

I tensed my legs and jumped. Seriously jumped. I probably would have hit the celling if not for the state of my reflexes allowing me to flip in midair and spring off like a rebounding basketball. I dove headfirst into the ground before handspringing back into the air with just enough force to launch me half way to the ceiling. I had a perfect view of the cathedral like space before the hang time ran out and I plummeted again. This time I was able to turn the landing into a roll and then a run. It was barely a run as my walking pace seemed blindingly fast. In even more blatant disregard for the laws of physics I angled myself towards one of the walls and started strolling up it with the speed of a formula one racecar.

I may have been humming the baseline to Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain as I moved. Sue me, my foot steps were perfectly matching the rhythm of the song.

I was phenomenally lucky to have this kind of space to play with. Most new capes would be messing around in the boat graveyard or one of the abandoned warehouses, and that was just asking for trouble. Meanwhile I got to parkour across gothic architecture without a flight to Europe or annoying any historical conservationists. It really was exhilarating, even if I got the sense that some of the skulls were less than thrilled with the way I was treating some of the icons as springboards.

They were the only ones annoyed by this. I was legitimately having the time of my life. Between the rush of energy of the life fibers, which was like a runner’s high times a million, and the superhero tier acrobatics this may have been the best time I’d had since getting my powers. Garment seemed to be enjoying herself as well, at least as much as I could tell. It was certainly no challenge for her to manage the life fibers, even at the speed I was moving. She even shifted the designs around, possibly for more even coverage, possibly just to exercise her creativity. Amazingly it seemed like even the life fibers were enjoying themselves.

I had limited feedback from them, but I was drowning in activated nanites at the moment so there was a level of connection. The drives I had picked up before, connect, feed, grow, they were all there, but there was also something else. I hesitated to call it joy, but there was definitely a sense that it was good to be moving, good to not be contained or dormant any more. I had no idea what it meant for the fiber’s development, but at least it wasn’t malicious.

Actually, nothing from the fibers had ever been malicious. Dangerous, sure. They were definitely dangerous, but they just weren’t advanced enough to have malice behind their actions. Maybe that was a good sign, or maybe it would change. I couldn’t say, but at the very least it was one less red flag to worry about.

And when I was nearly flying around my private cyber cathedral with the strength of a superhero it was hard to come up with things to worry about. Actually, scratch that. There was one thing. The same thing I was worried about when I woke up. I was getting really, really hungry.

It seemed to have taken longer to build up, but it was gaining steam. As I understood it my nanites could handle basic needs, but some of the exotic effects were too much for them, so that stuck through and suddenly I was desperate for food. As the hunger crept up so did a million other doubts, including a seriously self-conscious feeling about my current attire. Suddenly jumping back and forth in scraps of armor, immodest underwear, and a mesh of red thread with glowing blue circuit lines on my skin seemed somewhat bizarre.

God damn it, I was supposed to be using life fibers properly, not running around nearly naked in a ridiculous battle costume.

I took a pair of bounding leaps and landed back in my original scanning bay. With a signal to Garment the fibers pulled themselves off me and neatly spooled themselves up. A quick signal to Fleet and the stasis field was reactivated.

I was worn out, but not to the extent I had been previously. The pizza was calling to me, but first I needed to get Garment. Not really knowing what to do I held my hands back in the position she had indicated before. Slowly the gloves peeled themselves off my hands, turning right side out as they went. When they finished the gloved hands were pressed against mine. I turned my back as Garment started to mime putting on her dress again. I would probably never get used to that. It just felt too intrusive.

Instead I dove into another pizza and was two thirds of the way through it by the time Garment finished getting ‘dressed’. The data was roughly what I had expected, enhanced strength, agility and general physical abilities. There was one factor I hadn’t seen coming.

The mass of the fibers had increased by 12.325% from their first measurement.

My interactions, the energy they were drawing from me? It was feeding the fibers. They were growing. I had no idea what the end result would be, and if I didn’t have Garment I would probably be pretty concerned about the entire situation. Still, more mass meant more complexity. It might mean the chance to develop sapience, and then actual communication, not this rough empathy stuff I’d been groping at so far.

I didn’t need to worry about the life fibers. I had a much more pressing concern. Garment wanted to change the design of my costume.

“No. Absolutely not. That was a test environment, not the basis for a new style.” Garment seemed to pout as she presented yet another sketch of an outfit design that would have done Frank Frazetta proud. Considering how much she loved clothing it was odd how keenly she seemed to be latching onto the idea of minimalist design.

“Look, wide weave fibers in any of these select materials will facilitate enough ventilation and prevent absorption of the life fiber energy. It will be perfectly safe while still being fully concealing.” Garment seemed to look down at her sketches, then over at the disassembled costume, then at my calculations. Grimly she seemed to accept my decision and trudged off, pencil in hand.

I shook my head. I hated to disappoint her, but there were certain conventions I just wasn’t ready to accept in terms of my cape identity. I was at a highly unstable time where anything I did could be held against me forever. Now was not the time for stylistic experimentation.

I listened to the scratch of pencil on page as I worked on my own project. Micromanipulators were amazing devices, but unfortunately too bulky to be used along with the haptic interface for my omni-tool. This would have been a serious problem for anyone without the blanket ability to merge technology. Thus the product of my latest work, the hybrid omni-tool/micromanipulator. It was incredible really. Not only was the interface so much more precise in terms of controlling the output and setting design parameters, but the tools it could create could now be used with micron precision, and that’s not even getting into the combat applications.

There were a few other things I worked to get out of the way as Garment finished her design. I had retrieved the complete potion from my alchemy lab. The first potion I had even created. It was capable of generating two copies of myself that would last for about seven or eight minutes, or until they were damaged. Mainly I would use it to let me generate additional call beads without depleting my alchemy reagents, but it would also be interesting to finally see exactly how the duplication worked.

I had also completed a brief interface with my computer core and expanded my A.I.’s parameters slightly. It wasn’t much, but the growth should be unpredictable if I did it each time I got a new power and it would provide steady, consistent development. Both programs were mostly optimizing within a partitioned section of the core and operating the motoroid or laptop with truncated versions of themselves. I took some time to offer assistance and optimization advice as I increased their allotment of resources and growth boundaries.

They were coming along nicely. Survey should be able to facilitate a basic voice interface soon and Fleet’s ground travel modeling had progressed better than I had hoped. I’m not sure if it could handle bipedal combat, but complex navigation was already well within its capabilities. I also had slated for a complete rework of the motoroid’s systems now that I had the omni-tool and micromanipulators to facilitate things.

On that topic I’d been able to test my diagnostic scanner on both my micromanipulators and all the equipment I had gotten from Class: Engineer, though thanks to my weird experience I already had a seriously through understanding of that gear. The scanner was significantly less accurate than the Laboratorium, but was actually extremely adept for identifying damage and understanding programing. Its ability to discern the workings of advanced tech was a bit lacking, but its portability made up for it. I was considering hybridizing it with a heads up display or sensor visor of some kind, but I hadn’t committed to a decision yet.

The new equipment was a bit of a conundrum, as was the technology behind it. Most of it was conventional and meshed nicely with the rest of my knowledge base, but all the advanced functions were based on a single exotic material. I seemed to be running into that problem fairly often. The best tech for Master Builder was locked behind access to cybertonium. I could do incredible things with my physics skill power, but the higher level stuff required quantum paired crystalized lithium to manage antimatter and higher dimensional effects, a kind of di-lithium crystal. Still, as complex as those were they paled in comparison to the basis of this new technology.

Everything was built around Element Zero. Yeah, neutron matter. Cybertonium could be artificially engineered, but it required the precise use of nuclear decay as part of its production. Paired crystalized lithium could form naturally in areas of enough spatial distortion. Element Zero needed a supernova. I might eventually be able to produce some of it with alchemical transmutation, but it would be so difficult that it would make my other metamaterials projects look like child’s play. Until then I was limited to what was included in the equipment my power had provided.

I was deliberately avoiding thinking about that project as I stared at an open page on one of the spare laptops. The laptop was completely redundant with the better computer options I had at my disposal, but I felt like doing this step on a conventional PC. Now that I had my omni-tool I even had a portable computer that wasn’t an embarrassment on the level of the rest of this human junk.

I got up, went to the kitchen and put a quarter into the jar. Did I need to expand the jar’s use for my military memories? They weren’t a problem yet, but I could see them causing some issues.

When I got back I continued staring at the page. This was a serious concern, and one I’d been struggling with for a long time. I wasn’t sure how to approach it, but this seemed like a good step. If it wouldn’t completely address the problem it could at least provide a counter point for if things got out of hand.

I was distracted from my contemplation by the Celestial Forge moving again. It was the Clothing constellation and connected to a mote as large as any I had secured. When I felt the link I understood why. The mote wasn’t that individually powerful, but the implications of what I could do with it were staggering.

It was called The Flock’s Fleece. Its most basic function was the ability to create clothing. Since I had experienced Garment’s skill first hand I had more respect for what that phrase meant, but this was still significant. Tools were nearly unnecessary, as was just about every step between raw material and finished clothing. And wondrous clothing at that. Not only could I make beautiful clothes from raw wool, leather, or any other base material, but I could enhance them beyond what was conventionally possible. Anything I made would keep whoever wore it comfortable in any environment on the surface of the earth, from the middle of the Sahara to the depths of Antarctica. It would also protect them physically, probably not to the point of being bullet proof, but definitely stab proof and probably bullet resistant.

It wasn’t the kind of power that increased my own combat potential, or brought any serious utility. The armoring would stack, but was so minor compared to my reinforcement that it was barely noteworthy. The environmental resistance was nice, but hardly worth a power of this magnitude. No, the significance of this was the fact that I could keep anywhere from a large city to a small civilization in supernaturally enhanced clothing for a trivial amount of effort and resources.

Given how this power basically turned me into a human textile factory and considering how fast Garment could already work it was staggering to consider what we would be able to accomplish together. That is, providing she finally abandoned this barbarian chic idea.

I prayed for that to be the case when I saw her approaching with another sketch. Fortunately it was more conventional, largely in line with her earlier design, but with white paneling added to compliment the gloves. Her gloves. It was weird to think we could end up working together like that.

She seemed happy at my reaction, but made a quizative gesture towards the screen.

“Oh, I’m thinking about setting up an account.” I turned to the laptop as she looked over my shoulder at the PHO signup page. “I figure it might be a counter point if they try to stick me with a bad cape name. I mean, it’s not guaranteed, but it’s a shot.”

She made an encouraging motion towards the list I had been working on. It wasn’t comprehensive or even particularly creative. I still had no idea for a theme. My best idea had been to go with something vague and hope for the best. A couple of names had been crossed off due to being in use, and a couple more had been eliminated on further consideration. I was almost down to a selection, but was still a mess of nerves over it. There was one name I was leaning towards, and it was something I had remembered from my college days.

My first year geometry professor had been a serious career mathematician. He was the kind of person who went on about how mathematics was the only ‘true language’ and never missed an opportunity to talk about how he’d read Euclid’s Elements in the original Greek. The only thing that kept him from being insufferable was his sincerity about the importance of the material and how passionate he was to share it. Honestly, dropping random Greek terms and facts about the development of mathematics was a decent way of keeping the class engaged.

There was one word that had stuck with me, largely because I hadn’t heard it before or since. The word meant ‘unlimited’, but in a fundamentally different sense from infinite. Specifically, it translated to ‘without boundary’. There was something I liked about it on principle.

There’s a split among capes as to whether you should have a meaningful name, or something completely separate from your abilities. The shift seemed to happen between junior capes and experienced ones. Capes just starting out wanted their abilities fully on display. I’m pretty sure someone would try to call themselves “Captain-Firehands-that-I-can-direct-after-I-shoot-the-blasts-but-not-when-it’s-raining-Man”. Experienced capes wanted to get as far away from anything that would expose their capacities as they could. Alexandria was probably the best example of this, since the fact that she had perfect memory and started out as ‘The Library of Alexandria’ was pretty much regulated to obscure cape trivia at this point.

What I liked about this possibility was it did both. It was vague and epic sounding while also being indicative of my power, but all it revealed was the lack of limits. Even if someone understood what it meant there was pretty much no tactical advantage to that bit of information. I had checked it, both on cape sites to make sure the name was open and a Greek translator to make sure I had the spelling and definition correct.

“What do you think about this for my cape name?” I pointed at the top of the list. Garment reviewed it and gave an enthusiastic motion. I still wasn’t sure how up to date she was on culture or society, but she had a pretty good sense for how things fit together. Plus I needed to commit to something before the PRT made a public statement. They had been tied up with today’s Ward debut, but that wouldn’t occupy the press forever. If I wanted to avoid something ominous and mythological I would need to take a step forward. A PHO account wasn’t a guarantee, but it was movement in the right direction. I confirmed the name and opened my account.

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Garment gave me an approving gesture, then indicated towards her sketch. The day had been draining away and I needed to get cracking if I was going to finish my projects before my appointment.

“Alright. Let’s get started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Innate Talent: Alchemist (Overlord) 200:  
> You are capable of brewing potions with magical effects. You can easily create ‘true’ healing potions that provide instantaneous healing rather than healing-over-time, and can make potions for any ‘buffing’ spells you know that are in the ranked magic system such as flight, invisibility, increased magic resistance, physical boosts, and so on. Obviously you must actually know a spell in order to make a potion with that spells effect. Additionally to make use of this talent you must actually have the means to make the potions in the first place such as an alchemist's lab or, for slimes, your own body
> 
> Alchemist's Laboratory (Overlord) Free with Alchemist:  
> A fully fitted and supplied alchemist’s laboratory ready for your use. It comes with the highest quality supplies and equipment required to make magical potions, allowing you to make potions to emulate the effect of any spell you know that could be reasonably made into a potion via alchemy (assuming you know alchemy, at least). The equipment will automatically upgrade itself relative to your own personal skill level, so the more skilled you are the better it will be to reflect that. Reagents for common potions restock themselves automatically on a regular basis.
> 
> Class and Specialization (Mass Effect) 100:  
> You will get enough training in your class to be considered an asset to any team. Not to the point of being a keystone. You are considered to be to a similar level when it comes to your specialization. Specializations are various apexes that can be reached. You also get a set of gear per your two choices.  
> Class: Engineer  
> Engineers are pure technology specialists. Although they lack the implants that most other classes wield, they make up for it with their high-spec military grade omni-tools, capable of bypassing shields and armor or incapacitating robotic targets and some synthetics. They can deploy combat drones to harass enemies.  
> Specialization: Mechanic  
> A more purely focus Engineer. From fighters and frigates to Mass Effect fields and automated machines, you know your way around and are aside fairly versed in mechanical theory. You might not know how to build something, but you can almost certainly figure it out with time.
> 
> The Flock's Fleece (Actraiser) 400:  
> Men and women have not wandered the wilds naked since the long-gone days of the Garden. Whether they knew it or not, the act of clothing oneself is one that at once protects and isolates. A shirt or a robe is a metaphorical armor against the elements, against shame and against the prying eyes of others. You are such a skilled craftsman that you can take the 'metaphorical' part out of the equation. You're a one-person clothing creator and tailor, able to take the raw materials of silk, cotton, wool and hide...and then with almost no tools produce wondrous clothing, fitted just right for anyone who dares try the garments on. They're protective vestments against the harsh elements, able to keep people in comfortable condition be they in the deserts of Kasandora or the icy plains of Northwall.  
> Not only that, but people who wear them find that they'll be kept safer from the claws of beasts or the swords of their enemies, acting as a light chain-mail mesh despite being soft and maneuverable fabric.


	20. 16 Therapy

Thanks to my latest gift from the Celestial Forge I had another option when it came to my costume. My Engineer Class skill provided me with a seriously advanced armored spacesuit complete with life support, power generation, and integrated shielding. The localized reactor would be a serious boon to some of the more advanced tricks I could manage with my omni-tool. The fact that it provided a sealed environment with a regenerating oxygen supply addressed one of my remaining vulnerabilities. Unfortunately there were two problems with just going out in my new armor.

First, despite the advanced material and integrated shielding it actually provided less protection that a set of clothes under the effect of my Fashion reinforcement power. It would have been borderline before I included the additional pieces I had made to protect me from life fiber testing, but with those included it was miles ahead. The shield had a serious advantage in blocking physical impacts, but would deplete and have to recharge. Even with the shield taken into account I was well ahead of the armors protection in terms of chemical, thermal, and radiation resistance, not to mention straight up physical toughness.

The second critical factor was Garment. While she definitely cared about my safety she seemed to consider fashionableness to be of equal importance. She made it absolutely clear that she did not spend all this time designing my costume just so that I could switch out to ‘generic tinker’ armor at the last minute. She would have no part in it, which also meant no life fibers. They would have been tricky to integrate under the armor even with her help, and completely impossible without it.

It was possible that I might be able to integrate some of the armors systems into my costume’s defensive plating, but that would take time and testing and Garment had waited long enough for this. She was positively fervent when I approached the workbench. Actually, a lot more eager than I anticipated. Which could mean...

“Garment?” She shifted her attention back to me. “Uh, do you know about the power that I just got?” There was a very excited motion of assent.

Well, I knew she knew about my powers from before she appeared, but I wasn’t sure she had been kept up to date. Actually, she probably had a better idea of what I could do and how I worked than anyone short of my passenger. The Flocks Fleece was a serious clothing power. In addition to granting environmental resistance, durability, and perfect fit to every item of clothing I made it seriously increased my skill at tailoring and turned me into a one man textile factory. I could go from raw materials to finished products in a flash, even products that would require additional chemicals or extensive and time consuming treatments. I could only imagine what Garment’s plans for a power like that would me.

I didn’t have to imagine because they were impeccably documented. Garment may have had issues with text, but she could convey an incredible amount of detail through sketches including exact fabric thread counts and composition. From the moment Garment slipped her gloves over my hands I was tearing through a blitz of precise diagrams and exacting measurements. My power would let the costume fit perfectly no matter what the sewing was like, but Garment seemed to think that was no reason to get lazy.

There were aspects to her design that were pushing our combined skills and the limits of my aesthetic powers to the absolute max. The Time constellation passed by in the Celestial Forge with no connection and even less notice as we focused on completion of my costume. Tiny complex stitches in precise arrangements of threads caused seams to either vanish or be integrated into the detailed embroidery that replaced the metal plating of my old costume.

Incredibly this was even beyond the stellar quality of Garment’s work. In addition to our combined skills I was using both my micromanipulators and omni-tool. I was able to achieve a level of precision that may have never been seen in the history of fashion. The equipment and techniques I was using were intended for precision alignment of technologies that altered the very fabric of the universe. I was using them for incredibly complicated stitches and the assembly of stylistic touches on a level of quality that had possibly never been seen in the history of the world.

It was subtle, but I could pick up on Garment’s excitement as well. We were supporting each other, her directing the broad design choices and me handling the detail work. There was an eagerness in the way she would move materials to be exactly ready for when I needed them, or a certain flair to the way things were coming together. Everything else she had done was just dressed up conventional clothes-making. This was the first time she really got to push the limits of what was possible, and we were doing it together.

And then we were done. My costume was complete. This was a real cape costume. I had been able to do an alright job before, but this was beyond polished. I’m pretty sure there were leaders of regional Protectorate teams who didn’t have this level of quality in their wardrobe. With the cowl and color scheme it looked sort of like a utilitarian mix of Alexandria and Eidolon’s styles. The coat was tailored now, not that thrift shop nonsense. I still had my storage belts and bandolier, but they properly matched the design as well as now being more ergonomic and organized. There would be no more spilling reagents across the street. It took advantage of my crafting and reinforcement powers to allow lighter construction and more ease of motion than a costume of its apparent bulk should have.

Pride was absolutely radiating off Garment as she examined every facet of the construction. I don’t think I’d ever seen her that satisfied. Even with the quality of work we had managed to set a serious pace. I still had time to deal with some of my other projects before my appointment.

Right, my appointment. God, I did not feel ready for this. I contemplated if there was any way I could possibly get out of it, then hated myself for the thought. This was just a check in, it would be fine. I mean, I’d have to dig into my trigger event, but...

Hey, I should really test out that potion. Don’t want to leave that for the field. Nothing like the exploration of some new supernatural effect and all of its implications to distract from something I was definitely not avoiding thinking about.

I left Garment to continue admiring the costume and moved to the Alchemy Lab. There were actually some doors linking the workshop without needing to use the entry hall, possibly to facilitate transfer of materials. It would certainly make things easier once I started transmuting metals. In the center of the lab was a beaker of faintly glowing blue liquid. The brewing process had taken a little under an hour from start to finish. If this worked well I could probably set up some level of industrialization to improve production rate or volume, but I needed to get a handle on this first.

The main reason for this test was duplication of my limited reagents. Dry ice was trivial to produce with the resources of my new lab, but I had a limited supply of meteorite. Just enough for six beads. Still, that meant twelve free beads with every potion. I just had to deal with the fact that I would be duplicating myself.

That was my real concern. I didn’t think my clones would turn murderous or anything, but there were some unsettling aspects to bringing someone into existence with a lifespan of seven or eight minutes. That was basically a game of ‘how fast can you speedrun the stages of grief?’. Then there was the whole problem of making additional copies of myself.

I really didn’t know what to expect here. I’m at least self-aware enough to acknowledge that I have some serious issues. I wouldn’t be going to that appointment I’m not thinking about if that wasn’t true. So here I was, about to take someone who wasn’t that stable, and make two more of him. With limited lifespans. In a contained environment full of dangerous equipment.

Ok, this was silly. I trusted myself to act fairly reasonably. Shouldn’t I trust my clones? Or was the fact that they were my clones the reason I shouldn’t trust them? This was confusing. I wonder if Oni Lee had to deal with this kind of thing? Maybe that was why he was so grim and serious all the time.

This was turning into circular thinking and accomplishing nothing. It was a Celestial Forge power. It might have some quirks, but it’s not like it would be actively dangerous to me.

Deliberately not thinking about the life fibers.

There was nothing to do but press forward. I loaded up on my vital reagents, picked up the beaker, and downed the potion in two gulps. The effect was not exactly what I had expected, though I’m not really sure what I expected the mechanism of a cloning potion to be. With each gulp there was a shifting around my limbs, like another image was superimposed on it. It was like bad clipping of a 3D model. One after the other the images stepped away from me and I was looking at a pair of copies.

So this was it. My first encounter with a duplication of myself. I didn’t know what to expect. Both copies were looking around the lab, seeming to get their bearings. I waited to see how they would react. Would they have questions? Concerns? Doubts about their existence. The first copy looked over at me and opened his mouth.

“You really need a haircut.”

I blinked. “What?”

“He’s right.” The second chimed in. “It wasn’t clear before, but yeah, that’s seriously past due.”

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

The first responded flippantly. “Well it needed to be said. And it’s not like I have any pressing concerns over the nature of my existence to worry about.” He looked over to the second for confirmation.

“Me either. Probably some failsafe in the effect. Actually, I find it kind of freeing.”

“I know, right?”

I considered things. “So all you want from your existence is for me to get a haircut?”

The first shook his head. “You don’t have to do that. We’re not like Garment. This is a temporary situation. There’s no need to make sure we have a validating experience. That would just bog us down from what we’re trying to accomplish. Actually, here, take the reagents. You need the practice with the formula, and it’s not like we’ll benefit from it.”

“From me too” The second also handed over his dry ice and meteorites. “But I’m serious about that haircut. Actually, I bet we could manage it for you.”

I stopped from my attempted combination of the formula. “Okay, that’s not happening. No scissors near my head. Not by someone untrained.”

The first raised a hand. “I’m pretty sure that Decadence power more than covers things. Plus, we can do a couple of test runs while you work on those formulas.”

“Wait, you have all my powers? Do you have a connection to my passenger? Uh, I guess our passenger now?”

“Yeah.” The second nodded to the first copy. “Hey, is he as amused by this for you guys as he seems form me?”

He was, damn it. Highly confusing situations seemed to be regarded as quality entertainment for him.

The first copy nodded as well. “Tell you what, you start on those call beads and we’ll brainstorm what to do with the remaining duration.” There was a grin shared between the copies that didn’t make me feel that comfortable. Still, this was what I was here for. Even if I hadn’t gotten obedient drone copies at least they seemed to be working towards the same objectives.

Call Up was by far the most serious formula that had been provided by Evermore Alchemy. I had only used it once and didn’t really understand the significance of what was happening at the time. Other formulas could manifest healing energy, teleportation, or all kinds of energy blasts. This formula worked on a substantially higher level. It affected the very fabric of the universe.

When the formula activated it punched a hole in reality. This effectively created a tunnel to a fundamental source of magic, one that by its very nature would collapse in short order. The only thing stopping that from happening was the thin layer of blue crystal that formed over the breach like a scab. Well, it was actually a material a lot more complicated than ‘crystal’, but that’s not worth getting into right now. All it would take was the disruption of the crystal and all the power of that conduit could be unleashed in an instant.

Unfortunately I still had nothing I could link the other end of the breach to. I knew other passengers were a possibility, as were any other sufficiently powerful forces or beings, but I hadn’t encountered options that seemed like a good idea to pursue. I had seen what passengers looked like and had a decent idea of how they saw the world. That wasn’t something I was going to blunder into. Until I got a better handle on that kind of thing call beads would just be compact magical batteries for my Magitek devices.

I was almost finished working my way through the copied reagents when Garment entered the room, either drawn by the sound of the formulas or just finished admiring our work on my costume. She looked at me, then at the first copy, currently measuring ingredients near the potions stand, and the second, making some notes at the ritual space. She repeatedly glanced from one to the other then back to me. She made an excited gesture, motioned for us to wait, then rushed off.

“Uh, what was that about?” I looked at the two copies.

They shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll be fine?”

“Should I really take advice on that from someone who will be gone in a few minutes?”

That got me a critical look. “I’d say we’re in a better place to recognize trivial concerns. Now finish up, you need that haircut.”

“Ok, this is getting really weird.”

“Getting weird?” the second copy called from across the room. “You’re in a pocket dimension talking to magically generated clones of yourself as part of an experiment you dove into to avoid having to think about an impending therapy session. What part of this isn’t weird? Oh, and I know we think our hair is fine, but take a look at it from the back and seriously tell me you’re comfortable going out like that.”

The first copy turned around and I could see what they were talking about. I also recognized the shameless tactic of using my insecurities against me. When I worried about my clones using insider knowledge to subvert me I assumed it would be towards a more significant purpose than hairdressing.

I glared at them as I worked through the last of the copied reagents.

“Did everyone just feel that?”

“Yeah, missed magictech constellation again.”

“Damn it, we really need more of those skills. It’s been nothing since we built the motoroid.”

“I know. At least we got this workshop and are no longer trying to set up a potion lab in some abandoned factory.”

I really can’t explain how weird it was to watch your own inner monologue being discussed externally. Also their convincing of me to sit down while they collaborated on the process of a haircut, mostly from first principles, added a whole other dimension to the meaning of ‘talking yourself into something’.

Fortunately the process was fairly simple and completed well within the duration of the copies existence. Most of the barber tools were fabricated on the spot using omni-tools, which networked with copies of themselves seamlessly. There were some potential future applications to that, but I was mostly distracted by the fact that I was being picked over by copies of myself in what seemed like a demented version of self-care. Fortunately my copies at least shared my taste and were keeping the haircut fairly conservative, just cleaning things up rather than going for any crazy style.

That was the state I was in when Garment burst into the lab, three sets of clothing floating after her. I gaped at the collection. I was at a loss for how to process this. I wasn’t sure how connected Garment actually was with modern culture. She had an excellent handle on fashion based aspects of it, but seemed to have some holes in her experience. Whatever the gaps were the world of cinema didn’t seem to be one of them.

I didn’t know Garment was fan of James Bond films. I also didn’t know how she had been able to assemble three of the most famous Bond suits in so short a window. I also didn’t know why she was insistently offering me the white tuxedo while my copies looked on whith amusement.

“Garment, no.”

“Garment yes.” I glared at the second copy and he shut his mouth.

“We have maybe two or three minutes before this wears off. That’s not even enough time to get changed.” Much less whatever she wanted to accomplish with this dress-up.

“But there’s always next time.” The first copy chirped as he examined the grey three piece suit.

“Yep, that’s a promise.” The second copy added, looking over the black tux.

“Okay, you can’t make promises. You’re not going to exist in a couple of minutes.”

“Like you would actually turn her down.” I looked between the first copy and Garment’s excited stance. Fine, that was true, but if I admitted it I would never get out of playing dress up for her. I glared at my copies, who were clearly enjoying themselves. This was a new kind of self-hatred I was totally unfamiliar with.

“So, done here and transferring the last of my notes.”

“Me too.” My omni-tool pinged as it received files from its duplicates. “Last couple of minutes of existence. Any ideas?”

“External examination when one of us is in the neural interface? Maybe get started on the motoroid overhaul? Oh, and make sure this guy doesn’t duck out of therapy.”

“Seriously?” I looked at the first one.

The other raised a hand. “I would offer that we are you, and thus know how you feel about it.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re not going.” I realized I had become frustrated enough that I was no longer morally conflicted about their impending end of existence. If that was their plan all along then I had to give them credit. Give me credit? God, this was confusing.

“That just makes it easier to make sure you do it.” He turned to Garment. “Don’t let him skip out, right?”

She gave an enthusiastic gesture as she packed away the suits. I sighed as I joined my copies for a final work blitz. The work on the motorid was actually extraordinary. We were already operating under powers that let us work blindingly fast. Combining that with three sets of hands who all had the same goal of an overhaul and that final three minutes might as well have been days of construction. One copy coordinated from things the neural interface, linking with the networked omni-tools while the other managed computer components and I rebuilt the mechanics. I knew immensely more about transforming robotics than I had when I built this thing and was able to convert the transformation process from an awkward and jerky mess to a smooth process worthy of the alien robot technology I was so familiar with.

For some reason it did produce a strange five part electric grinding sound that was oddly familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it.

We didn’t finish everything by the time the copies disappeared, potion duration 8 minutes 34 seconds, but it was enough that I was able to mop up the rest of the tasks myself. And duck into the neural interface quickly because the developing A.I.s were having some difficulty handling the sudden disappearance of a networked mind from their awareness. Once I got them calmed down and reviewed their development, which should now be able to handle basic language interface on Survey’s part, I disconnected to find Garment standing in front of me with her laptop, a copy of my schedule, and the estimated travel time to my doctor’s office.

I would be annoyed by it if I hadn’t sort of been the one to put her up to this. At least this experience would help reaffirm my aversion to cloning technology. Time saver my ass, I’m not dealing with another me running around full time if this is what it’s going to be like.

“Fine, fine, I’m going.” I looked at Garment. “I’m going to have to seal the workshop. If you’re in here you’ll be cut off from the internet. Do you want to wait in the apartment?”

She seemed to consider things before making an affirmative gesture and picking up her laptop and thus the copy of Survey. I got them settled at my old desk and sealed the workshop. I’d be taking my bike which meant another trip to the secluded alley with hopes that no one had caught on to it yet.

I said my goodbyes and exited the apartment with the enthusiasm of a death march. All my concerns were flooding back and my strategy to not think about them wasn’t holding water, not this close to the appointment. There was no more dancing around the issue. I had to deal with my trigger event. Really deal with it, not just lean on whatever way that my power decided to mess with my mind and hope for the best.

I retrieved my bike and started towards Dr. Campbell’s office. It was weird not taking the bus there, but I knew the area well enough that there was no issue finding it. Rather than hide my bike I decided to actually park it and slowly approached the building’s entrance. It was technically downtown, but closer to the college than the corporate district. As such the office had a small parking lot that was mostly empty this late on a Saturday.

That really sheds some light on things. How isolated were you during your recovery? Isolated enough that a reoccurring therapy session on Saturday evening never had any conflicts.

It wasn’t something I really complained about. I was grateful that Dr. Campbell could fit me in to his schedule, though I suspected this was outside his normal hours and he held it as a concession for me. And I realized I was ruminating on past therapy to avoid facing the current situation and was literally dragging my feet to draw out the time it would take to reach the entrance.

I steeled myself and pushed forwards. I greeted the receptionist he shared with a few of the other Doctors in the building and dropped into a waiting room chair to stew in my apprehension. You know what, screw those copies who thought this was so important but knew they wouldn’t have to deal with it. They got the easy way out, those bastards with their temporary existences.

I was jarred out of my moderately ridiculous chain of thought by the office door opening to reveal a short late-middle aged man with thinning hair and a beard flecked with grey. He smiled when he saw me and waved in greeting.

“Joe, it’s good to see you again. Come right in.”

I pushed down my anxiety and followed him into his office. He took his usual seat and I sank onto the couch, suddenly aware of the awkward placement of my motorcycle helmet. I shifted it a few times before setting it on the floor without comment from Dr. Campbell.

He picked up a notepad and turned towards me. “So, how have you been doing?”

“Good.” I tried.

It didn’t feel like enough detail, so I struggled for how to press on. Uh, what are some positive things in my life? I mean things that aren’t cape related.

“I’m still exercising.” He nodded. “I actually joined a gym as well. It’s been good. One of those points of contact we talked about.”

“That’s excellent. Is it still helping with your sleep?”

“My sleep’s been... it’s been better.” I didn’t want to comment on that too much. “I’ve been getting out more. I started some new work, met some people. It’s, it’s been good.”

He made a note. “And how’s your mood?”

“Better.” I felt like I was repeating myself. “not at the point of being an obstacle, at least.”

“It’s good to hear that. Have the mindfulness exercises helped with that? Previously you were having some trouble with them.”

I took a deep breath. It was more than ‘some trouble’. It was like fighting my own brain. I put the thoughts aside. “Sort of? I’ve been able to recognize when things are getting out of hand. It’s been easier to counter negative thoughts, manage self-care, that kind of thing. Probably too easy.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I struggled to come up with an explanation that wasn’t ‘I have an extradimensional entity serving as a moderating influence in my brain except when it arbitrarily decided to make things worse’. Said influence was still there, but seemed to be taking a back seat to allow me to deal with all the emotions of therapy in their raw state. I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful or indignant at that. Instead I grasped back to the original problems I had with the concept of mindfulness.

“It’s kind of like the thoughts don’t feel natural, like what you’re thinking and feeling is normal no matter how destructive, and it’s somehow dishonest to try to go against that.”

“I understand. It’s a very difficult skill. Even recognizing your own mental state is an accomplishment. Taking additional steps to try to correct it takes a phenomenal amount of effort. As I said, your commitment to the process was extraordinary.”

I nodded blankly. Really I hadn’t gotten past the recognition step, and that mostly just served to make me aware of how bad things actually were. Well, no. Those skills had proved pretty useful at figuring out what my passenger was trying to convey. If I hadn’t spent months trying to understand what was wrong with my own mind I doubt I would have been able to get half the details I’d been able to gleam from my passenger’s reactions.

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“What makes you say that?”

I grimaced. “It just feels like this is meaningless. No one really takes it seriously.”

“Clinical depression is serious.”

“I know. I mean I try to keep that in mind, but people say they’re depressed when they’re tired, or have had a bad day. There’s not really a sense that it’s something that’s justified in upending your life.”

“Societal perception of mental illness is difficult to deal with.” He stated in a clam tone.

I was grateful for him leaving it there rather than asking about how my family was dealing with the idea. I struggled for something else to talk about that would kick that topic and the event tied to it down the road.

“I met someone.” He raised an eyebrow. “Not romantically, but she’s been a good friend.”

“That’s wonderful. How did you meet?”

Stick closest to the truth. “I ran into her after work. She’s a fashion designer. Really talented as well.”

Maybe it was serendipity, but when mentioning Garment I felt the Celestial Forge make a connection to the Quality constellation, and it was a mote that she would love. It was called Beauty in the Arts, and it took the quality of my aesthetics beyond even what Decadence was capable of. This was borderline divine beauty in form, and it had no impact on how functional the end product would be. The only downside was Garment would probably want to remake my entire costume from scratch.

Dr. Campbell nodded slightly and seemed to be evaluating my wardrobe. Damn it, I forgot how perceptive he was. Well, just press forward.

“She has some communication problems, but she’s really nice and supportive. I’ve been helping her out with some of her projects.”

He seemed concerned for some reason. “So she’s in the fashion industry and she has trouble communicating?”

“Yes?” I couldn’t figure out where he was going with this. He just looked at me flatly until it finally clicked.

“You think this is about Sabah?” I couldn’t keep the tone of my voice level as I spoke.

“There are some similarities. And you’ve been fairly reserved about approaching people since then.”

My mind spun. This was not where I thought the discussion would go. “Gar… She’s nothing like Sabah. They couldn’t possibly be more different.” Even the association felt wrong. Last I heard Sabah was still a fashion student. The idea of her telekinetically assembling clothing like Garment was beyond ridiculous.

Besides, Garment’s communication problems were nothing like the slight difficulties Sabah had with English. The idea that there could be any similarity between them… it was just insane.

“I just wanted to draw attention to the parallels. I know it still bothers you and if there’s a connection we should discuss it.”

I took a breath and let it out slowly. “I hate what happened with Sabah. I mean I hate the event, what I did, the situation, the aftermath. Really the aftermath.”

This was seriously well trodden ground for us, but I knew he didn’t mind me repeating myself. It felt like the only way I could deal with the emotions the topic brought up. It was really more of a case of venting in a safe space than any move towards progress.

“I didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, that was the first time I tried to have a relationship with someone and it crashed and burned spectacularly.” I shook my head. “It’s all stupidly obvious looking back. All through high school what kept me going was the idea that things would be better in college, but things can’t be better if you don’t know how to handle them.”

“We’ve talked about that. Do you want to...” I shook my head, cutting him off. It would be too easy to get sidetracked talking about earlier stuff.

“No, it’s just.” I let out a breath. “Going into a situation like that when the only advice you have for dealing with women was ‘be nice to them’ it’s no wonder things went horribly. I thought I was expressing interest, she thought... I don’t even know what she thought. That I was being pushy out of nowhere? That I was like, holding assistance hostage for something more? I didn’t even realize something was wrong until that public blow up, and even then I didn’t figure it out until she changed programs.”

I dropped my eyes before continuing. “I mean, the first time I try to let someone know I like them I end up driving them out of the department.” I shook my head. “That would be bad enough, but everyone thinks that’s where all this stuff came from. That I liked a girl and she broke up with me and now I’m depressed. We didn’t even have a relationship. I just did things for her and she tolerated my presence.”

“Are you still getting that sentiment from your family?”

And there it was. No way to dance around it forever. “Sort of? Everyone seems to have a different idea of what’s causing this, or that I’m faking it all to get attention.” Thank you for that Natalia, it really makes interactions with you a treat. “I’ve probably convinced my mother that it wasn’t the cause, but that just means she’s digging into anything else to avoid admitting my home life could possibly be a contributing factor.”

“But it still bothers you?” He leaned forward slightly as he asked.

“What I did bothers me, not how it ended. I’m upset that I hurt her and didn’t see it happening, not that she dumped me, if you can even call it that. There wasn’t enough between us for it to be any kind of loss.” I shook my head again. “It was a bigger deal when my faculty advisor died.”

“I know that was a big shock for you.” His tone was sympathetic as he spoke.

I nodded. “She was the only teacher I had that seemed to seriously care about her students. Also the associate professor they got to replace her couldn’t find his ass with a map and flashlight.” I let the bitterness leak into my words. “My mother said I should have picked someone from the engineering faculty rather than my English professor.” I shrugged. “Maybe things would have gone better if I had support from inside of my department. Could have put off my breakdown by two, maybe three whole months.”

I let sarcasm seep into my voice, but it felt like the life was draining out of me. Therapy was wonderful, the worst parts of my life all come screaming back. I sighed.

“I talked with someone about Sabah.”

Dr. Campbell gave me an encouraging look. “How did that go?”

“One of the coaches at the gym I joined asked about my time in college, what happened, if there was a girl.” I grinned slightly as I remembered Doug’s complete lack of tact.

“What did you say?”

“I gave him the broad points. None of the stuff around it. He pointed out what should have been obvious at the time, but he was pretty understanding.”

Dr. Campbell nodded. I needed to get off this topic. It was at the point where even my family was looking like a more pleasant item of discussion.

“Would you like to talk about what happened a couple of weeks ago?”

And there it was. I took some time before I replied. I really appreciated him not mentioning how he heard about it. I knew my parents talked to him, but he had made it clear that it was one way communication, that nothing we talked about was shared in return. Still, it was more than a little stressful to deal with. At least he didn’t use my family’s version of events as the basis for how he approached me, which was a big step up from, well from pretty much my entire childhood.

Still, this was a path that led straight to my trigger event, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. Both for the path and for what the destination could have been.

I really, really didn’t want to talk about this, but I knew I needed to. My passenger might have helped me function in the aftermath, but if something happened, if that was called into question or something else came up I knew how badly things would hit me. There was nothing to be gained by ignoring this. I took a breath and started.

“My mother? She’s been trying to ‘help’ with my depression.” I didn’t actually make finger quotes, but it took some effort to restrain myself. “Some of it was harmless, omega 3 supplements or a sun lamp for seasonal effects.” I swallowed. “But she started reaching out to my psychiatrist.”

My new psychiatrist. I’d been through four since the one at the college clinic. Too much changing of locations and health plans, and most of them weren’t a good fit anyway. I had a somewhat stable medication regimen, but...

“I remember discussing it.” He noted. “The change to your medication was affecting your sleep.”

I nodded. “The sleep medication they added didn’t help, it just left me hazy all night. Running made a difference.” I had to do so much of it to get an effect that it bordered on insane. I think I was hitting seven miles a night, and at that point it was only slightly less disruptive to my schedule than the insomnia had been.

“When we last met you mentioned you were discussing another change to your medication?”

I nodded. “A different serotonin uptake inhibitor. We didn’t make the change for a few weeks, and at that point...” I trailed off, not knowing what to say.

“You were with your family?” He spoke cautiously, like he was being careful of my reaction.

This was it, time to get into the trigger event. I braced myself and did my best to push forward. “It was my first day on the new medication. I didn’t realize how it was affecting me, not at first.”

“You had a bad reaction?”

If he had spoken to my parents he knew damn well I had a bad reaction, but I appreciated him leaving them out of it. Instead I just nodded and continued.

“One of my sisters was home for spring break, so my mom wanted to have a family dinner. I took the bus back to Captain's Hill.” Family dinners were not a pleasant experience, but there was no decent excuse I could use to get out of it.

“What happened when you got there?” He leaned forward slightly, but gave me space to answer.

I let out a slow breath. “My mother acted like everything was normal. Natalia was ok, at least at the start. There were a few comments, but nothing that bad. My dad was there, but he tries to stay out of this kind of conflict.”

Dr. Campbell nodded and waited for me to continue. I took a deep breath and pressed on.

“It’s crazy, but sometimes I wish they were at least consistently horrible. Well, I don’t mean to say horrible, but...”

“It’s alright. Use whatever terms you feel work best.”

“Alright. I mean, they act nice and normal seventy or eighty percent of the time, then just cut into me like it’s nothing. Well, my mom and sisters. And it makes it feel so trivial. I have a major mental disorder because my family was mean to me? What kind of reason is that?”

“Emotional abuse is highly damaging and traumatic. Inconsistent environments and treatment only exacerbate things. Have you considered what we talked about earlier?”

I turned away slightly. “I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t actually have undiagnosed bipolar disorder.”

He made a placating gesture with one hand. “I’m not offering a diagnosis, but some of the signs are similar enough that it’s worth looking at ways to deal with it. Something like Cyclothymic disorder would be hard to diagnose, particularly when your mother was growing up.”

It also felt like too convenient an excuse. But this was digging into old issues, and I knew how they could overwhelm an entire session. Instead I did my best to push on.

“Things got worse as the night went on. My sister started making comments about taking advantage of my parents and not trying to deal with my condition.”

He frowned. “I thought you weren’t getting any support from them anymore?”

“I’m not.” And the decision had been mostly to try to stop crap like that. “She was bringing up my years in college, how they paid for everything then and supported me until I moved into the city.”

“But they paid for her education as well?”

I ignored a missed connection to the Toolkits constellation. “Yeah, but she’s graduating this year, not some dropout with no prospects.” Exact quote. I sighed. “I wasn’t taking it well because of the medication. When I tried to counter her my mother stepped in, and that made things worse. Then I got the letter.”

“Letter?” He looked concerned.

“I hadn’t given the college an updated address for my apartment, so my parents were holding some mail for me. It turns out my medical withdrawal had expired to a normal withdrawal, meaning I’m now a proper college dropout.” I grit my teeth. “So I’d have to reapply to get back into the program. My sister saw it and started laying into me, and my mother wanted me to explain what happened and how I could fix it. And then I just realized it.”

“What was it you realized?” His tone was level but he looked concerned.

I took another breath. “I realized that I was never going to beat this thing.”

“I don’t think...”

I waved off his response. “I mean never as in not fast enough to get my life together. Everything I’d done, it was just enough to let me know how bad things were. All that work just let me understand the magnitude of the problem and how big the issues that caused it were. How long would it take to fix? Ten years? Fifteen? Even just five years would pretty much destroy every idea I’d ever had about where my life would go. And then...”

“What happened then?”

And then I triggered. A tinker trigger. An unsolvable problem builds up over an extended period and comes to a head in a critical instant. The world peels back and you get to see the entities with all their passengers, arbitrarily picking who gets to have powers and who doesn’t. And lucky me, I had a giant meat computer with my name on it.

And then it happened. The Celestial Forge. My trigger got hijacked by a passenger from outside the cycle. No memory loss for me. I got to see the entire horrible operation in action. All the mechanisms, the motivations of the shards, and how they restrict, manipulate, and alter their hosts. And I got to choose if I wanted the power or not.

I also got to see what I would have ended up with otherwise. Extended periods of isolation means control tinker. The added fun of triggering under a bad reaction to antidepressants meant a dual specialty. It was a bad joke. I always wanted to be a tinker. Fate leads me to a tinker trigger and what do I get to specialize in? Bioengineering and Neurochemistry.

I don’t even like normal chemistry. The specialties came with no more mechanical knowledge than was absolutely necessary to facilitate their work. And the work in question was some of the worst tinkering imaginable.

It was like someone took the phrases ‘Make Friends’ and ‘Change Your Mind’ and decided to use them as tag lines for a horror movie. That’s basically what my tinker power would have been. Nilbog meets Heartbreaker by way of Bonesaw.

And I would have gotten all those lovely powers while under the influence of drugs that seriously compromised my mental state, while in a house with people I was currently furious with, and with a passenger who would have had no intention of moderating my response.

I took the Celestial Forge and never looked back.

“I left.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You just left the house?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “There were some harsh words first, but yeah. Busses weren’t running that late so I just walked back.”

“All the way from Captain’s Hill?”

I nodded. “It gave me time to think. I had a lot to sort out. When I got back I kind of cut off contact and started trying to get my life together.”

He smiled at me. “Good.”

I blinked. “Good?”

“This is clearly a positive step for you. You’re looking in better form than I’ve ever remember seeing you, and you took a sensible action in a highly stressful situation. That’s excellent progress.”

I let out a slow breath. “I doubt my family will see things that way.”

“You need to focus on your own care and what’s right for you.” His words were measured, but his expression implied some much stronger denouncements for my family and that raised my spirits.

“I’m glad you see it like that. I’ve been worried about what I did.” I flinched. “You know, how it came across.”

“From the sound of things you’ve been handling yourself very well. New connections and opportunities, a positive outlook, and a serious attempt to move on. All of that is a very good indication.”

It was mostly the same kind of affirmations that I’d heard throughout my therapy, but this seemed a little more sincere. Or maybe I was just able to believe it now? My passenger was still holding himself back, but what little I could pick up from him seemed supportive. None of this was easy to believe, not with my history, but maybe I could do it.

“Thank you.” The words felt like a bad underservice, but from Dr. Campbell’s expression he seemed to appreciate them. He smiled and nodded.

“Is there anything else you would like to talk about?”

Yes, but cape stuff is pretty much off the table, so probably not.  
  


“I think I’m alright...” I cut myself off at the sound of a distant rumbling. It wasn’t thunder. I knew too much about the mechanics of these kind of things. That was an explosion. More than that, it was a series of explosions.

Dr. Campbell looked towards the window. “What was that?” Suddenly the lights cut out and the office dropped into darkness. The full implication of what was happening hit me.

“Fuck.” The word echoed around the darkened room.

“It’s alright, I have a light.” He fished out a cellphone and activated the flashlight.

“Fuck, it wasn’t supposed to happen this early.” I rose to my feet. “Lung isn’t being moved until next week.”

“What are you talking about?” He looked up at me with confusion.

“It’s the ABB. Baukda started a bombing spree!” All calm had left my voice as the implications raced through my mind.

Dr. Campbell’s face was grim in the dim light. “Are you sure?”

“Those were explosions. This was in the works since Lung was captured.” I grabbed my helmet. “I’ve got to go.”

“Joe? Where are you going?” His voice was thick with concern.

Crap, what do I say here? “I have to leave.”

“That’s not a good idea.” He spoke levelly, but his expression was morose. “If there is a bombing spree going on you need to stay off the roads. You can wait here until its safe, or at least until the power comes back on. It won’t be safe on the streets until then.”

“No, I have to go, now.” The anxiety I was feeling was badly creeping into my voice, and it wasn’t helped by my passenger reinforcing all of my concerns.

He gave me a hard look. “Joe, I never believed you were a risk to yourself, but as a doctor I can’t condone you entering into a situation like this.”

I grit my teeth. There would be a potential liability issue if he let a patient enter a dangerous situation. I didn’t think that was the main reason, but he was clearly willing to use it if it would keep me safe. I appreciated the sentiment as much as I hated the action.

What the hell could I do here? My options were massively limited. I doubted he would stop me if I just ran out, but that would damage our relationship. It might also require him to report things which could cause a whole host of problems for me in the future.

There was one option that would get me out. Did I trust him enough for it? Well, it would be his job at the very least if he tried anything with it, and I couldn’t afford to let this delay me any longer.

“Dr. Campbell.” I spoke slowly and clearly. “That night with my family was the worst night of my life. I can say it was a specific Event that was particularly bad. But that’s behind me. I’ve changed, my life has changed, and now the city is being attacked by a supervillain and. I. Have. To. Go.” I looked him dead in the eyes. “Do you understand me?”

I watched as comprehension slowly dawned across his face. “Oh.” There was a pause and he seemed to realize that wasn’t enough. “I see.”

I nodded. “So, can I leave?” I edged towards the door.

“Uh, yes. Of course.” I started to go before he added. “I’ll see you next week.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Excuse me?”

“With everything you’ve dealt with, and everything you’re going to be dealing with I’m not going to leave you without support. I’d like to meet with you once a week to make sure you’re doing alright.”

I was stunned by his suggestion and the idea that anyone could be ‘alright’ in this type of work. “I don’t think my coverage...”

“It’ll be off the books. No records.” He ran a hand over his beard. “I know you’ll want to make a difference out there. Let me help you this way. You might be managing things for now, but I cannot overstate how stressful this new… business is. Once a week, just to check in.”

I nodded. “I can handle that, but for now...”

“Go. Do what you can. Officially our session has ended before the power outage.” He smiled at me. “There’s no record of this.”

“Thank you.” I nodded and rushed out the door before his reply. If my passengers foresight was any indication the city was about to burn and I had to do everything in my power to stop it.

I just hoped I it would be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Beauty in the Arts (God of War) 200:  
> The Greeks and their gods have an eye for the aesthetics of their surroundings. Whether it is the statues around them, or the floors they walk upon, or the things they carry and wield, it is better if it is appealing. Your ability to design any of your crafts has increased with this knowledge, able to appeal to form without sacrificing function. Regardless of what you create, it's going to look good enough that the gods might take notice... might. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is for you to decide.


	21. 16.1 Interlude Weld

Weld suppressed any reaction to his current situation, falling back on his extensive public relations training. It wasn’t easy. Generally these things were better planned and exectuted, but like everything since he touched down at the Brockton Airport this morning the event had a sense of desperation that was highly unnerving.

“Damn it, this isn’t going to work. I’m getting nothing but glare.”

“We could wait for a cloud? Something to diffuse the light?”

“Look around. You see any clouds? We’d need to get a screen set up, and that’s not happening. Whose job was it to read the weather forecast?”

“It was supposed to be good light for the photoshoot!”

He ignored the bickering of the publicist and photographer. As one of the more photogenic Case 53s he had done more than his share of publicity work, promotions, and even some acting. He had seen this kind of thing before, but you never really got used to it. Out of all the things he had to deal with because of his ‘condition’ excessive glare when being photographed under bright sunlight was a fairly minor one. If he was back in Boston the PR department would have known how to deal with it, but it seemed Brockton hadn’t had that level of foresight.

He’d been talking about the potential of a transfer with Director Armstrong for ages. It was clear what the purpose of it really was. The leader of the Brockton Wards was set to promote out of the program in a few months. It created a convenient leadership opening on a team big enough to be nationally relevant while small enough to be manageable. A perfect situation for someone to sweep in and make a name for themselves.

Weld was painfully aware of his trailblazer status among Case 53s. Some of it bordered on tokenism. First Case 53 to get a national ad campaign. First Case 53 to appear in more than a single episode of a TV show. Then there was that meme that just refused to die. 

He understood how important it was, how much it meant to the rest of the Case 53s, or even just the ‘monstrous capes’ out there. Hunch, his teammate back in the Boston Wards, had practically worshipped him despite the fact that the boy’s own physical traits would never let him ‘enjoy’ the spotlight like Weld did.

There were times when he hated the entire situation, but he’d learned to focus on the good things. He had a fresh start and a new team, even if the introduction and promotional shoot was turning out a little rocky.

“It’s no good. We’ll have to fix it in post.”

“You think there’s time for that? These are supposed to be circulating this afternoon. You want to leave the new leader of the Wards out of the publicity shots? Screw it, just slap on a tinted lense and we’ll adjust the balance of the rest of the photos to match.”

He held his position as the PRT employees bickered with each other. It was one of his lesser talents, but the diminished sensation in his skin coupled with the reduced physical demands of his body meant he could effectively hold a pose indefinitely. Well, not indefinitely, but longer than any photoshoot would require. Behind him the Protectorate Headquarters glistened in the same bright sunlight that was causing so many problems for this shoot.

The rest of the Wards, he hadn’t been able to think of them as ‘his team’ just yet, had finished their own photos and were off interacting with the crowd, signing autographs, and generally doing their best to pretend that the entire hero framework of the city hadn’t been turned on its head over the past couple of days. There was a particular flurry of activity around the purple costumed form of Flechette. As the other new arrival she had novelty value, though for a different reason than his own. She was decent at dealing with the public, not a natural but clearly someone who took their PR lessons seriously.

The performance of the Brockton Wards was a mixed bag. He could understand why they needed to play to the public, to show that things were alright, but something like this seemed callous so soon after Thursday’s… event.

Event. Right. They still didn’t have an official name for it, probably because most of the names people would default to involved too much profanity. That was the real reason for this show, a desperate attempt to get anything else circulating through the news cycle. He remembered the first time he had seen the footage from the end of that event. After that it was unlikely any cape battles involving wards would see a live broadcast for a long time. Generally you shouldn’t have footage of an incident that would be inappropriate viewing for the age of the people involved in it.

They had brought the full roster out for this event, even Shadow Stalker, who had missed the mess at the bank. The girl looked incredibly out of place in the clear midday sunlight. The aesthetic of her costume clashed sharply with those of her teammates. The rest of the wards were in bright colors with smooth lines and clear angles. The designs fit in with the look of more prosperous parts of the city, the Protectorate Headquarters, the skyscrapers of the downtown area, the boardwalk.

In contrast she looked designed for the more decrepit parts of the city. The Docks, they had called it. Weld had only seen it while flying in, but the division was stark. Boston had its share of historic regions mixed with modern advancement, but there was a fundamentally different feel to it. Despite all the problems with Boston’s older areas, particularly regarding traffic, there was a certain pride in them. With this city it was like they were ashamed of half their neighborhoods. Weld wondered if that sentiment bled over to the dark themed Ward who was only being approached by the most adventurous members of the public.

Next to Shadow Stalker the least outgoing Ward was clearly Browbeat. The hulking boy was a contradiction as he tried to avoid attention while towering over the rest of the team. Some people just seemed to hate the spotlight, and he appeared to be one of them. It was a bad combination for a Protectorate cape, even more so for the Ward’s program where the bulk of your duties involved some level of community outreach.

Browbeat apparently had the only real victory to come from this mess, and was being touted as such, much to the boy’s annoyance. He had at least destroyed one of the Undersiders’ weapons before being taken out of commission himself. Weld had never seen so much emphasis being put on the damaging of a single piece of tinker tech, but with how dark the situation had turned out to be it was one of the few rays of light and was being played up for all it was worth.

It had bought the young cape a level of attention that he seemed at a loss for how to handle. Clockblocker, Kid Win, and Vista were engaging the public with jokes, autographs and harmless displays of their powers. Clockblocker froze an autograph pen while handing it back to a fan, then posed for a selfie with said fan and the suspended object. Vista was creating distortions behind her that it had taken Weld a while to realize were bringing the Rig into focus for anyone who wanted a photo. Even Kid Win was managing a bit of flash to his actions. Browbeat was doing nothing more than nodding and signing autographs.

At least for the rest of the team it was an encouraging shift from the mood that permeated the group when he’d met with them before the presentation. The team’s faces had reminded him of after actions reports from encounters with S-Class threats. Between his meetings with Director Piggot and the Youth Guard investigator he’d barely had time for a quick series of introductions before they’d had to leave for the event. He hoped, seeing how things seemed to be turning around, that this posting wouldn’t be as bad as it seemed.

Apparently he was not that fortunate.

“Well, that was a fucking waste of time.”

The ride back to the PRT Headquarters had dispelled any hopes he’d had of this situation being easy to resolve. As soon as they were out of the public eye a black cloud seemed to settle over the team. Shadow Stalker was the only one who seemed actively hostile, which was odd considering she hadn’t even been at the bank. Had she been close to Aegis or Gallant?

“Take it easy Sophia, it’s part of the job.” Clockblocker had been quiet since they boarded the vans and even this interaction seemed stilted and artificial.

“Yeah, well I wouldn’t have to give up my day off if you idiots hadn’t screwed up so royally.”

Vista’s face darkened. “That’s not fair and you know it.”

“Yeah right. Outnumbered them and had the element of surprise and you still fucked it up. Just because your crush ran off in shame you think it’s ‘not fair’?”

“That’s enough.” Clockblocker’s tone was completely at odds with everything Weld had seen from his public persona. Sophia just shot him an ugly look.

“You think being third in line means anything? Piggot would rather bring in fresh blood than let a moron like you run things.”

Weld bristled slightly as attention shifted towards him and Flechette. Of all the concerns that had caused his transfer to be rushed Clockblocker’s leadership potential was certainly not among them. This wasn’t good. He had expected an adjustment period, not this level of open hostility.

“That’s not what this is about. You were out of line.”

“No, what this is about is the rest of you fucked up so bad we’ve got that bitch from the Youth Guard sniffing around. Or am I the only one they’ve inflicted that on?”

“You’re not.” Flechette spoke up. “We both had meetings. It’s standard practice after a major incident.”

Sophia looked less than mollified. “Whatever. I need a shower. After that bullshit I’m swimming in this costume. Out of the way midget.” The girl dumped her cape and mask on the couch and pushed past Vista towards the locker rooms.

Flechette looked conflicted as she watched the girl strut away. She didn’t seem to be having any better luck connecting with the local team than he was. They’d known each other from training exercises, but Weld was reluctant to rely on that lest it cause and even worse dynamic between the new arrivals and the rest of the team.

Clockblocker let out a sigh before turning towards the two of them. “Sorry about that. Sophia can be a little intense.”

“By that he means she’s a gigantic bitch.” Vista glared at the other Wards as if daring them to contradict her. Kid Win shrank away, Clockblocker just looked tired, and Browbeat diverted his eyes.

“Uh, I’ve got console duty for this afternoon. Better get on that.” The bulky cape slunk off to the operations room while avoiding Vista’s eyes.

“Yeah, I’ve got to get to my lab.” His hand shifted to one of his forearms where a device Weld recognized as part of the boy’s flying skateboard was mounted. When Director Armstrong had first shown Weld the footage from the bank he had been shocked at the destruction of tinker tech by the Undersiders’ weapons. Even if nothing else happened the loss of a full suit of power armor and what was clearly Kid Win’s most prized possession would have been a dire setback for the tinker and the team.

Then Aegis made his last desperate strike and suddenly no one was thinking about the loss of tinker tech anymore.

The team’s tinker had mounted the damaged pieces of his board on the outside of his costume, turning them into an improvised set of bracers and greaves. Weld had seen him fiddling with exposed electronics or parts of the paneling when he thought no one was looking, occasionally moving a component from one part to another. The parts were somehow still active, which was remarkable in its own way. He’d seen bursts of thrust from the equipment that allowed bounding leaps onto the platform at the introduction and a trick where he held a fan’s action figure floating in some kind of suspension field. He would say the cape was making the best of a bad situation, but he seemed genuinely engaged with the damaged components rather than mourning their loss.

As Kid Win peeled off part of his armor on the way to his lab Weld shared a wince with Flechette. The boy’s exposed skin was a rainbow of unpleasant shades, yellow, purple, blue. Basically a giant bruise covered half of the cape’s body. It was incredible he hadn’t shown discomfort during the press conference or autograph session. Was he on painkillers? Clockblocker saw their reaction and broke in.

“Chris was with the director when Panacea dropped by. He missed out on the healing, and now, you know.” He pulled off his mask and they could see his concerned expression.

Weld tensed and so did Flechette. By the looks of things Vista was well aware of the reason for their discomfort. The account of the encounter with the healing cape had been the most pressing driver for their transfer. It may have happened sooner or later, but it’s unlikely Weld would have been rushed out with little preparation and a set of special orders from Armstrong.

“You’re lucky to have a healing cape nearby. Even in New York there are only a few who can handle that kind of thing, and usually it’s not worth the trouble of contracting them.” The group’s attention shifted to Flechette. “How is she doing since the incident? Have you heard anything?”

Clockblocker smiled at her and edged closer to Flechette. “From what I heard she slept for about eleven hours, then spent the day eating snacks and reading. Once she learned she wasn’t getting out of there she kind of turned the whole thing into a mini-vacation.”

Vista smirked. “They let you request stuff to see if there’s a pattern, check for influences, that kind of thing. Unlimited snacks are pretty much the only good thing about being stuck in that tank.”

Weld shared a quick glance with Flechette. Thanks to his nearly unique Manton interactions he didn’t really have to worry about master effects, but he’d seen their impact on both teammates and other capes. It was unsettling seeing someone as young as Vista talk about Master/Stranger protocols so casually.

Clockblocker seemed as inured to the concept as Vista was. He closed the last of the distance to the new capes. “Uh, just wanted to say, despite what Sophia said there’s no hard feelings about the transfer.” Flechette’s eyes darted towards the locker room, missing the darkening of Vista’s expression. “I wasn’t trying to challenge your authority or anything. I wasn’t set to be leader for a long time, I’m just trying to help with this mess.” There was a brittle edge to his smile and Weld noticed he looked fairly tired. The image of what happened to him at the bank, the close up of time frozen bugs invading his still conscious face, it would wear on anyone.

“Don’t worry about it. We expected an adjustment period. This was short notice for everyone.” There was a huff from Vista that the girl immediately tried to downplay.

“It’s fine. We appreciate you trying to smooth things over.” The time cape’s smile warmed at Flechette’s words and he nodded towards her.

“How are things going? You had any time to settle in yet?”

Flechette shook her head. “It’s been nonstop since I got here. They don’t even have permanent accommodations ready yet. I’ve got one of the overnight rooms upstairs assigned to me.”

He looked confused. “You’re not staying down here? I thought that was pretty common for Wards?”

Weld broke in. “Usually it would be fine, but, you know, Youth Guard.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Vista was digging through the fridge without leaving her place on the couch. The effect reminded Weld of an old TV with a messed up signal.

“Apparently there’s a state law prohibiting renting an apartment without a window. They won’t accept less regulation for a teenage cape than you get for a basement apartment. Hence, no natural light, no Ward accommodations.” There were also some choice words about effectively sealing the team in a bomb shelter one level away from the villain cells. That hadn’t looked good for anyone involved.

Clockblocker nodded along. “So you’re set up for the moment, right? I can show you around the building if you like?” He had spoken to Flechette, but shifted his stance slightly to let Weld know he’d be welcome as well.

The girl shook her head. “I think I’ll try to rest up for the thing tonight. Clean up, maybe catch some TV?”

The redheaded boy looked a bit disappointed, but rallied. “How about you?”

Weld shook his head. “I’ve got more meetings, introductions with the response teams, protocol briefings, then an appointment with Armsmaster.” It was set to be an unpleasant afternoon, and not just due to the tedium. He looked over the collection of couches and armchairs. None of them would take his weight. Neither would anything in the quarters he’d been assigned. He doubted any of the conference rooms would fare any better. He’d have to stand through this whole mess, which just made all parties involved feel uncomfortable.

The other boy nodded. “Right, well I’ll see you tonight.” He wandered off towards the men’s side of the locker rooms, leaving them alone with Vista.

Weld was ready to relax, but then he caught the look in the shaker’s eye and saw the slight distortions at the edge of the room. Flechette tensed and he noticed her hand twitch towards her arbalest before she stopped herself.

“I know why you’re here.”

It should have been ridiculous, a twelve year old girl trying to look tough, but something about this situation told Weld he needed to treat this seriously.

“What do you mean?” The world was blurring in the corners of his eyes. It was a highly unsettling experience and he was clearly handling it better than Flechette, who looked ready to bolt. It was one of the side benefits of his biology. All his internal organs were solid metal. They didn’t produce stress hormones like other people experienced. It created a life without highs, but also let him keep a level head in situations like this.

“Don’t patronize me. I have more experience than most of the members of this team.” More than anyone on the team now that Aegis and Gallant were gone, but somehow Weld didn’t think pointing that out would be a good decision. “I know how these things go. There’s always another reason.” She pointed at Weld. “Boston.” Then at Flechette. “New York.” She smiled darkly. “I’ve read the transcripts.”

Flechette cleared her throat. “It’s not what you think.”

“Oh? So you’re not here to recruit Mammon?” She gave both of them an accusatorial glare. “Your departments didn’t send you out with promises of amnesty and probably all kinds of other goodies for that monster?”

More emotions were breaking into her words as she spoke. ‘Monster’. That was the result of a front line experience as opposed to the analysis from someone one city away. Weld could see condensation on the inside of her visor. He couldn’t clearly see her eyes but he could only imagine what they would look like right now.

Flechette looked at him hopefully and he took a half step forward. His footing wasn’t as stable as he expected, but he avoided reacting or looking down. Vista’s shaker rating was definitely well earned.

“Amnesty is a standard Protectorate policy, particularly for cooperative capes. It’s more effective at getting minor villains and villainous leaning rogues off the street than any term of prison.”  
  
“Minor Villains?” Her voice was thick with sarcasm. “So your plan is to stick a master in the middle of the Protectorate and hope for the best?”

“You’ve read the transcript, right? The signs aren’t pointing that strongly towards master. If anything gets confirmed that will change things, and you know it.”

“It doesn’t matter. He still attacked Amy. He still made those murder knives and gave them out like it was nothing.” Her voice dropped. “What if he gave them to the Merchants? Or the Empire? Do you know what the typical members of those gangs get up to on a regular basis? What they have to do to earn membership?”

“There’s no indication that will happen.” Flechette qualified. “With what he’s done so far...”

“So far? What, did you watch it on TV and think it was bad? You didn’t see the aftermath. You didn’t see them loading parts of your teammate into an ambulance, or taking a circular saw to someone’s armor after they were sealed in it like a coffin. You didn’t see the nicest, most caring girl in the city limping off with a shattered hand. So what, you’re just going to hand out absolution like it’s nothing? Like nothing happened?”

Weld fell back into his training as he squared his shoulders and spoke. “Official department policy is to limit contact and report to headquarters upon encounter with the undesignated supply cape. No support, resources, or collaboration are permitted. If there were any other orders in play, particularly involving the legal aspects of an active case, we would not be at liberty to discuss them.”

Vista grit her teeth as she looked between Weld and Flechette. “Fine, do whatever you want. It’s not like it matters. Nothing ever does.” With two steps through a confusing distortion of space the girl had crossed the rec area and slammed the door to her room in a way that for some reason left Weld feeling more like a frustrated parent that a leader of a team of superheroes.

“Well...” Flechette drew out the word. “That could have gone better.

Weld slumped. “Tell me about it. I’d heard stories about this town, but before that news report, before seeing it in person, I don’t think I really believed them.”

She nodded. “Apparently it’s the highest cape per capital in the country, excluding small towns where entire teams set up.”

“High rate of local triggers, then the cape community draws in more capes. How long has this been snowballing for?”

Flechette shrugged and pulled off her visor. Without the mask he could let himself think of her as Lily again. It was good practice for not messing up names in the field. “Years? Decades? Depends on if you’re talking about the current mess or the city in general.” She slumped onto a couch, then looked over to him and realized his situation. She made to get back to her feet, but Weld waved her off. At least one of them should be able to relax.

“I thought I knew what I was getting into, but these guys have seen way more combat that any Ward is supposed to. In Boston unless you’re a serious brute they sideline you from anything remotely dangerous.” Weld happened to count as a ‘serious brute’.

“Same in New York,” She glanced off to the side. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” Weld moved around and leaned gently on one of the sturdier pieces of furniture. It sagged under just a fraction of his weight.

“Well, I have this villain...”

He smirked at her. “Show off.”

She gave him and annoyed look. “Trust me, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. Everyone wants a nemesis until they have to deal with them on a regular basis.” She sighed. “Anyway, the brass vets any groups we’re cleared to mobilize against. Nothing worse than the Undersiders, or the level of what their reputation was before all of this happened.”

Her voice trailed off at the end of the statement and Weld nodded to her. There was still some debate on if the Undersiders would have stayed as reserved as they’d been known for if the Wards had handled things differently. It was all academic now, they had made themselves a priority threat and there was no going back from that.

Lily shook her head. “Anyway, it’s actually sort of like what happened with the Undersiders.”

Weld furrowed his brow. “How so?”

“She’d join up with one of the ‘safe’ groups and start pushing them towards higher profile stuff. She’s a thinker-striker, good a coordinating people. The groups she joined would get a lot more brutal and effective until they were taken off the list of approved Ward engagements. Then she’d move on to the next group.”

Weld grimaced as he pictured the chain of events. “Any chance she’ll follow you here?”

She didn’t look pleased at the prospect. “Who knows? This place is already crazy enough, so it’s not really her speed. I can’t really see her fitting in with any of the established gangs, though the thought of her in the Undersiders isn’t exactly pleasant.”

“I don’t think they limit engagements here. Earlier Clockblocker was telling me about a time the Wards drove back Lung.”

Lily clenched her jaw. “Vista? I saw her getting changed in the locker room. The girl has scars. Old ones.” She looked towards the girls closed door. “It’s no wonder she’s like that. She’s been front lining for years, and she triggered young.”

“No wonder the Youth Gard is on the warpath.”

Lily glanced towards the locker room. “What do you think of Shadow Stalker?”

Weld made a show of looking contemplative. “Well, I think you can do better than her.”

She took a playful swipe at him. “You’re an asshole. Seriously though, what’s up with her?”

“I got a briefing, but there’s not much I can talk about. She’s on probation and has some bad stuff in her past. Started as a vigilante and apparently had a rough time of it.” He shook his head. “I’m going to have to push for therapy for this team, aren’t I?”

“If half of what I heard about this place is true I’m surprised it’s not already mandatory.”

“Are you okay with it? I can’t allow any exemptions if I want this to go through?”

She nodded. “I can deal.”

Weld noticed her glancing towards the locker room again. “So, still keeping that quiet?”

She shrugged. “It’s less that it’s a secret and more not wanting to deal with the press. Can’t just be gay, I’d have to be an icon for the movement.”

He frowned. “Tell me about it.”

She nodded slowly. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“Don’t worry. I honestly prefer it when people do.”

She smiled at him. “So, any details you’re not allowed to share about the recruitment of a possible-tinker possible-shaker that we are definitely not supposed to refer to as Mammon?”

“I’m guessing the same as you, make contact and find out if he’s serious about joining outside the city.”

Flechette’s expression turned grim. “I can tell you, the New York Protectorate wants that healing power. They want it bad. They’re not sharing exact details, but the sense I’ve gotten is they’ve been run ragged recently. Between the Adapts and the Elite things have been bad enough, but apparently the Teeth set up a cell recently.”

Weld nodded as things fell into place. “Butcher.”

“Butcher Fourteen. Amongst all the other powers she deals festering wounds, that’s from Butcher Four, and has perfect accuracy from her own ability. Add the fact that no one wants to risk lethal force and every encounter has bad injuries piling up. Not the biggest problem on its own, but the other gangs are taking advantage every time a cape gets knocked out of commission. They need a healer on staff to the point they’re willing to forgive a lot worse thas what’s happened here.”

Weld considered things. “I think Panacea may have spoiled this city.”

Lilly looked surprised at his statement. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, without her this place would have boiled over long ago. If your capes are out of commission for hours instead of weeks it lets you ignore how bad the problem is. Without her they would have needed to send in the Triumvirate ages ago, or at least some other relief force. Hell, just having half the Wards show up to school in Kid Win’s current condition would have had this place choked by Youth Guard oversight.”

The girl looked uncomfortable with the idea. “She couldn’t make that much of a difference, could she?”

“From what I heard the girl overworks herself to an insane degree. I saw her at this charity gala thing once, it was for the anniversary of the Boston Games. She was dead on her feet and asleep before dessert. Apparently did a tour of cancer wards before the dinner and her sister had to drag her out of the Massachusetts General ICU.”

Lily shook her head. “What about you? Anything you definitely aren’t allowed to tell me?”

He grinned. “You’re going to love this. Apparently Accord reached out to Director Armstrong before I left.”

“About the new cape? What did he want? Is he trying to block recruitment?”

“All Accord said was that he would not oppose the new cape’s presence in the city. From that guy it’s practically a ringing endorsement.”

“So what, he wants to fight someone with good design sense?”

Weld just shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he’s hoping to get enough of the new guy's work on the rest of the heroes to hold off his OCD, or whatever. It’s not anything like a deciding factor, but Accord has been known to make life hell for capes who get on his bad side, hero or villain. With the Chain Gang picking up steam Armstrong would welcome at least one thing he didn’t have to worry about.”

Lily waved away the idea. “Probably would have an easier time up there than in this city, at least if Vista is any indication.”

“Probably. Hopefully things will calm down in a few days.”

She smirked. “Providing we’re not caught in a gang war before then.”

“I know this place has a reputation, but it’s not like there’s constant cape fights. We’re probably due for a lull.”

“Providing you didn’t just jinx us.”

“Sure.” He stretched his back. “I’ve got to get going.”

“Good luck.” She smirked. “Fearless leader.”

He waved her off and headed out to his PRT meetings, which proved exactly as tedious and awkward as he feared. Of course everyone apologized on behalf of someone else who was supposed to provide adequate seating. It was the same chorus through the afternoon as he familiarized himself with local response procedures, major initiatives, and Protectorate policies that he probably knew better than the people giving the presentation. It was honestly a relief to find himself in a van crossing the force field road access to the Protectorate HQ.

It didn’t really sit right with him how divided the two sides of the organization seemed to be in this city. Having separate headquarters was common enough, but having one in the middle of the city and the other floating remote and inaccessible seemed designed to foster division. Weld had the sense that this situation had been developing for a very long time and, more concerningly, probably had politics behind it.

Weld exited the van to find a figure in blue and silver armor waiting for him. He recognized Armsmaster from promotional materials. Usually he was next to Bastion on the group shots of Protectorate team leaders. The van’s shocks sprung back as Weld stepped onto the platform of the Rig. His eyes briefly flicked around at the massive amount of exposed steel he was surrounded with, acutely aware that one misstep would result in the lengthy and embarrassing process of extracting himself from the structure.

Suddenly he didn’t want to move at all.

He was pulled from his apprehension by Armsmaster stepping forward and extending a hand.

“Weld? Welcome to the Protectorate East North East Headquarters. Thank you for joining us.”

He glanced at the extended gauntlet ready to have to explain his situation when he noticed a slight film across the exposed metal. Actually, all of the tinker’s equipment had the same barrier attached. It was a relief that at least someone had been prepared for his visit, but He wasn’t sure about putting his faith in less than a millimeter of plastic. Still, this was one of the best tinkers in the country. He probably knew what he was doing.

Weld shook the extended hand and mercifully did not find himself fused to the gauntlet. The impurities he focused into his hands could help prevent involuntarily absorbing metal he touched, but they wore off quickly and there always seemed to be patches he missed. He really didn’t want to show up to that night’s charity event with half of Armsmasters gauntlet fused to his hand.

"I’d like to review some items with you, then we can depart for the Forsberg Gallery. PR thought it would be a good sign of solidarity to have the leaders of the Protectorate and Wards arrive together."

“Thank you sir. That sounds fine.”

With a nod Armsmaster started walking, leaving Weld to follow, keeping a close eye on any exposed metal as he did. The precautions Armsmaster had taken had not been extended to the rest of the Rig, leaving the walk a harrowing experience. He knew he had enough space to walk down the corridor, but he couldn’t help but scrunch his shoulders as he moved.

It seemed to take an eternity to reach Armsmaster’s Lab. He was a little impressed they came here rather than some meeting room or office. He knew how protective tinkers could get about their workspaces. That just made him even more concerned about accidently fusing with something.

Weld relaxed slightly at the sight of a heavily reinforced plastic coated chair sitting opposite a work desk.  
  


“Please, sit down.” Armsmaster gestured to the chair as he settled behind the desk. Weld quickly sank into the seat. His body didn’t get tired like a normal person, but there was a certain mental exhaustion that built up over the day. A chance to sit down and collect his thoughts was vital to his sanity, and this was his first opportunity since he disembarked his flight early this morning.

Armsmaster gave Weld a level look from across the desk. “Now, I trust you’re aware of the situation this city finds itself in?”

That seemed a loaded question, but Weld seriously doubted he was looking for a critique of the local parahuman dynamic. So, in all likelihood he was discussing current events.

“Your capture of the leader of the ABB altered the power dynamic, so probably a conflict between local gangs or a possible new player. Additionally there’s a chance for retribution from the remnants of the ABB. There’s also...” How should he put this? “expanded hostility from the Undersiders in addition to the unknown factor of their equipment supplier.”

The bearded man nodded. “Exactly. Brockton has seen gang conflicts before. The local forces are known to the Protectorate and skirmishes between them will be manageable. New capes, however, are an unknown and highly disruptive factor. The event at the bank proves as much.”

Weld nodded. “I heard you were opposed to the idea of Khepri being the supplier of the Undersiders’ weapons.” Armsmaster sat slightly taller at that. “How did you figure that out?”

“Experience and intuition.” He answered very quickly. “There are factors to this job that you can only pick up with time in the field.” Weld nodded. He had hoped for something more tangible, but sometimes gut instincts were an important part of hero work. “Our main concern is the new cape. Widespread distribution of his weapons could be disastrous and seriously shift the power balance in the city.”

Weld raised an eyebrow. “Sir, do you think that’s likely? Judging from his interactions with Panacea...”

Armsmaster cut him off before he could finish. “Those are suspect until the Think Tank provides a final report. With an admitted association with Tattletale we can’t trust anything said in that exchange. Unfortunately I’ve had to limit my analysis to physical evidence.”

With a few keystrokes a rotating image of a curved blade appeared on the screen. The blade had a fracture where the handle would attach and Weld could recognize the shape of a Karambit from the numerous ones that had ended up as part of his body. Why people could see a metal cape and still decide to try a knife on him Weld would never understand.

“This is one of two samples of the capes work that we’ve been able to obtain. The edge...” A command caused the display to shift to a simulation showing atomic structure. “Is fully monomolecular, hardened with an unknown process that strengthens the atomic bonds and prevents the immediate decay that would be expected from such a structure. This allows the weapon to exert immense stress on its target, effectively shearing all but the densest materials without meaningful resistance.” The display shifted to a series of material samples, all split with an unnerving smoothness.

“I’ve been briefed on the Undersiders’ armaments.”

“On their effects, yes, but there are additional aspects a work here.” The display shifted again, showing a mock atomic structure. “This is amorphous metal, also known as metallic glass. A difficult material to create, this particular sample was simplified by its composition being precisely arranged to impede crystal formation...” The man seemed to realize he was losing Weld, and shifted to a summary. “The point is that the alloy used should be more reactive than is evident in the sample’s behavior.”

“So it should have rusted?”

The tinker snorted. “It should have oxidized to powder within hours of creation. Something is holding back corrosion and there’s no discernable cause for the effect.”

Weld could see where this was going. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why a Ward who absorbed all metal that touched him was sent to a city where another Ward was just butchered with a metal knife. Theoretically he should be immune to these weapons regardless of how sharp they were. However if they had some unknown effect, whether tinker or shaker based, then who knows what could happen? He knew he could survive significant damage, at least as much as Aegis, but how much further would the Undersiders go?

Armsmaster must have been able to follow the chain of thought from his expressions. “With your permission I’d like to test a sliver of the sample against your durability and absorption powers. If anything will go wrong I’d rather we discover it here than in the field.”

Weld could see the logic of it. He didn’t like it, not after the amount of testing he’d had to endure as a Case 53, but it would be better to have it happen in controlled circumstances than deal with a magical mystery metal in the field. “How big a sample are we talking about?”

“Pieces were removed for edge mapping and spectrographic analysis measuring between 4 and 6 millimeters. We would use those in the tests.”

Weld nodded. “I don’t have a problem with it, but I’ll need my guardian’s permission.”

“Director Armstrong, correct? I can reach out to him with the details to give you some time to discuss the matter.”

“Thank you. Uh, could I see the samples?” Considering how often he’d had to deal with accidently absorbed objects it seemed silly to be nervous about this, but there were aspects to both tinker tech and shaker powers that could be a nightmare to deal with.

The man gave a professional smile. “Certainly, anything to assuage your concerns.”

He led Weld over to a complicated piece of machinery embedded in the wall. He waited while Armsmaster worked a series of controls that caused small shifts and openings to move around in the device. Then he waited some more. Weld stood there watching Armsmaster work the controls with increasing desperation.

“Is something wrong?”

“They’re not here.” The Protectorate leader’s voice was flat and lifeless.

“What?” Weld asked in confusion.

“The samples. They’re gone.” His body was stock still, an unnatural posture visible even through the power armor.

“Did you put them somewhere else?” Weld offered. “Or could someone have moved them?”

“I didn’t put them anywhere else. And no one has access to this room in my absence.” He turned suddenly and crossed the room in four long strides. There was a complicated series of motions and a portion of the wall folded open, extending a glass case.

An empty glass case.

“Is that supposed to be empty?”

“No. No it is not.”

Weld could put the pieces together. “The knife?”

“Seemingly vanished.”  
  


“Someone stole it?” The implications were frightening.

The man shook his head. “No one could have gotten in here without tripping some kind of alarm. Not without serious mover, stranger, and breaker powers.”

“Doesn’t that new cape have a mover power?”

“It doesn’t make sense. There are hundreds of more valuable things in here that someone could have taken. There’s no reason to blow that kind of advantage over something this petty. Not unless...”

Once again he quickly crossed the room and began work on a console. A digitized face sprang up on one of the wall screens and an accented voice anyone in the protectorate would know began to speak. “Hello Armsmaster. How can I help you?”

“I need a status report on the metal sample I sent you.” He asked, casually chatting with the most famous tinker on the planet.

“Just a moment. Oh, hello Weld. How is your transfer going?”

“Uh, just fine mam.”

“That’s excellent.” The projected image on the screen seemed to be thinking. “Oh. Sample is not in its storage container. No sign of forced entry or unauthorized access.”

“Last time the sample was confirmed present?” There was an edge of eagerness to his voice that seemed incongruous with the circumstances.

“Returned after an inductance test at 09:50 hours today. I’m guessing by your lack of surprise you can shed some light on this situation?”

“The main item and all ancillary samples vanished from my lab sometime in the last seven hours. There was no disruption of any other items and no sign of forced entry.”

The digital avatar smiled. “So that means...”

“Shaker. Almost confirmed. We’re looking at rapidly fading projections. I’d say thirty six to forty eight hours, possibly affected by external factors.”

“I guess I owe you that drink. Of course, this means we could be seeing significantly more spread of the weapons, particularly if the cape is still getting a handle on his power. If he’s unconstrained by tinker logistics there’s no telling where his limits are.”

“I’ll start drafting up response scenarios.” There was a chirp from the console. “Sending a report to the PRT with an updated assessment.”

“I’ll add my own as well, though this is just a data point, not a confirmation...” The image on the screen gave Armsmaster a sideways glance.

“Yes, yes, I know. Still, stronger evidence than anything so far.” He turned and seemed momentarily surprised that Weld was still there. “I guess we’ll have to hold off on testing for the time being.”

“I’d recommend that.” Offered Dragon’s avatar. “Integrating shaker influenced material could have unpleasant effects.”

“Yeah, I’d like to avoid that.” He answered the projection nervously. It nodded at him and turned back to Armsmaster.

“I’ll re-run some of my analysis with projection factors in mind, see what comes up.”

“I’ll check in with you after the Forsberg event.”

“Looking forward to it. Nice meeting you Weld.”

“You too.” He replied somewhat awkwardly.

The screen blinked off. Armsmaster was still looking like Christmas had come early for a reason Weld couldn’t quite place. Was a shaker that much less dangerous than a tinker? Sure, tinkers could be unpredictable, but a shaker could theoretically churn out weapons non-stop. That seemed substantially worse.

“Are you alright?” He seemed to have picked up on Weld’s reaction.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine.” Weld struggled for something to say. “So, you have Dragon on speed dial?”

He tried to put a teasing edge into his voice, but it was either deliberately ignored or went over the tinker’s head. “We’ve collaborated on a number of projects. She’s a highly valued colleague.”

Anyone else would have read into a grinning man saying a line like that, but Weld got the sense there was some critical lack of awareness happening here, possibly on his part, but more likely not.

“Sir, is the shaker classification really that big of a deal? I mean, compared to tinker…”

Armsmaster seemed to suddenly become aware of the smile on his face and quickly resumed his stoic posture. “I’m simply pleased to have my theories validated. Unknown factors are the most dangerous element of engaging a cape, and this addresses one of the most significant x-factors we’ve been dealing with.”

“I see. So in the event that I encounter the cape or one of the Undersiders?”

“I would recommend avoiding contact with the weapons, which is not a deviation from standard engagement processes. Browbeat will be relied on to take point in those situations.” He glanced towards a bench on the other side of the room. “I’m working on a solution to that problem in the same vein as his defenses, but it won’t be ready for deployment before the next predicted action by the team.”

Weld nodded. “Any idea when that will be?”

“The Undersiders were consistently opportunistic, but generally operated some level of engagement at least every sixteen days with a median of nine days between operations. Depending on the nature of their relationship with the new cape and the conditions of supplying their equipment there could be an increase in the frequency or scale of their operations.”

Weld nodded along. “What about the other gangs?”

“The most serious interaction the Undersiders had was with the ABB. Remnants of that group might strike out against them, but it’s unlikely to be a concern. Models indicate we’re more likely to see a new player attempt to enter the dynamic than a serious upset from one of the existing parties.”

Weld didn’t know how the man could be so certain, but Brockton Bay was a lot smaller than Boston. With fewer teams in conflict over less territory it probably made predictions more accurate.

“Are you prepared for the Gallery Event tonight?”

“I did a good amount of this kind of thing back in Boston. Is there anything I should be aware of in this city?”

Armsmaster considered. “With a smaller population and comparatively larger cape community you tend to see the same faces at most of these events. Generally they have a good dynamic with the heroes, but occasionally you can get someone becoming overly familiar. It’s easy to erode the public reverence most people have for capes when you’re seeing them twice a month and paying hundreds of dollars for the privilege. Be careful of making a bad impression because you’ll likely run into the same person repeatedly, but at the same time remember to set clear boundaries.”

Weld was familiar with the concept, though generally someone who turned cape stalker got flagged and intercepted from major events. In a city this size that might not be as apparent or practical.

“We’ll be entering together after the rest of the capes have made their appearance. The mayor will want to greet you personally, which will mostly be a photo opp. I trust you can handle it?”

“Yes sir, I...” The tinker held up an arm and rushed over to a terminal where a light had started blinking.

“Sir?”

“Radio contact from within the PHQ, non-Protectorate signal.” He entered some keystrokes and the display shifted. “No sign of forced entry, but motion sensors are picking up some activity on the lower level.”

Suddenly the room shook around them as the sound of a chain of explosions echoed through the Rig. Weld desperately lurched for the coated and reinforced chair to avoid fusing with any of the lab’s exposed metal.

“What was that?”

“Series of detonations. We’ve lost internal sensors, central computer, and the main communications array.” Armsmaster’s fingers flew across the console’s controls and data streamed over the displays faster than Weld could follow.

Weld froze. “Is it the ABB? Bakuda trying to break out Lung?”

Armsmaster shook his head. “I have a direct link to the cells. There’s no sign of activity there. For the rest of the Rig there could be more damage, but I can’t get a reading. I don’t know what they’re trying to...”

He fell silent as a black clad man in a demon mask appeared between them. He had a bulky plastic cast around his right forearm, but was holding a small metal object in his left hand. Weld could see a camera mounted on the cape’s mask with a wire leading to an earpiece.

Weld watched in shock as the villain slowly panned his head across the lab, completely ignoring the two of them. Armsmaster sprang into action before the Ward’s brain had even fully processed what was happening. He launched himself across the room, a halberd jumping from his back into his hand and extending to its full length. The tinker struck true, but the assassin just collapsed into a pile of ash. The two heroes watched in horror as a dozen copies appeared around the lab and hurled the object they were holding.

Weld expected a barrage of grenades. Instead he watched as the devices attached themselves to equipment all around the room. Armsmaster swore and started shifting his halberd to emit a crackling burst of static, but before the transformation could accomplish anything the explosions started.

Rather than traditional blasts these bombs seemed to fracture whatever they were attached to. The objects split apart like shattering glass, then launched the large shards out in every direction at blinding speed. What wasn’t destroyed by contact with a bomb was sundered by the flying debris.

Unfortunately one of the pieces of equipment targeted was the work desk immediately adjacent to Weld. Even with his diminished sense of touch the barrage of flying metal rocked him to his core. He remembered the sense of movement and the lab blurring past him before the crash of metal and the sharp impact that muddled his senses.

As he regained his focus he became aware of the screech of alarms and what sounded like a fire. He tried to move but found himself pinned. And examination showed part of a wall, a structural beam, and a portion of some of the lab machinery all fused with his body. He couldn’t even shift far enough to try to break the material holding him, and that might be a completely lost cause for the wall. The Rig was under attack and he would be spending the entire time trying to absorb the metal he was attached to. The only other option was to shear off parts of his body and try to crawl free, hoping he didn’t fuse with anything else on the way.

His mind flashed back to his very earliest memories. Waking up in that scrapyard as little more than a head. No knowledge of who he was or what was happening. The weeks of isolation before he figured out his powers enough to assemble a semblance of a body and finally leave. That maddening loneliness and sense of inaccessibility. Without realizing it he had begun to desperately thrash against the material pinning him in place.

“Weld?” The voice was horse but hopeful. Armsmaster had survived the attack.

“Over here! I’m pinned by the wall!” He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice but too many memories were flooding back, bringing irrational fears with them. What if the Rig sank? He would be pinned under thousands of tons of metal, unable to move, working his way through it at a snails pace. How long would it take him to get free? Weeks? Months? Would he even be sane after something like that? Would people know to look for him?

Relief flooded through him as Armsmaster appeared through the smoke and dust. His armor was dented and Weld could see blood tracing down from his cracked visor to stain his beard.

“Are you alright?” His breathing was heavy and had a concerning wet sound to it.

“I’m trapped. I can’t break free. I’m going to have to separate parts of my body, and I’ll be useless after that.”

“Hold on, this might...” He fiddled with a small object and a flickering cloud of gray mist appeared around it. Unlike a normal cloud it was completely static, holding its shape exactly and moving with the object. With a shaking hand Armsmaster brought it to the wall fused with Weld’s body. A spray of metallic dust sprang up from the point of contact as anything touching the cloud disappeared.

Weld held himself as still as he could while Armsmaster worked, but the device gave out before the last of the beam could be cut away. Despite the tinker’s desperate attempts the cloud refused to reform. He still had random pieces of rubble attached to his body, but he was mostly mobile again. He shifted one hand into an axe head and brought it down on the section of beam still fused with his leg. The beam sheared off, but took some of his leg with it. It was fine. An acceptable loss.

“Thank you.” He looked up, taking in the state of the room and the Protectorate leader. “Are you alright?”

“Better than I could have been. He was targeting the lab, not me. What reports I’ve gotten suggest a series of surgical strikes, not random bombings. The ABB has never been this coordinated before.”

Weld grimaced at the implications. The damage that could be inflicted...

“What do we do?”

The tinker pulled himself straight with a wince and examined the remains of a halberd. He disconnected most of the damaged handle and gripped the remaining portion like a hand axe. “Lung is still on the rig. Oni Lee can’t teleport him off, meaning he’ll have to fight his way back to the mainland. This is our best and only chance of keeping things contained. Can I count on you?”

Weld remembered being buried under the rubble, the fears and flashbacks fresh in his mind. But he also saw the protectorate leader in front of him, underequipped and struggling to stay on his feet. He knew what he had to do.

“Absolutely.” His hands shifted into blades, the type he was prohibited from using against anything less than top tier threats. “Let’s go.”


	22. 17  Confrontation

I don’t think I’ve ever moved as quickly as I did on my way out of Dr. Campbell’s office. I’m not sure how much the life fiber exposure had enhanced my body, but I was treating stairs as gentle suggestions rather than actual things necessary to move between floors. If the stairwell had an open interior I seriously think I would have tried dropping down the center of it and trusting my healing and reinforcement to deal with any damage. All I wanted was to get out of this building and desperately try to do SOMETHING.

I felt, well I felt a lot of things right now. There was a certain emotional turmoil that came with even normal therapy sessions. A tour through the absolute worst day of my life was significantly more than a normal therapy session. If the city hadn’t decided to descend into chaos I would probably have spent a good chunk of the night venting frustration on a punching bag at the gym then trying to catch up on something like a normal sleep schedule. Instead I was off rushing into a fight I was decidedly not ready for.

I was taking entire flights of stairs in a single bound when I felt the Celestial Forge connect to another mote. I was split between being annoyed at the interruption and being grateful for something else to think about than the impending doom of the city. It was actually only the second mote I had connected to from the Crafting constellation. The last one was Smithing, which gave me expert level ability in creating weapons and armor. This mote also gave the ability to make weapons, but weapons of a much more serious nature.

I thought I was good at making blades. I could make legendarily forged swords. I could make monomolecular edged weapons. I could make blades infused with runic magic. I could even forge melee weapons out of pure energon, though that was still theoretical and would require a bit of setup. I thought I had a handle on this melee weapon thing. With one this power I suddenly realized how ignorant that line of thinking was.

The power was called High-Frequency Manufacturer. Like many of my crafting powers I’m not sure what it enabled was physically possible before I got the ability to do it. Right now it seemed so blindingly obvious and so insanely effective I was embarrassed for not having realized it sooner. By applying an extreme frequency alternating current to a weapon I could then cause it to vibrate at levels where the edge would destabilize molecular bonds. Essentially I could turn anything with an edge into a weapon that could cut through anything.

Except force fields, because they seemed specifically designed to ruin my shit.

It was so easy to set up. Of course, that was easy by the standards of my current skill set and would probably have been a serious challenge if I was coming into this blind, but that wasn’t really the point. This technology was actually seriously better than monomolecular blades. All that stuff about not being able to handle dense or thick material didn’t apply to HF weapons. In fact, by stressing the charge frequency you could extend the destabilization area induced by the vibrations and actually split objects that were thicker than the length of your weapon. With a good enough weapon and enough power I could literally cut a building in half.

It was an incredibly powerful ability and would do absolutely nothing to help with the chaos currently being unleashed on Brockton Bay. I was not ready to counter this nightmare. The best I could hope would be to mitigate some of the damage, but that was a daunting prospect. This wasn’t like a normal villain attack. Once a bombing happened the perpetrator didn’t just stick around and wait for someone to show up. Just rushing to bomb sites wouldn’t help me track down the ABB. I needed to stop Bakuda, but Lord knows where she was. Probably in a command center coordinating all of this mess.

At the moment my only serious option was to try to stop Lung from escaping. That meant getting to the Rig and engaging what would probably be a seriously boosted dragon-man alongside a team of heroes that would not be well disposed towards me. It was a shit plan, and depending on how powered up Lung was when I arrived it could easily turn into a disaster. Unfortunately at the moment it was my only option.

I burst out of the office onto the darkened streets of Brockton Bay. The late twilight sky was a deep purple rapidly fading to black. The city was not actually an inferno like I had feared, but from the looks of things we were under a complete blackout and I could still hear the occasional explosion. Not a constant barrage, but there really isn’t an appropriate amount of your city to be blowing up at any given time.

Fortunately due to the dark area and lack of power I wouldn’t have to worry about security cameras. I could find the nearest door, access my workshop, then hopefully get to the Rig before Lung either escaped or powered up to a point where no one would be able to stop him. That was when I heard my phone ring.

My work phone.

I pulled it out of my jacket as I kept moving towards my bike. A quick glance at the display showed Tattletale’s number.

“What?” I barked as I held the phone to my ear and I kept moving.

There was heavy breathing on the line and serious background noise, like a crowd of people in chaos. “Hey.” Tattletale’s voice had a desperate edge to it. “You know that deal we set up? I’m going to have to call it in now.”

“What? What’s going on?”

“Well, we’ve run into a little...” There was the sound of a blast and what could have been raining debris. “Fuck it, there’s no time to be cute. We’re pinned down by the ABB. They jumped us when we were checking on the take from the bank. If you can’t get here soon we’re pretty much done for.”

It sounded like she was running while trying to keep up with the call. I grimaced at the implications. This was absolutely the worst time for the Undersiders to need a bail out. There was no way a city wide blackout wouldn’t have been coordinated with Lung’s escape attempt. Any chance of stopping this depended on me acting immediately. With no idea about Bakuda’s location Lung was my only option.

But if what Tattletale said was true, and from the desperation in her voice I didn’t doubt it, the Undersiders were screwed. They had been at odds with the ABB and were instrumental in Lung’s capture. It made sense that the gang would want revenge, I just expected any moves to be attempted after Lung was free.

“What happened?” I didn’t like this. I mean I really didn’t like this. Going to save them meant letting Lung go free. With Oni Lee having access to Bakuda’s arsenal and no real preparation on the part of the Protectorate I didn’t give them decent odds of countering the breakout. But if I abandoned the Undersiders that would mean abandoning Taylor. I still didn’t know exactly how she was significant to saving the world. My passenger was damping the emotions connected to her, but there was still that conviction about her saving everyone.

I kind of resented my obligation here. I couldn’t let her die. Even if that meant letting Lung free and giving up my chance to stop Bakuda’s rampage.

“Bakuda’s here.”

...or maybe not.

“We’re at the storage site past the train yard. She set a trap, turned the entire area into a damn arena for us. She’s got Uber and Leet along with dozens of conscripted civilians. She put bombs in their heads to keep them loyal.”

A sense of dread settled into my stomach. There it was. That was the bad, the serious, worst of the worst cape stuff I’d been anticipating. This wasn’t the unfortunate but tolerable level of depravity the public had come to expect from supervillains. This was full on Slaughterhouse shit.

It also perfectly validated my concerns regarding using that storage site. I thanked my thinker power for that. At least I could go full bore without worrying about accidently damaging Garment’s wardrobe. Priorities, right?

“I know the place.” I signaled for my bike to follow and opened my workshop using the door of a nearby maintenance shed. “I’ll get there as soon as I can. What else can you tell me?”

Her breathing was labored and it sounded like there was more than exhaustion behind that. “Bakuda’s put a contingency in place, a pacemaker or something like that. Her heart stops and every bomb she’s made goes off, both the implanted ones and everything around the city.”

I winced at the news. That was a serious level of human shielding. It took lethal force completely off the table. I didn’t know if I was actually able to kill someone, but Bakuda’s current actions might have driven me to make the attempt.

No, that wasn’t right. I did actually know if I would be able to kill someone. I had a lifetime of military training and experience drilled into my brain. I was a hundred percent confident that if it came down to it I would be able to take the shot, and that kind of terrified me. I might regret it and moralize over it later, but I had personal experience that would let me follow through. No matter how vague or indistinct that experience was it was still there and couldn’t be denied. Effectively I was a trained, blooded soldier. It was chilling in terms of what it meant for my mind, but undoubtably an asset for going into this situation.

I guess that’s one more quarter for the jar.

I put the phone on speaker and started stripping out of my clothes and changing into my new costume.

“The ABB is too coordinated. They have someone guiding things from behind the scenes. New cape, probably a thinker. I can’t get a reading on them.”

I put aside the concerns over my mental state and focused on the new aspects of this crisis while doing my absolute best to set a speed record for changing clothes. I decided then and there, once I get a shred of cybertonium I’m building a subspace storage pocket for all my equipment. I’m not getting caught in this nonsense again.

Tattletale continued as I struggled to get my armor pieces attached. “Bakuda’s not doing random strikes. This is insanely well coordinated. Everything has been precisely timed. The blackout isn’t just in the city. She’s managed to knock out the entire region.”

That was a nightmare, both in terms of the effects and what it would take to coordinate. Taking out a power station or relay wouldn’t do it. You’d either need a large scale EMP, which had obviously not been used, or need to trigger a specific overload cascade in the power network. Possible, but insanely complicated.

“What’s your situation? How long can you hold out?”

I pulled on my cowl and visor and started attaching my pouches of reagents. Fortunately I had them prepped, unfortunately it was a general loadout and not one specialized for Bakuda. In fact, I was terribly unprepared for this situation on almost every level. I was at a point of every second counting as I scrambled for what little equipment I had available. My scanner was pocketed, I had my micromanipulators and built in omni-tool, but precious little else was field-ready. I started the transfer of a truncated copy of Survey to my Omni-tool and an update of Fleet’s motoroid software. The omni-tool was already designed to support virtual intelligences, so there would be no difficulty given the current level of Survey’s development. With that set I quickly dug into the rest of the equipment that came with my combat engineer power.

“Our situation is fucked.” She replied bitterly. “Bitch was taken out before we got here and they split us up. I think Khepri’s still holding out but I’m pretty sure she got Grue and Regent. I don’t know how long we can manage. They’re basically toying with us right now.”

I grabbed my heavy pistol and started rummaging through the rest of the equipment. The medi gel was irrelevant next to the rest of my healing powers, plus it was technically a product of biological engineering and I didn’t want to be associated with that. I had some grenades, but they were less powerful than my alchemy and without using my armor I didn’t have a convenient way of managing them or the spare time to deal with that problem. In a pile of weapon parts and mods where something caught my eye. It wasn’t designed for use with a pistol, but I could make it work, even in the field. With the upgrades I could manage it would bring enough force to bear in case things went to hell.

I’d gotten what I could and couldn’t spare any more time. I just needed to get on the road.

“I’ve thrown them off, so I should be safe for the moment, but I have no idea how long that will...”

There was the sound of an explosion followed by the crumbling of collapsing masonry. Tattletale’s voice went quiet. Probably from moving the phone away from her head. There was a faint reply to her with a robotic tinge to it. The Vehicles constellation passed by without a connection as there was a thump and the sound of the phone hitting the ground.

I locked away the last of my gear and sealed the workshop door. There was just enough time for the A.I.s to finish transferring and updating before the link to the computational core was severed. With a quick command my bike shifted from its street mode to the monstrosity of armor and aerodynamics that signified my cape vehicle.

“And who is this?” The voice that came from the phone was a robotic monotone, but clearly a processed human voice rather than a synthesizer. My passenger’s reaction confirmed who it belonged to.

“Bakuda, I presume?” I mounted my bike and keyed in the location with Survey while shifting full control to Fleet. I needed to focus on this call. I was probably the worst person to try to play social dynamics against a supervillain, and that was on my best day. After a draining therapy session this was the last thing I was ready for. Still, any time she spent talking to me was time she wasn’t spending hunting the Undersiders. “I understand you’ve been giving my clients a hard time.”

My bike tore out of the parking lot, though with the engine running as quietly as possible. With the Magitek drive most of the engine noise was simulated to avoid attracting attention when opperating in civilian mode. In times like this the bike counted as a ninja motorcycle in more ways than one.

“Ah,” The robotic voice replied. “So the mouthy girl decided to call her little friend. What, did she want you to ride to the rescue?”

Yes, that was literally what I was doing. Well, that and stalling Bakuda and trying to manage last minute alterations to my gear. My motoroid was completely unarmed, a condition I was doing my best to rectify. Normally attempting something like that would have been a joke while the bike was working itself to top speed while swerving around the traffic and stopped cars of a city in the grips of a blackout. Luckily I had my Black Thumb power which allowed me to work on vehicles while they were operating. Insane? Most definitely, but that didn’t change the fact that I could manage it as well as if the bike was sitting in the center of my workbench.

“There were requests of that nature. I don’t suppose I could convince you to let them off with a maiming? Good customers are so hard to find.”

An electronic laugh echoed through the phone. “No, I’m afraid we’re taking this all the way.” There was a pause as someone spoke from too far away for the phone to pick up. “Fuck you, bitch.” Another pause. “I AM a genius.” More response that I couldn’t hear. “You think so? You FUCKING THINK SO?”

Tattletale, what the hell are you doing? I was splitting my focus three ways while also dealing with serious emotional aftermath and even I could tell this was a terrible idea. And as someone with an omni-tool up to the elbow in and active engine while making micro adjustments with the other hand and trying not to fall off a swerving high-speed motorcycle my threshold for a terrible idea really meant something.

“Bakuda?” I tried to get the bomb tinker back on the phone as I made alterations to the front shocks of the motoroid.

There was no response as I heard her rant in a metallic voice. Phrases like “Twelve steps ahead”, “Certified Genius”, “Greatest Tinker”, and “True Fear” were only audible because of the volume at which the bomb tinker must have been screaming them. Tattletale sure had a talent for making people murderously angry. Hell, I was her ally and every time we interacted I’d ended up wanting to throttle her at least once.

Well, the exchange lasted longer than I thought it would, certainly longer than I would have been able to keep her on the line. I was speeding past the end of the boardwalk before things finally came to a head.

Let me just say, having an A.I. navigate through packed Saturday night traffic at maximum possible speed while you also are trying to rush a last minute upgrade onto a still running machine that you are currently riding is a fundamentally terrifying experience. The fact that it was only a prelude to rushing into a heavily trapped murder arena being run by a infuriated bomb tinker really showed the direction my night was headed.

With one final exchange of snark with mad rantings there was a sound like an old house settling if it had been pumped through a stadium sound system. It was accompanied by a scream that was legitimately bloodcurdling, followed by shallow, raspy breathing.

The robotic voice came over the line once more. “Looks like you’ll have to find some new clients. I don’t think this one is going to be up for cape work for a long... EVER. Tough shit for you.” The phone cut off, leaving my bike weaving through darkened streets towards the train yard.

I took a breath as I tried to process things. There was absolutely nothing I could do. My bike was already moving as fast as possible, certainly faster than I would be able to manage if I was driving. In this area speed wasn’t the limiting factor, maneuverability was. The A.I. had to take brutal corners and swerve around the scattered traffic. The roads were less packed than near the boardwalk but I didn’t have a straight shot across the city any more. I trusted my A.I.s to manage the route and driving and distracted myself with my pistol.

She wasn’t dead. Not yet, at least. Judging by the breathing and Bakuda’s taunt she probably just did something unspeakably horrible to her. That was okay. Well, it wasn’t okay, but it’s not dead. I can’t fix dead. Anything else I can probably manage. I tried to stop thinking about it as I shifted to firearm modification at over a hundred miles per hour.

The mod was easy enough to adapt with my current skills, and I could even manage some upgrades. As it was part of my personal equipment I was able to work blindingly fast. The end result was brutal overkill, but I had a feeling I would need a significant display of strength if I was going to get through this.

Survey sent an alert to my omni-tool. I had a message. A message from Survey. To Survey. It took me longer than it should have to figure out what was happening.

I activated the video link and an image of Garment appeared on my display. It was taken from the webcam of her laptop and showed her in the darkened apartment lit only by the computer screen. She made a concerned gesture.

“I’m fine. Garment, I have to go help some people.”

She made a gesture at herself, then to me. Well, to the screen of the laptop, which my omni-tool confirmed had my image on it.

“There’s no time. My...” I struggled to find the right word to use. Friends? Clients? Acquaintances? Obligations? “Some people I know are going to get hurt, may already be hurt. If I don’t get to them immediately they might not make it.”

She made a distressed gesture, and frankly I agreed with her. I would have been nervous enough going into this situation with every resource at my disposal. This wasn’t the kind of battle you wanted to face halfcocked. Still, you fight with the army you have, not the army you want. The timing for this was just about as bad as it could possibly have been.

Actually, was that the work of their new cape, or was that overly paranoid? I mean, assuming Tattletale was right that meant they had unknown thinker support, which could be a God damn nightmare. And I was rushing right into it.

“Garment, I’ll be alright.” I didn’t have full confidence in my words, but I pressed on. “You stay safe. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

We were approaching the storage facility. With how time critical things were I couldn’t afford to scout the place out and go in quiet. I needed to enter heavy and make the biggest impact I could. Survey helpfully offered some suggestions based on the layout from satellite imagery. I input some data based on parameters that were requested by the program, mainly outlines of my capabilities and the needs of the situation. Survey updated the proposal in response.

Well, it was certainly dynamic. I transferred it to Fleet and readied my reagents.

The storage facility was impossible to miss. With the rest of the city in pitch darkness it was brightly lit by what looked like a series of flares somehow suspended in the air above the site. They cast the entire area in an unnatural white glow. There was a low cinderblock wall around the facility and some cars parked by the main entrance with a few members of the ABB milling around them. The occasional rumble could be heard from inside the facility.

The main entrance was guarded and possibly trapped. Fortunately I had another option. My bike sped towards the outer wall as I checked my omni-tool’s sensors to make sure there were no hidden surprises on my chosen route. With the all clear I readied a combination of two drams of ethanol with a measure of ash. This was the first time I had mixed dark alchemy. The back of a speeding bike wasn’t the best place for something like that, but the stability of my micromanipulator gloves made the action trivial.

The mixture glowed as I threw it down, but with a somehow harsher light than what was produced by my restorative formulas. The flickering mass flew towards the wall and shone brightly. Then the wall exploded.

I was ready for the blast and debris. My bike’s hyper alloy paneling could handle much worse than the light pelting of concrete fragments and my own durability was so excessive that my only serious concern in this fight would be Bakuda’s more exotic offerings. Unfortunately I think she leaned heavily towards exotic offerings for most of her work.

I had been partially guided by my sense of the location of my knives. It confirmed all of them were present in the facility, but getting closer I could feel a cluster of the knives I had made for Alec, Brian, and Rachel along with the scepter near the center of the facility. The stiletto was in another part of the site and the baton and knife I made for Taylor were further into the rows of units. I had focused on the cluster on the hope of finding the Undersiders, whether captured or injured.

As the wall exploded my bike roared through the blast before turning into a sideways slide and coming to a perfect stop. I turned towards the cluster of equipment I had sensed and found myself facing a woman in a gas mask flanked by two tough looking men in ABB colors all standing on a set of shipping crates. Around us was a much larger crowd of conscripted henchmen who were not nearly as adept at concealing their shock.

I took in the aftermath of my entrance. The wall was a mess of settling rubble with a few unfortunate conscripts groaning on the ground around it. They were barely visible through the massive cloud of concrete dust around the breach. A sort of contrail had been drawn from the cloud by my passing and wisps and curls of dust flowed off my costume. From the arrangement I’m guessing Bakuda had been mid rant/speech when the blast went off. On top of one of the storage units I could see the figures of Uber and Leet staring down at the commotion.

Well, after an entrance like that I wasn’t about to let someone else seize the initiative. I raised a gloved hand and pointed towards Bakuda, and specifically the knives she and her henchmen were holding. Concrete dust swirled through the air as I moved and I let it settle before calling out across the courtyard.

“Those don’t belong to you.”

The two ABB members looked down at the knives in their hands. The left one was holding my karambit and the right one my parrying dagger. Both were sheathed, as was the bowie knife at Bakuda’s hip. The bomb tinker tried to regain her footing, but was clearly put off.

“So that bitch’s rescue squad finally showed up.” She over gestured during her speech, possibly to make up for the monotone of her voice. I was recognizing the limits of communication that were imposed by full face masks. They were great for concealing identity but horrible for conveying nuance. With her synthesizer stripping the tone from her voice Bakuda seemingly had to emote like a bad actor to get her point across.

I had considered how to handle this. Given my current reputation, coming in with a speech about justice and rescue of innocents was bound to fall flat, especially considering who I was here to rescue. In fact, any indication that I was approaching this from the perspective of a hero would probably just have her jump straight to grenades. Instead I decided to play up the reputation I had earned and go as mercenary as possible.

“I have a contract with the Undersiders. I intend to honor it.” I didn’t have Bakuda’s built in amplification but the new material of my cowl didn’t muffle my voice like the bandana had. Plus the courtyard was still in stunned silence.

“Big talk.” She made an overdramatic gesture as the Celestial Forge missed a connection to the time constellation. “Too bad you’ll never live up to it.” She waved a hand across the stunned masses. “Look around. This is what power looks like. Did Tattletale tell you about this? Did she make you think you had a chance? That girl’s signed your death warrant. Called you in with your tricks and trinkets?” She pulled out my bowie knife and flashed it to the crowd. “Kid’s stuff. What do you have that can stand up to the might of the ABB?”

Some of the braver members of the group were beginning to look emboldened. There were few firearms among the conscripts, but everyone had some kind of armament. Grips were beginning to be adjusted on weapons and the more aggressive members of the group were starting to shift forward. I knew I could handle anything but a mass charge, but without some counter display I could be likely to face just that. I needed to make a point before anyone got it in their head to try their luck.

I triggered the motoroid’s transformation. The vehicle folded up around me in a smooth transition between motorcycle and power armor, though still with that five part electronic grinding sound that was oddly familiar despite just being a discharge from the servo-capacitors. A boom echoed around the courtyard as I brought down a foot with a combined seven hundred pounds of weight, cracking the concrete underneath it. The members of the group that had been edging forward were now slinking back from the eight feet of hyper alloy power armor. I seemed to have successfully reaffirmed my intimidation.

Well, except for Uber and Leet who for some reason were gesturing excitedly at each other and rapidly whispering back and forth, but those guys were nuts. They were probably more excited about fighting a robot suit than they were concerned about getting hurt in the conflict. To be honest as long as I was holding myself back I doubted they would pick up worse injuries from a confrontation with me than they typically endured during one of their usual broadcasts.

I activated a speaker added during the last upgrade and my voice boomed across the courtyard, dwarfing Bakuda’s electronic cadence.

“I think the question you should be asking is, what do you have that can stand up to me?” This was a pissing match, but I was dragging it out intentionally. From the looks of things they had been bombarding the section of the storage area where I could detect the baton and knife I made for Taylor. That had clearly stopped, and likely would until the showboating had finished. I could feel the items moving through the area. The longer I drew this out the better the chance that Taylor would be able to rally. 

“Right,” She scoffed in what might have been a dismissive manner without the voice synthesizer turning everything into a monotone. She was clearly trying to remain aloof, but she suddenly seemed defensive as she looked at my armor. “And who the hell are you?”

I was kind of amazed she had given me such a perfect setup. I swung out one of my armor’s new weapons and pointed it at her. “My name is Apeiron, and I’m here for the Undersiders.”

Once again she was on the back foot. Bakuda had been showboating, and I had stolen her thunder. I knew she could go straight to bombs at any time, but I had the sense she wanted more out of this than a clean victory. They wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of all of this nonsense if the only point was to eliminate the Undersiders. This was either personal or some kind of reputation thing. If she was going for a political victory then dropping me with a grenade might pull it off, but if she missed she’d lose more face then she could afford.

That was still something I was very concerned about. I hadn’t had time to integrate any ranged weapons into my motoroid. Even if I had I wasn’t at the point of trusting my A.I.s to be able to handle point defense against grenades or missiles. In the event that she opened fire my plan was to engage my turbines at maximum power and blindly launch myself out of here. I could figure out my next step when I was safely beyond bombardment range.

My omni-tool had a fairly advanced scanning system and right now Survey was leveraging the technology for all it was worth. It was plotting out life signs, geographical data, and energy signatures, which provided disturbing news on all fronts. There were close to a hundred conscripts here, eighty seven detected and likely more behind the storage units. Looking at the crowd I could plainly see the civilians that had been forced into service. They hadn’t even changed their clothes. It was like they grabbed people out of their jobs or off the street and shoved a bat into their hands. I spotted people in office wear, coveralls, high visibility vests, and even school uniforms for some of the younger members. The younger members skewed very young, like middle school age if not less.

This whole situation was horrible, but something like that was just a new level of vile.

A scan of the facility showed that the layout of those units didn’t match the satellite records. Clearly a lot of bombs had gone off here. My additional entryway wasn’t the only spur-of-the-moment renovation that had been done. Entire sections of the facility had been torn apart during this encounter. What’s more some of the exotic effects were still active. A large crystal formation was clustered near the north east corner, at least three units were still burning, and there was a spherical region that looked normal but my scanners couldn’t penetrate.

The reason for this was clear from a simple sweep for energy sources. In addition to the clear blip from everyone present, even the people who looked like career ABB, I was getting dozens of readings from the facility. This place had been absolutely peppered with explosives, and they were too complex for me to tell what kind of bomb they were before they went off. With my defenses the bombs would either be completely meaningless or utterly devastating with very little middle ground. I needed to do whatever I could to avoid a fight here.

Fortunately there was the possibility I might be able to do just that. Before Bakuda could respond I lowered my arm and swung the weapon back into place, the entire crowd following the movement.

“Give me the Undersiders and we’re done here. You can keep the ‘trinkets’ for all I care, but I’m fulfilling my contract.”

That ‘keep the trinkets’ thing was the only reason I was considering this. I couldn’t let Bakuda go free, but if she actually took the knives I’d be able to trace her anywhere she went. Perfectly undetectable, unblockable tracking. I could swoop in properly prepared and take out her, her lab, and any cronies all in one strike.

I just prayed I had managed to keep the hope out of my voice when I made that offer.

Bakuda actually seemed to be considering it. “I can respect a mercenary attitude.” She looked up towards Uber and Leet who, to her disgust, were still geeking out over my suit for some reason. “That is, a PROFESSIONAL mercenary attitude. Tell you what, after sorting out that mouthy girl I’m feeling a bit generous. You can have what’s left of the rest of them, but I’m keeping the bug girl.” She flicked the knife. “Lung has business with her. Let’s say she’s a welcome home present.”

God damn it. So close. I wasn’t willing to give up Taylor. If I let her go I might be able to save her, heal whatever they had planned, and bring Bakuda to justice, but savior of the world or not there was no way I was delivering a teenage girl into who knows what tortures.

I also wasn’t too comfortable with that ‘what’s left of them’ comment. I just hoped they weren’t dead. I mean, I was betting against it. Bakuda seemed to like a captive audience, and probably in the literal sense of the word. I couldn’t see her killing them if only because it would ruin the flow of her ranting.

“I can’t accept that. Khepri is part of the contract, nonnegotiable.” I shifted my stance to be slightly more aggressive but kept my weapons undeployed.

“No fucking way.” The bomb tinker’s behavior was dismissive and cautious, but not overly aggressive yet. A good sign, but I had no idea how long it would last. “That bitch is ABB enemy number one. Only way you’re taking her out of here will be in three different body bags.”

God damn it Taylor, what the hell did you do? Judging from past behavior I’d be tempted to make a joke about severed body parts, but this was serious.

So how the hell did I play this? Coming to an agreement was a lost cause. I could see that plainly. I wasn’t going to talk her around, plus there was nothing I’d be willing to offer. I was right back to dragging this out and hoping Taylor could use the time to get her shit together. And also hope that the rest of the Undersiders weren’t slowly bleeding out.

So, the goal had shifted from objective based conversation to keeping her talking until something can be accomplished. Fortunately her underlings seem too terrified to attempt anything while she was center stage. So I just had to keep her wound up enough that she kept talking, but not hit the point where the bombs start flying. Her grenade launcher was currently slung on her back rather than in her hand and I was fairly confident I could launch out of here in the time it took her to reach for it.

Safely launching out of here is another matter, but both me and the motoroid were fairly durable. Frankly I’d take my chances with a terminal velocity impact over some of the bullshit that got unleashed on Cornell.

And that’s another alchemy power from the Celestial Forge. Natural Alchemy, like potion making, but science based, not magical. Well, natural energy based. Still useful, and the science aspect will help with other endeavors. Not really relevant to the current situation and I needed to say something before I lost the initiative. 

“You think you can back up that claim?” The statement may have been overly aggressive, but if this was going to end in blood I was at least going to pick the route we took to get there. I put as much derision into the tone as I could and Bakuda stepped back like she’d been struck. Her hand twitched towards her grenade launcher, then stopped and looked around. I was a bit concerned she’d jump straight to violence, but it seemed she still wanted to play to the crowd.

“That’s fucking rich coming from you. Some nobody shows up and thinks they can dictate terms to me? You think that janky robot suit is worth anything? Every baby tinker shits out some crap like that day one.”

It was interesting that she jumped straight to the topic of tinkering. Judging by how Tattletale had set her off and the fact that she had also triggered due to something relating to college it was easy to guess where she was coming from.

I remembered people like her from when I was in school. No room for failure because their entire self-image was tied up in being the best. That mentality barely worked in high school. Take a half dozen people who all needed to be number one and put them in the same class and things get messy real fast. Was that what happened with her? I was getting something to that extent from my passenger, but it wasn’t clear.

Those people were also the most insufferable ones to work with. Even if they actually had the skills to back up their claims their ‘confidence’ in their abilities was always paper thin. Just a hint that you might be ahead of them in any area was like an act of war. In the worst cases even the perception that someone could be better than them was inexcusable and had to be corrected.

What was clear was the idea of someone outshining her bothered her badly, and that was something I could use. Survey had transferred a sensor reading to me, faint but still promising. It looked like scattered groups of insects were making their way towards the storage facility. They were only visible because of how tightly packed the swarms were, but Taylor was clearly still in this fight. I just needed to buy her some time.

I shifted my stance slightly and the crowd reacted. Bakuda wasn’t wrong about every tinker making power armor. Power armor was technically possible even with mundane mechanical skills. Almost every tinker had enough crafting ability to get a suit together. The thing was the vast majority of them were absolute crap. They had a limited range of motion, moved like tanks, were prone to falling over, and tended to look like they’d been made out of broken refrigerators. That was probably because they usually were made out of broken refrigerators.

My suit did not fit that description. This was the end product of over a dozen mechanical powers with Garment approved aesthetics applied to it. It moved more smoothly than most people were capable of and had power and strength to back up its speed. Just the subtle shifting of weight was able to communicate how agile it was. Bakuda may have been trying to downplay it, but it was clearly of a class well beyond ‘janky’.

I made a series of subtle movements over the full range of the suits movements. “I don’t know, I think it holds up.” Sarcasm and derision. I had the feeling Bakuda wanted a direct challenge that she’d be free to swat down. She was the one playing games with reputation and power balance. I guess I was as well, but I wasn’t trying to establish myself as a crime lord. The social stakes were higher for her, so odds were she’d keep posturing.

As I hoped she kept on talking rather than launch an attack. “Can’t be hot shit if these losers were able to buy you off.”

Right, I guess that was a bit of a quandary that didn’t exactly line up. Even Tattletales analysis probably wasn’t worth a rescue with this kind of equipment. I tried to play it off. “I’m satisfied with our arrangement.”

Bakuda made an overly dismissive gesture. “Yeah, right. What are you working for, trading cards and lunch money?”

I shifted my stance again. “Not every business relationship is based on finances.”

Plenty of capes worked on mutual support. Thinkers and tinkers propped up other teams all the time. From Bakuda’s reactions she seemed to get it.

“So that’s it then.” There was something to her posture I couldn’t quite place.

“Pretty much.” I shifted my armor again and gestured to her. “Offer still stands. Give me Khepri and the rest of them and we’re done here.”

My answer seemed to offend her somehow. “And here I thought I found a decent merc. Didn’t expect you to get so personal.”

Was that what this was about? Too invested in the people I worked with? Well, if her main experience is with Uber and Leet I could understand the appeal of keeping a professional distance. “In this business everything is personal.”

“So you think that’s worth the trouble?” Once again there was something in her posture I felt I wasn’t picking up on.

“It is to me.” I tried to be glib in my response, but it didn’t seem to land well.

There was an electronic scoff from her mask. “That bitch got you making her the best toys, and now riding to her rescue as well?”

The conversation was definitely getting away from me. There were parts of this I wasn’t following and now was definitely not the time to be on shaky footing.

“I don’t expect you to understand.” Mostly I said that because I didn’t understand where this conversation was going. I checked in with Survey again. Thick cinderblocks weren’t the best medium for scanning through, much less accounting for the after effects of the bombs and the random crap in the storage units. I couldn’t get a clear picture of what was happening deeper in the facility, but I hoped Taylor was getting her shit together because from how Bakuda was reacting, things weren’t going to stay civil much longer.

“Don’t you fucking tell me what I can’t understand. You think this high school shit means anything to me? I’m a fucking genius!”

In my experience there are few things more concerning that someone who presents themselves as a genius. I mean, I had multiple powers that boosted my intelligence and I wouldn’t be comfortable yelling that to the world. What kind of person could just profess their genius without shame?

I could recognize aspects of her personality from my college days, but I had the feeling we were coming at this from completely opposite sides. Someone who was inordinately built up rather than torn down. It was weird even considering the idea that a person could have been so excessively extolled that they could seriously hold this kind of image of themselves. No wonder she had crashed so hard.

Maybe it was because I was coming into this straight from therapy, maybe it was the frustrations I had been dealing with before she decided to throw the city into hell, but I just wasn’t feeling that tolerant at the moment. If I was going to taunt the bomb tinker I was going to hit her where it hurt.

“So what?”

My dismissive tone seemed to drag her out of her rant.

“Ex-fucking-cuse me?”

“So you’re a genius. Like that means anything? There are what, thirty million people in the world with that IQ bracket? Do you seriously think it’s really a point of distinction?”

She actually didn’t open fire on me, but it seemed like that was only because she was too angry to consider the possibility.

“It doesn’t matter what you fucking think. I’m the greatest tinker alive.” She gestured at the devastation around her. “Look at this.” She specifically pointed at the towering mass of crystal. “Can your pea brain even comprehend what I’ve done here?”

I seriously looked at the effect of the bomb. “Looks like some kind of silicon seed structure designed for molecular propagation with the integration of surrounding solids. From the discoloration I’m guessing you either pulled in a few of your own people when you set it off, or someone was using one of these lockers to store something particularly wet and meaty.”

Bakuda would probably have reacted less if I had clocked her in the mouth. I enjoyed putting her off balance, but that was something I had real cause to be concerned about. I had no defense against that kind of bomb and if the crystal progression hadn’t experienced pattern collapse it would have turned into the kind of thing that got an S-class response.

“That... That’s right!” She struggled to regain her momentum. “Total molecular control. And I cooked it up on a whim, just to see what would happen.” Seemingly back on pace she planted her feet and gestured to the crowd. “Power and fear! That’s what this is about. While you’ve been chasing after your bug bitch I’ve taken this city! True control. These people will do whatever I tell them, whenever I tell them, all because they fear me!”

This was getting dangerously close to either an ordered attack or some kind of bombing demonstration. I needed to know how she could trigger the cranial and planted bombs. Until then I couldn’t even risk trying to capture her. That said, I wasn’t about to let some poor kid get detonated just to provide a data point. Fortunately Bakuda was almost embarrassingly easy to side track.

“Cranial bombs, right?”

She glared at me, but when it became evident I wasn’t going to press further she launched into a speech.

“Exactly. These people know they only live because I allow it. I can kill them with a thought and they only live as long as I do. That’s loyalty. That’s fear. That’s power.”

“That’s the only thing keeping you safe.” My voice was flat as I interrupted her.

The bomb tinker recoiled and glared across the courtyard at me. “What?”

“These people are saving your life. Right now they’re the only reason you’re still breathing. Actually, everyone here owes their lives to Tattletale. Her tip about your little dead man’s switch is the only reason I didn’t open this discussion by reducing you to a charred smear.”

The scary thing was I knew I would have done it. One look around at the children and old women with bombs in their heads was enough to convince me, not to mention all the other everyday citizens whose only crime was happening to match the ABB’s recruitment demographics. What she was doing here was beyond monstrous. It was vile.

I believed in the unwritten rules. I accepted people broke them all the time in a myriad of small ways, but blatant breaches like this were beyond the pale. The only way Bakuda could get out of this mess without a kill order is if somehow the politics of the situation held it up. Everyone would have been thinking that SOMEONE should take her out. I just happened to have the war veteran experience that meant I both could and would have followed through on the idea. That terrified me, but not as much as it seemed like it should have.

And that’s another quarter for the jar.

She glanced around in agitation. “Big fucking talk. What the hell do you think you could do against the ABB?”

We were entering the end game here. There weren’t many places I could go that would escalate things past death threats. It was time to play the last of my cards. I leaned forward slightly as I spoke. “Maybe you should ask Oni Lee.” There were questioning glances from the crowd. “By the way, how’s his arm doing? Was that a clean break? He didn’t stick around long enough for me to find out.”

Murmurs were starting to circulate through the crowd to Bakuda’s clear annoyance. One of the henchmen leaned in towards her and whispered something, but she brushed him off.

“No.” She seemed to be trying to whisper, but the metallic voice of the synthesizer was clear across the courtyard.

He tried again and she glared at him. “We don’t need her help on this. I’ve got it under control.”

The gang member nearly backed down, but steeled himself. He started speaking up, so I could just make out his response with my suit’s sensors. “He’s the guy that took on the demon. We’re supposed to call it in if he showed up. At this point all the timing we’ve been given is already shot. What difference does it make?”

“She can play conductor as much as she wants but she’s not in charge. I don’t need to check in with her. I don’t answer to anyone!” As Bakuda turned increasingly manic the gang member fell back reverently. I noticed everyone seems to be edging as far as they could from him. “This is my plan, my genius! I don’t take orders from some eleventh hour recruit!”

Seemingly mollified Bakuda turned back to me. “So you got a lucky hit in and thought you could handle the whole organization? Well tough shit, that overconfidence is going to get you killed.” The fact that Bakuda was the one talking about overconfidence struck me as a breathtaking lack of self-awareness.

While she was posturing a moth suddenly landed on the visor of my suit. I managed to avoid reacting, but based on the twitched of the insect I noticed a faint trail of bugs hanging in the air leading towards the eastern rows of storage lockers. A quick check confirmed that the knife and baton were in that direction.

Thank God, Taylor was finally ready. I had no idea if she had anything prepared, but if she was setting this up then at least she wasn’t pinned down or incapacitated.

“I’ll give you one chance to stand down.” Her stance was aggressive and she shifted her position to the edge of the shipping crate. “Admit you’re out of your league, step off, and just maybe I won’t use you to test out some new ideas and let Oni Lee play with whatever’s left.”

There were a few ways I had considered opening things, but if she was going to give me this kind of opportunity I might as well take it.

“I guess I have no choice.” I opened the paneling of my armor and stepped out onto the courtyard, noting a failed connection from the knowledge constellation as I went. Bakuda relaxed as I exited the motoroid and she made some dismissive gestures to the ganger who had spoken up. Behind me the motoroid’s plating sealed itself again.

The focus of the crowd shifted to me as I strode forward and flung back the coat of my costume. Doing so revealed my now intricately designed and highly modified heavy pistol. Runework and alterations performed on the back of a speeding bike were a challenge, but I was still happy with the result.

It was brutal overkill, but I doubted anything else would really do in this situation.

“I’m glad at least one of you small brained plebeians has the sense to stand down when you’re out matched.”

Here it was, the final bout of showmanship before the shit completely hit the fan. I squared my shoulders and called across the courtyard. “I’m not standing down.”

Bakuda tensed and the crowd went dead silent. “What?”

“I just needed a second pair of hands.” With a signal the motoroid strode next to me. The crowd watched open mouthed as the armor moved smoothly without an occupant. It fell into place at my side and with a flourish deployed both weapons.

There was a limit to what I was capable of building on the ride over, though much less of one than there logically should have been. With my powers and abilities the handful of minutes I spent working on the bike while it was peeling through the city was the equivalent of days of dedicated construction in a fully equipped workshop. Between the depth of my mechanical knowledge, the precision of my micromanipulators, and the instant fabrication of my omni-tool I was able to complete a pair of advanced melee weapons in blinding speed.

I still wanted to reduce the chance of fatalities, which is why I went with blunt weapons. The motoroid essentially had a pair of tonfas or nightsticks built into its forearms. They had been repurposed from the bike’s structure and a simple fabricated servo bracket allowed free rotation around the wrist. That could potentially allow the motoroid to use martial arts techniques based on the weapon, but right now it mainly allowed dramatic deployments. When both tonfas swung into place a metallic crack echoed around the courtyard and more than a few of the conscripts took an involuntary step back.

A pair of blunt instruments wouldn’t have been a deciding factor in a fight like this, nor would they have gotten the response I needed. Luckily I had just received the ability to easily turn anything into a high-frequency weapon. A rapidly fabricated resonant capacitor calibrated to the specific inductance of the tonfa was all it took. Blunt HF weapons didn’t have the insane cutting power of HF blades, but they were incredibly durable, both in terms of strength and the ability to resist molecular alteration.

They also crackled with faint partial discharges of the alternating current, which judging by the reactions of the crowd, looked intimidating as hell.

But once again, glowing beat sticks weren’t going to be the kind of display I needed to win the day. That’s where my runecraft came in. The strength of the runes was highly variable, but could be increased based on the nature of the weapon, the method of inscription, and the detail of the rune work.

Larger weapons could handle more power than smaller ones. A dagger or a collapsible baton could only support fairly weak effects. A solid bar of metal that needed robot strength to wield had a significantly higher threshold.

Inscription method also mattered. Printed runes would only have a sliver of the power of those inscribed by hand. The power could be further boosted by arcane methods and rituals in the inscription process, but the important thing was that the work was done personally by my hand.

Detail was also a big factor. I hadn’t learned how significant it was until I decided to dive into inscriptions after gaining my Decadence power. That seemingly meaningless design power had boosted the quality of my rune work to the point where what was planned as an incidental boost became enough to propel Taylor into villainous infamy. I had gotten two more style powers since then along with a set of gloves that let me work at a borderline impossible level of detail.

Both tonfas were fully inscribed and may have been the most powerful weapons I’d ever made. Well, that was a title they could have held until I started work on my pistol.

At the sound of the tonfas deploying I dropped a hand to the grip of my pistol and activated the interface of my omni-tool. Tension rippled through the crowd as my left forearm was sheathed in orange holographic mass fields.

Bakuda glared at me while trying to make it look like she wasn’t edging for her grenade launcher. “Big deal. You’ve seen what I can do. Are you really stupid enough to think you have a chance?”

I glanced down at my omni-tool. The interface was much easier to use now that I was out of that armor. I had faintly hoped that I would be able to crack that dead man’s signal and end this madness. Unfortunately that seemed to be something so near and dear to her specialization to the point that even with Survey’s help I could barely make sense of it. Between the levels of encryption, the semi random frequency changes, and what I’m sure must have been some exotic effects I wasn’t getting an easy way out of this mess. Which left the hard way.

“I don’t know if I do…”

I activated a very familiar command that I had actually never used before. With a flash of mass fields and instant fabrication a combat drone deployed into the air next to me. However, two things were different about this deployment.

The first difference from my combat experience was that I now had a burgeoning A.I. in my omni-tool. With it able to direct my drone suddenly it was capable of more complicated commands than just ‘fuck that guy and anyone close to him’. Survey would be able to direct the drone for reconnaissance, distraction, and even interception of attacks.

The second difference was something I didn’t think would make as much of an impact as it had. Fun fact, I actually couldn’t turn off any of my powers. There was no way I could make something without all of my applicable crafting abilities coming into play. So every set of clothes I made would fit perfectly, every item would be nigh-impervious to the effects of time and, thanks to Beauty in the Arts, everything I made would look good on a level that bordered on the divine. It seemed it didn’t matter if it was made by hand or automatic fabrication program, the effect still applied.

A combat drone is normally a series of partial spheres of cheaply fabricated material around a ball of charged plasma and a temporarily projected mass field. It doesn’t exactly look bad, just fairly utilitarian. It certainly isn’t supposed to have subtle contours, embossed designs along the surface, and a silhouette that evoked the idea of a celestial being. The glowing drone floated next to me like a divine messenger to the absolute shock of those assembled.

I squared off between my eight foot armored motoroid and my elegantly designed combat drone and stared down the bomb tinker.

“...but we might.”

Whatever spell cast by the drone’s appearance was broken when Bakuda screamed and raised her grenade launcher. I had been ready for this. The pistol was in my hand and tracked on the target before the grenade began its arc across the courtyard. The reason that Taylor had been able to dismember Aegis so easily was the speed granted by the wind runes on her knife. They were significantly less advanced than the ones I had engraved onto my pistol. The faster draw speed, lack of air resistance, and projected shockwaves were boons when using the pistol even if they were all secondary to its true purpose.

Drawing on my new lifetime of experience I settled into a firing stance and drew a perfect bead on the grenade. As I squeezed the trigger a sliver of metal the size of a grain of sand was sheared from the ammo block and subjected to mass effects and electromagnetic acceleration that launched it with the speed and effective inertia of a high caliber rifle round. With the wind runes supporting it the round tore through the air and shattered the grenade at the apex of its arc.

There was a sudden greasy feeling in the air that was immediately followed by a blinding lightshow. The sky above the facility filled with lightning, bolts spreading out like spider webs clawing at the night. Occasional tendrils found their way to the ground, melting the metal roofs of any storage units they touched. When it finally passed a good half of the flares that had lit the sky were flickering out and dropping towards the ground.

It didn’t escape my notice that the particular discharge of the bomb would have been devastating to both my drone and motoroid. Also probably to everyone on my side of the courtyard. Bakuda may have been able to make tactical decisions even when maddeningly angry, but those decisions didn’t seem to include any concern for friendly fire casualties.

I had started moving long before the discharge had dissipated. Combat instincts from wars I didn’t fight drove me forward as I pulled a prepared formula from my bandoleer. Two drams of oil and a lump of wax. It was the mixture for my weakest attack formula, Flash.

Bakuda assumed she was invincible because of her contingency, that no one would risk attacking her. That wasn’t exactly true. If you could be sure your attack wouldn’t be enough to stop her heart then you were free to go nuts. It was just unacceptably risky with a lot of offensive options. Bullets and blades could catch arteries or something vital you didn’t mean to hit. Blunt force could cause a punctured lung or brain damage that would be the end of things. Using electricity against someone with that kind of implant was just insane.

Fire was another matter. If you were using a fire ability that you could precisely control, perhaps thanks to a set of micromanipulator gloves used for the mixing of the formula, and spread the effect thin enough, such as across three idiots who decided to stand on an elevated platform, then you could be certain the effect wouldn’t be enough to kill. To hurt, most certainly, but nothing worse than a few second degree burns.

I threw down the balefully glowing mixture and three large orange sparks wheeled out of it. Each was about a foot wide and I could feel the heat radiating from them as they flew away. They soared unerringly towards the shipping crates that had been used for an improvised stage. Bakuda raised her grenade launcher, seemingly at a loss for what to do. One of the gang members looked dumfounded and the approaching blasts while the other was swifter and made a leap to the ground. It did him no good as the spark veered to follow his movement.

The dark alchemy burst over them in a roiling wave of fire. Within a second it was gone, leaving burnt flesh and smoldering clothing. Bakuda’s mechanical voice screamed profanities as she hauled herself up and tried to angle the grenade launcher towards me with a shaky grip. I was already moving towards the storage units with my drone, tracking the rough trail of bugs left by Taylor. Bakuda paused at the last second.

“Where’s the fucking robot?”

The scream of turbines echoed across the facility and drew everyone’s eyes to the sky. There, plummeting out of the night, was the clear form of my motoroid in the process of power bombing the courtyard.

When Taylor had tried out her baton Alec had made a joke about her using it to create a seismic event. That was a ridiculous idea. Impact earth runes were a completely different application from tremor earth runes.

As much as I needed a dramatic display I still wanted to avoid casualties as much as possible. Completely outfitting the HF tonfas with impact runes would have blasted the remains of anyone hit by them over a distance of two to three city blocks, depending on what the wind was doing at the time. With tremor runes they would be knocked down, maybe buried a bit, but largely alright. Well, they would still have been hit by a hyper alloy bar held by a five hundred pound super strong robot, so not exactly alright, but no worse than your typical industrial accident or mid-speed collision.

Tremor runes had another advantage. Against stationary targets with no way to disperse the force their effects could be devastating. The power of the shockwaves were proportional to the strength of the impact. This kind of thing was something I had dismissed long ago since nothing I could build would have held up to the stresses involved. The strike would destroy the weapons and probably my motoroid along with it. Of course, that was before I got a way to specifically strengthen the weapons, and in a manner particularly effective against vibrations.

Oh, and that’s a new connection to a mote from the Crafting constellation. Weapon Modification. Now I’ll be able to make these things even better when I get a chance.

With a carefully timed leap I latched onto my drone with my omni-tool just before the motoroid impacted an empty section in the center of the courtyard. Drones were not designed for this kind of thing. Survey was stressing its systems to the absolute limit in an attempt to keep me off the ground and even then I had to cheat with my omni-tool’s mass field to stay aloft. As a result I was spared the effects and got an excellent view of the results of my plan.

Once again I may have slightly underestimated the effectiveness of my rune craft.

The ground in the center of the courtyard bowed and rippled in a way I had never seen outside of cartoons. Knowing it wasn’t a cartoon and the physical reality of the situation I was immensely grateful that I was currently suspended from my drone. The entire mass of conscripts was knocked off their feet and the facility... well I’d be tempted to say it looked like a bomb went off, but considering this place had already seen multiple explosions that probably wasn’t the most enlightening descriptor.

This was the real reason I had exited the motoroid. I still didn’t know if my reinforcement protected my brain tissue to the same extent that it protected the surface of my body. I had been meaning to experiment with that in controlled conditions. Power bombing the surface of the earth with a seismic weapon was definitely not controlled conditions. From the aftermath I was very glad to not be inside that suit.

Everything was damaged. Some units had completely collapsed, some were crumbling, and some looked like they would fall apart in a stiff breeze. The lucky ones, mostly further away from the impact site were just sporting networks of fresh cracks or the occasional missing brick. Even considering all of that everything still looked better than the state of the ground.

My motoroid slowly rose to its feet in the actual crater it had made. The impact had torn apart the surface of the courtyard and exposed the foundation. Deep cracks and fissures spread out from the crater in a jagged network. The entire facility looked like it had been shattered like a pane of glass. It looked like the fissures extended all the way through the foundation of the site, as a few of the units that were still standing now listed at a concerning angle.

I was shocked by the level of destruction, but my new military instincts were drawing me forward, leaving no time for introspection. I dropped from the drone, drawing my pistol again. This was one last tactical move and display of power.

When combined, my technical skills greatly outstrip any of my individual powers. As such, as an engineer I may have been able to mount an incompatible weapon mod onto a pistol and sort of get it to work. With the weight of my other abilities in addition to the pure cheat that was Hybridization Theory I could take what would have been a loosely functional object and turn it into a work of art. As such not only was I able to mount the omni-blade bayonet onto the pistol, I was able to significantly improve it.

An omni-blade is a flash fabricated superheated silicon-carbide blade capable of being generated by an omni-tool. It can be used in melee combat, though military engineers generally prefer to use incendiary bursts when fighting at that range. Because of its extreme usefulness a scaled down fabricator and mass field was designed to allow for an omni-blade to be used as a weapon mount.

I didn’t leave it at that. I had approached this with the knowledge of a master swordsmith, the combined science of an alien civilization, and more enhancements to mechanics than can be properly comprehended. By stressing the mass field and fabricator output I was able to more than double the size of the blade. I optimized the shape and flow perfectly for my ergonomics and fighting style. The blade composition was tweaked based on my knowledge of other monomolecular weaponry and innate understanding of material science. Finally, and most significantly, I integrated a resonant capacitor into the weapon.

As I moved forward I activated my pistol’s melee weapon. A thirty four inch glowing orange blade crackling with HF discharges sprang forth. The strength of an HF blade scales with the quality of the original weapon. My customized omni-blade was a very, very good weapon.

A trio of jeeps were parked near the side of the courtyard. They were small enough to fit between the rows of lockers and my guess was they’d been used to run down the Undersiders during this sick game. With the courtyard shattered they wouldn’t be getting any other vehicles in here, but these had a high enough ground clearance that they could still navigate the less damaged parts of the site.

I wasn’t going to let that happen.

I overloaded the HF current as I neared the vehicles. While slowly walking forward I swung the blade once, twice, three times. The wind runes turned each slice of the weapon into a blazingly quick movement, leaving only an arc of baleful orange light. Despite being well out of the reach of the blade the jeeps split in half. Then they split again. Then those pieces got further subdivided. Crackling slices extended into the walls and ground around the wrecks, some of them frighteningly deep.

I looked over the courtyard. The conscripts were pulling themselves slowly to their feet, the frantic shouts of the professional gang members doing little to help things along. Some of the ones closer to the impact were sporting light injuries, but my sensors didn’t pick up anything fatal or life threatening. My motoroid had specifically targeted the point furthest from the crowds. Maximum shock with minimum injury.

Bakuda was still smoldering from my alchemy formula and swearing loudly in her robotic voice. One of her lackeys was fighting through the pain of his own burns to dig her grenade launcher out of a partially collapsed wall while the other helped the bomb tinker to her feet.

The crowd’s attention seemed split between us. Half were looking to Bakuda for direction and the other half were looking to me with no small amount of fear. More than a few were following every movement of my blade with filching apprehension. Bakuda finally pulled herself together enough to make another attempt at grandstanding, though this time from the top of a pile of rubble.

I wasn’t going to let her take back the initiative. Before she could start I pointed my blade into the sky and pulsed the capacitor just enough to cause a halo of sparks to burst from the sword. Most eyes turned to me, but the smarter ones followed the direction I was pointing to the form of my combat drone, floating high above the courtyard.

Coordination with the drone and motoroid was all handled through my omni-tool. The commands were unnecessary and pure showmanship, but at this point showmanship had a necessity of its own.

“Overwatch.” As the word echoed across the courtyard the components of the drone started to glow. Small bursts of electricity began to appear around it as it tracked the actions of the people below.

I dropped my blade to point at the form of my motoroid, rising from the crater. The raw fear on the faces of some of the conscripts was chilling, but I pushed forward.

“Engage.” With a completely unnecessary nod the motoroid began spinning up its turbines, filling the courtyard with a cloud of concrete dust.

Just before it washed over me I drew a bead on Bakuda with my sword. Then, to the sound of my motoroid launching itself into the fight, I retracted my blade and disappeared into the dust, following the breadcrumb trail of insects leading me to Taylor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> High-Frequency Manufacturer (Metal Gear Rising) 300:  
> A blade launderer, huh? Anyway, you can now make a HF blade out of anything you want. Depending on the original craftsmanship of the weapon, it could be good or shit. But if you picked this, you probably have something in mind.  
> Must be a physical object. No lightsabers and the like.  
> Yes, blunt objects can become HF weapons. No, they can't cut. They only get stronger, and can resist other HF weapons.
> 
> Alchemy (Samurai Jack) 200:  
> The ancient science of mixing specific ingredients and then infusing them with natural energy. You know how to make a wide array of potions with both beneficial and harmful effects.
> 
> Weapon Modifications (Archer) 100:  
> You design and modify weapons with flair, creativity, and skill.


	23. 18 Regroup

I disappeared into the dust choked rows of storage lockers ignoring the sound of the chaos behind me. I didn’t expect my motoroid to accomplish much, and that was largely the point. Fleet’s ability to direct the machine, both in motorcycle and bipedal mode, had improved dramatically but that only marginally extended to combat. The robot form had enough dexterity to handle itself, but there was no real combat programming beyond basic ability to swing the weapon. That was fine since I didn’t really intend for it to hit anyone.

None of those conscripts could meaningfully damage my motoroid or my drone, so I just needed to keep them wary enough to stay clear. Bakuda had dozens of bombs that could utterly wreck them, but the motoroid was agile and the drone was disposable. They should be able to avoid or intercept anything coming their way. That would let them tie up the ABB force long enough for me to regroup with the Undersiders and plan my next move.

I picked my way past critically damaged storage lockers over uneven ground with pandemonium behind me and my heart hammering in my chest. My body was swimming in adrenalin and I felt light headed. I really couldn’t believe I just did that. During the faceoff I had just focused on the next step, on trying to avoid showing any weakness, but the gravity of the situation was creeping up on me. This was full on life or death conflict, and the first time I had seen anything like it since my fight with Oni Lee. That seemed like ages ago when it was really what, six days? Actually slightly less than that.

Without the mindset of my military engineer power I had no idea how I would have been able to manage this. Even as I felt like panicking, instincts drew me forward, away from hostiles and towards allies and a more defensible position. I took a deep breath and pressed on. I could put another quarter in the jar later. Right now I was just grateful to be able to stay functional, no matter what that meant for the integrity of my mind.

I was following my sense of the equipment I built for Taylor along with her trail of insects when I felt the Celestial Forge. It made a connection to the Time constellation using every ounce of reach I had to spare. It wasn’t the largest mots I had connected to, but the ability was so ridiculously overpowered that it nearly made me lose focus on what I was doing. Given the significance of the danger I was in that’s really saying something.

The power was called Workaholic and was practically irreverent in how broken it was. In effect it boosted the output of all of my crafting. Either I could produce five times as many items, or what I was building would be roughly three times the size. By three times the size I meant three times in one dimension, so significantly more in total volume and mass. Actually, it worked out to slightly less than three times, since the mass would increase by a factor of twenty five rather than twenty seven. That had a nice symmetry to it. Either five times the finished product or five times five the material output.

The power would have been significant enough if it just let me boost my production speed, but there was another massively impactful element to it. The amount of initial resources required didn’t change. I could start with the parts to build one robot and end up with five, or a robot nearly three times as tall. And the power was practically irreverent about the fact that it was making logistical requirements meaningless.

It actually felt like the ability was designed to be exploited. I could build something, break it down to base materials, and then use those materials again. Each time the multiplying effect would be applied. As long as I had what I needed for the initial construction I effectively had infinite resources. If was almost as if the universe had gotten fed up with all of my struggling with logistics and just wanted me to get to crafting.

Not that I’m complaining or anything, it was just a lot more significant than I expected from any mote of its strength. Also, having your entire logistical methodology upended in the middle of a battlefield was a bit difficult to process. Instead I put it out of my mind and pushed forward towards the location of my knife and baton.

Once I had a couple of rows of now damaged lockers between me and the courtyard the amount of dust in the air dropped to manageable levels. The impact on visibility had been drastic even away from the blast site. Within the courtyard I doubted they could see five feet in front of them. A quick check on the link to my motoroid and drone confirmed that was pretty much correct.

I made a note to build some proper visual enhancements into my visor. I had wonderful scanning tech in my omni-tool, but there was a whole range of possibilities for optical augmentation available to me. In fact, there were a lot of upgrades I could apply to my personal loadout, and it wasn’t like I was working under a resource crunch any more.

Just a dire time crunch I didn’t know about that had led to this rushed and sloppy rescue mission.

I had a sense of the equipment I was tracking, but that was ‘as the crow flies’ and I was currently working my way through a maze of storage lockers. I could vault to the roof of any one of these without trouble, but that would defeat the entire purpose of causing a distraction and slinking off. Fortunately it seemed Taylor’s control of her bugs was at least as good as I had suspected. I wasn’t just following a scattered path, she was spelling out directional arrows with insects as I went.

I started to accelerate down the rows of lockers, slowing only to periodically check my omni-tool’s readings. The route seemed a bit convoluted, but from the looks of things Taylor was directing me around active bombs and past devices that had already exploded. It provided a wonderful and horrifying tour of what Bakuda was capable of as well as extensive justification for my passenger’s concern about her rampage.

I passed lockers that had turned to glass or melted into a puddle of liquid. In one area the path dipped as a perfectly spherical cut had been taken out of it and the surrounding lockers. Exotic effects, like sprays of corrosive green slime, were mixed with the signs of more conventional explosives, though those were still drastically powerful. Conventional was a relative term since I was sure one of the blast showed indications of a fuel-air mixture explosive and another seemed to have deployed a shower of white phosphorous.

It wasn’t the scale of the damage that disturbed me, nor was it the exotic effects that I knew I had no defense against. The horrifying element was the collateral damage. Bakuda’s inclination to send a tinker tech bomb at me with her own people in the blast radius was clearly not a new occurrence. I saw the signs of at least a half dozen conscripts who had been caught in the effects of her bombs. A portly man partially reduced to a gooey splatter, a pair of scorched shadows on one of the walls with no trace of the people they came from, or the bodies of people who were ‘just’ subject to normal explosives.

I found myself leaning even more heavily on my passenger and military experience to force myself forward. I had a feeling this would turn my gourd later, but right now I had a job to do.

My meandering route had taken me deeper into the facility, but I was close enough that I could practically feel the slight separation between my knife and baton. With one final turn I found myself mask to mask with the newest supervillain of Brockton Bay.

From the look of things most certainly she had seen better days.

This wasn’t the Khepri that had struck a tall, imposing image as she strode out of the bank and dismembered Aegis without a second glance. Taylor was panting for all the air she could pull through her mask. One of her yellow lenses was cracked and her hair was matted with sweat. Her costume was streaked with dust and soot and from the way she was standing she seemed to be favoring her left side. The baton was in her right hand and she held the knife in a reverse grip in her left. Both weapons were shaking slightly from the force of the death grip she had on them.

She may have been the last Undersider standing, but earning that accomplishment had clearly taken a toll.

She barely reacted upon seeing me, instead struggling to catch her breath. I took a moment to check my omni-tool for readings on any nearby bombs or hostiles. Cinderblocks weren’t the best medium to scan through, but from what I could see the immediate area was clear. Taylor had finally reacted when I started manipulating the holographic interface that sheathed my left forearm.

“It looks clear.” I offered. “From what I can see there aren’t any explosives or ABB in the immediate area.”

Taylor nodded at my words, but kept panting. “I know. Been tracking. With bugs.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You can do that?”

She nodded, still fighting for air. “Can sense them. Not enough for more than that. Been running.” She sucked in a deep breath through her mask. “Running non-stop.”

It was a grim prospect and I didn’t envy her it. I took a look around this part of the improvised arena. Between the traps and the swarms of conscripts it must have been a nightmare. There was damage from exploded bombs and nearby another one of the jeeps had crashed into a storage unit and totaled itself. It seemed to have veered off course, so my guess was either Brian or Alec had disrupted the driver.

For some reason all the seats of the jeep were pink. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time but the seats in the other jeeps had been red, orange, and blue. I groaned internally at the implications. I know this place was a maze, but it was full of conscripted civilians and was being used to hunt teenagers. Who could think it would be good humor to add a Pac-Man reference to that kind of nightmare?

“Uber and Leet?”

Taylor cringed and nodded. “Hired, signed up, something. I don’t know. It’s not like one of their normal shows. They’ve got their shit together for this.”

It was weird hearing the normally reserved girl swear, but I’m pretty sure this situation warranted a free pass for as much profanity as you could want. I had some choice phrases of my own being held in reserve.

“Seriously? Uber and Leet?” Honestly, I had pretty much dismissed them as a factor. The idea that either of them were being considered a serious threat, particularly for the Undersiders, was a jarring concept.

Taylor had finally caught her breath and relaxed her hold on her weapons from ‘death grip’ to merely desperate. “They’ve been pulling out stuff from all the earlier shows. And it’s been working.”

“Seriously?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice.

Taylor nodded. “No failures yet, but they keep switching stuff around. They have some kind of new system for how they manage it.” She sounded tired and despondent, and the idea that Uber and Leet had been a factor in driving her to that state was concerning.

To be completely honest, few things were more frightening than the idea of Uber and Leet with their shit together. I hadn’t even considered them in my concerns when charging into this mess. I’d figured Bakuda wanted to bulk out her numbers for her debut, maybe tap into their normal audience to help build her rep. I didn’t thing they would actually be a problem.

I would say I was surprised by them being a party to something like this, but I didn’t know them well enough to really make that call. Their broadcasts had been common enough viewing at college that I had picked up some level of familiarity just by osmosis. Their jobs tended to have a mean spirited edge, but it never seemed like it was designed with a malicious purpose, just that they took the joke way too far. More a lack of moderating influence than a desire to do harm. Even then, people who didn’t support what they were doing still tended to tune in to see them fall on their faces.

Make no mistake, the technology Leet could bring to bear was incredible. Compilations of their early jobs were still some of the best examples of what a high level tinker could manage. They just spiraled downward fast. Breakdowns, malfunctions, or catastrophic failures became more and more common. Uber started having to carry the team, and even then he could barely stay ahead of the buggy gear.

I’d heard dozens of theories for the drop off in the quality of Leet’s work. Some people thought he was working with some exotic resource that he was running out of and trying to stretch across his later inventions. Some said he was getting complacent, letting quality control go and allowing more bugs making it into final products. There were some thoughts that his power might be failing, but people had such a shoddy understanding of how tinkers worked that there were no clear rulings on that.

Even with my expanded understanding I wasn’t sure what the reason was. Tinkers with open specializations usually had some obscure limit on how they worked or what they could build. I hadn’t looked into the situation enough to even try to figure things out.

Fortunately there was still no sign of anyone else in the area. A quick check on my drone and motoroid confirmed it was still chaos in the courtyard. Bakuda had tried a couple of potshots, but my drone was able to intercept them. At the moment the professional ABB members were scrambling for new equipment while the conscripts were in chaos. We had at least a few minutes.

“Are you okay?”

The look she shot me suggested she had some choice words about that question. Instead she did her best to answer. “Tired.” She took a breath. “Heard you from before. Contract?”

I nodded. “Tattletale set up a deal for healing technology. She rather insistently called it in earlier tonight.”

The Celestial Forged missed a connection to the Crafting constellation as Taylor responded while half-collapsing against the wall.

“Healing? You can do that?”

“Yeah, I’m guessing she didn’t fill you in on the details either.”

Taylor shook her head. “She’s not great with that.” She glanced towards the sounds of chaos from the courtyard. “Uh, this is a little far to go for a healing contract.”

I snorted. “If Tattletale thinks I’m not tagging hazard pay to my bill she’s got another thing coming.” Taylor didn’t seem to find the concept that amusing. “Do you need any healing?”

She sagged slightly at the question. It was obvious she did, but this seemed a better way to handle it than the practice of drive by medical care that I established with Panacea. “Yes. I mean, probably? There’s been so much I don’t even have a good idea of how bad things are.”

“Right.” I reached out. “Let me take care of that first.”

She looked at my hand with concern. “What do you need to do?”

Right, her last experience with a ‘healer’ was when Panacea was threatening her with cancer and morbid obesity. I did my best to convey a non-threatening demeanor.

“Contact is enough. It will work through gloves and the suit. Is the shoulder alright?”

She nodded cautiously. “Left one? Right side caught a burst of something when Bakuda was dropping grenades from the courtyard.”

I reached out and put my gloved hand on her left shoulder. This was also the first time I’d been able to really examine the costume. The fabric was tightly knit, and given her powers I was willing to bet that it was made of spider silk. I could tell the entire thing had been woven as a single piece rather than stitched together. It was impressive work. I mean, I could do better, but I had powers for that. She had obviously been leveraging her bug control pretty thoroughly.

I put the topic of costume design aside and focused on my nanites. Glowing blue circuitry lines appeared on my arm and spread across the surface of her costume as the tiny machines went to work. Through her lenses I saw Taylor’s eyes go wide at the display. It only took a second of feedback to figure out what I was dealing with.

She was a mess.

I was honestly surprised she was still on her feet. It looked like she’d been running on a sprained ankle for a while now. She had numerous bruised ribs and that was on top of the two that were cracked. That should have made breathing agony, but somehow she was still managing. She had picked up enough contusions that her entire body was probably blooming into a giant bruise as we spoke. I was even getting evidence of earlier injuries. Possibly from training, or so I hoped because the only other explanation I could think of would be abuse.

I set the nanites to task. They were designed for much worse than this, and considering they didn’t have to rebuild or replace any body parts it was basically a milk run for them. As her injuries started to vanish Taylor practically collapsed into my hand, but thankfully managed to stay upright. It was a relief to hear her breathing normalize.

“Doing alright?” I asked, looking down at her.

“God. I mean, yes, that’s a lot better.” She rolled her shoulders and took a deep breath. Her posture had become a lot less stiff, like she was coming back to herself somehow.

It occurred to me that at this moment I had an opportunity to bail from this mess. Taylor was safe. I could use my Escape formula to teleport both of us out of here, call back my motoroid, and get the fuck out. Assuming Bakuda kept the knives I would be able to track her down later. With the power I just received a few hours of crafting would let me put together a set of gear that would take her and all her forces to pieces. And all I would have to do is abandon four critically injured teenagers to whatever fate Bakuda had in store for them.

I didn’t really like the Undersiders. They were nice enough as people, but I resented what they had come to represent. A lot of that was on me, but they had kind of come to symbolize the mess that came from reliance on my passenger. Being entrenched on the wrong side of the law, facilitating supervillains, and the association with an unknown crime lord all came about because I decided to blindly follow my passenger’s lead. But that was ultimately my decision and I didn’t feel right leaving a bunch of stupid kids to the horrors of this situation just because I regretted my own actions.

That was of course assuming I could even convince Taylor to bail. My passenger suggested she wouldn’t be likely to abandon her friends, so short of knocking her out or suddenly getting a persuasion power from the Celestial Forge it looked like I was down to my original plan.

“What about the others? Do you know what happened to them?” I glanced briefly in the direction where I could sense my stiletto.

Taylor suddenly became agitated and she nodded shallowly. “Bakuda got them. I could only tell so much through my bugs, but it wasn’t good.”

I tensed as I asked the question I’d been dreading. “They still alive?”

Taylor shrunk into herself slightly. “Yes, but...”

I cut her off before she could go any further. “Good enough. Let’s go.”

“You don’t understand, what she did...” She was becoming increasingly agitated.

I shook my head. “If it’s not dead I should be able to handle it.”

“What, seriously?” She pushed herself off the wall and approached me.

I shrugged. “It’s good healing technology.”

“That’s not...” She stopped herself, shuddered, then continued. “Look, some of the things that were done, that Bakuda’s been threatening, I don’t think you can come back from something like that.”

I gave her the most compassionate look that I could under the circumstances. We were two people with full face masks trying to communicate nuance to each other, which was just a recipe for frustration.

“It’s really, really good healing technology. Trust me, those knives aren’t the only thing Tattletale managed to get an insane discount on.”

She looked at me uncertainly, then slowly nodded. I’m not sure if she was convinced, or just going along with it. I guess at this point she didn’t have that many options. From the sound of things Bakuda had brutally cut her way through the Undersiders one by one. I didn’t know what to expect, but the remains of the less lucky conscripts were telling enough.

“You can sense through your bugs, right? Do you have a location?” I had a rough indication of the direction of my stiletto, but that wasn’t something I wanted to advertise. Also I had no guarantee that it wasn’t sitting on the hip of another ABB gang member.

Taylor nodded. “Tattletale’s closest. I know the route, but it isn’t safe.”

I pulled up a layout of the facility on my omni-tool, marking our location and every bomb I’d been able to detect. Taylor looked at the device hungrily.

“I can probably deal with most of the bombs. A lot of the triggers are using conventional detection methods, motion sensors or the like. Those are easy enough to fool.”

She nodded and indicated a location on the map. “Tattletale’s there. I mean, what’s left of...”

“Right.” I cut her off before she could get caught up in things and shifted the map to a zoom of the possible route. “Best to stay low. They should be pretty distracted, but I don’t expect that to hold if we start jumping roofs.”

“What’s going on over there anyway?” She glanced towards the courtyard where the sounds of chaos and occasional impacts echoed forth. “I have a few bugs, but it’s all over the place. I haven’t been able to pick things out.”

I grinned at her, even if my mask obscured it. “I left my robot and drone to keep them occupied.”

She went still and tilted her head. “What? When did you get a robot? Robots?”

I made a dismissive gesture. “Friday.”

She gave me a flat look through the yellow lenses of her goggles. “But didn’t you come in on a motorcycle? And what happened to that armor you were wearing?”

I grinned a little wider. “Same answer to all those questions.”

“Excuse me?” I was actually grateful to hear the exasperated tone over the grim, nearly defeated attitude she’d been showing since I ran into her.

“Motorcycle transforms into power armor that can function on its own.” I shrugged. “Really all power armor should be able to if you know how to program it right.”

She squared off against me. “And you built that on Friday?”

“Well, some of Friday.” I responded flippantly.

“How long did it…” She cut herself off and started shaking her head. “What about that healing thing?”

I held up a hand. “Perfectly safe, but I’m going to have to hold off on the details.”

“Great.” She let out a breath. “What, was that a Saturday project?”

“No, I’ve been able to heal since before I ran into the Undersiders.”

She looked like she wanted to follow up on that topic, but seemed to decide against it. “What about that thing?” She pointed at the glowing mass fields on my forearm.

“Omni-tool. Combination computer, scanner, and micro-fabricator.”

“That from Friday too?” She gave me a flat look.

“This afternoon actually. Look, we should probably keep this to what’s tactically relevant for the moment.”

“Sure, alright.” She glanced at the display again. “It can detect Bakuda’s bombs?”

“At least some of them. I can’t pick them up through solid walls, and some are easier to detect than others. We should be alright, but don’t let your guard down.”

She tightened her grip on her weapons. “Believe me, I won’t.”

We started picking our way through the network of storage units. Taylor only seemed half present and I found myself wondering how much information she was getting from her bugs. Fortunately she deemed to enlighten me.

“This place is wrecked.” She glanced between the uneven ground and the cracked cinderblocks of the locker walls. “There are fissures through the foundation that extend to the outer walls.” She considered things. “At least we have more ways out now. There are collapsed units and damage everywhere.” Taylor shook her head. “I’d hate to think what would have happened if Bakuda did that inside the city.”

“Sorry, did what?” I asked as we continued walking. She wasn’t wrong about the damage. The shattered foundation had a tendency to shift angles between steps. The uneven ground made it impossible to maintain a normal stride.

“You were there right? Whatever she set off in the courtyard that did all this.” She gestured around us.

“Oh...” I let the word draw out somewhat awkwardly.

“Oh what?” Her focus seemed to shift back from her power to her present surroundings, though it was less of a transition than I would have expected.

“Yeah, that wasn’t Bakuda.” I kept walking and ignored the girl glaring at me.

“Excuse me?”

I shrugged. “I figured I’d need something dramatic to put her off balance.”

“Dramatic.” Her voice was flat. “So you just grabbed a seismic weapon you had lying around?” There was an implication of ‘why did you have a seismic weapon on hand and what were you planning to do with it?’ that was strongly implied.

“Well, I didn’t have it lying around, but when I got the call I figured I should try to get something ready.” I knew I was needling her, but her exasperation seemed to keep her from dwelling on the darker aspects of the situation.

Plus it was fun.

“Are you telling me you built a weapon that did all this...” She gestured at the array of splintered concrete surrounding us. “Before you left for this rescue?”

I grinned. “Well, not BEFORE I left.”

“What?”

“The bike has autopilot so I was able to get some work done on route.”

“You made it in the time it took to ride here?”

“Well, it didn’t take the entire time.”

It turns out you can indeed see someone gape through a full face mask if the expression is strong enough. As amusing as this was, it did the job of getting her mind off what had happened to her teammates. I needed Taylor on task, so anything that kept her from ruminating on recent experiences was a plus.

As she processed the impossibility of my power I considered the nature of her own abilities.

“You said you could tell the whole facility was damaged?” My question seemed to draw her out of whatever train of thought she was working through.

“Uh, yeah. I can sense the location of any bugs in range. It’s about three blocks, give or take. I get information from their senses, but it’s hard to figure out.”

I nodded. “Any limits on quantity or control?”

She shook her head. “As long as they’re in range there’s no problem. There’s just so few bugs out here that I don’t have much to work with. I’ve mostly been scouting with them, sometimes I’ve been able to throw people off, but nothing good for combat.”

It made sense. The girl had all the traits of a serious master, range, scale, precision, and lethality. She could easily become a prominent cape, though I still wasn’t seeing the application to actually saving the world.

That was something I was going to be keeping to myself until I could at least figure out the basics of it. Revealing that kind of detail would either cast my ‘thinker power’ into question or prove an invitation for every crazy nihilist on the planet. Worst case scenario it could even bring down the Endbringers. I hated having to deal with the entire mess myself, but I didn’t see any other option. At least I had been able to pass off a reasonable explanation for the reason I was looking after her.

The Celestial Forge made a connection to a small mote from the Resources and Durability constellation. This one was called Element Analysis and it allowed me, with some work, to identify the elements of any material. More importantly, with some basic resources I could break anything down to its base elements. That would have been a huge boon for my nano assembly, but coupled with Workaholic it was pretty much an invitation to unlimited resources. With two powers I essentially had no logistical limits on what I could make. I would be able to build anything.

I just had to make it out of this situation first.

“Hold up.” I stopped Taylor at an intersection. With my scanner we had been able to skirt most of the bombs but unfortunately the area was too saturated to provide a clear route. “There’s a bomb.” I pointed out an innocuous looking soda can on the ground that concealed one of Bakuda’s devices.

“Can you handle that?” She looked apprehensively at the piece of litter.

I smiled at that. “It’s using a standard ultrasonic transducer for its trigger. I mean completely standard, like store bought. I think she was throwing together everything she could for this mess.”

Taylor nodded and I noticed a bug swoop past the can. “I can feel it. Sort of. Is that what she’s using for the bombs?” There was a hopeful edge to her voice.

I shook my head. “Not all of them. This thing would be a lot easier if that was the case. I’ve been able to pick up more than a dozen different trigger mechanisms. I have no idea what the hell she’s doing as far as these designs go.”

That wasn’t completely true. I had a rough idea, but I didn’t want to sidetrack Taylor with tinker theory right now. Bakuda was showing signs of being a chaos tinker. Her work was all over the place and didn’t seem that well directed. There were variations in trigger mechanism, area of effect, and even subtle differences in her exotic devices. I’m pretty sure she was just pointing her power in the right direction and seeing what came out.

It wasn’t a possibility I enjoyed considering. While it meant she probably would have difficulty repeating certain designs exactly she would be building on previous successes and producing explosives with more variation that anyone would be able to account for. Even the drawback of being a chaos tinker, extensive testing, was completely side stepped by the presence of Oni Lee. Add in the mystery thinker coordinating things and you had a real nightmare scenario.

“So do we go around? Over the roof?”

I shook my head. “No route past, and the rooftop could give us away.” I checked my omni-tool. I was specialized as a mechanic, not an operative, but I was still an engineer. Sabotage was basic battlefield practice, and typically against much more advanced systems than this. “I can overload the sensor without damaging the rest of the device.”

Taylor watched my omni-tool intently. “How long will that ta...”

Before she finished speaking a guided surge of electricity jumped from my omni-tool to the soda can. There was a crackling sound and a wisp of smoke from the device, but no explosion. I checked my readings again.

“All clear, trigger’s offline.”

Taylor followed me as I cautiously approached the device. I pulled out my Diagnostic Tools when we reached the can.

“Let’s see what we have here.”

I worked the scanner while Taylor peered over my shoulder. When I got a look at the internals I let out a dry laugh.

“What?”

I turned to face her. “Bakuda must think she’s funny. This is an ultra-high pressure liquid spray, built into a soda can.”

“Yeah, that seems like her. What, is it like, poison or acid or something?”

“Doesn’t need to be. At this pressure it’s basically a water jet cutter. It would slice apart anyone it hits. Because of the pressure involved and the dissolved gas in the fluid even if you survived the attack you’d start to precipitate gas into your blood. Unless they got you in a hyperbolic chamber right away that would finish you off.”

I could see her posture turn anxious at the thought. “Is it safe now?”

“The detonator’s fried, and there’s no remote trigger.” I examined more closely. “Hold on.”

“Hold on?” Taylor started edging away from me.

I stood up and packed away my scanner. “We need to move.”

“What?” She looked at the bomb and seemed ready to bolt.

“It’s not going to explode.” I assured her. “But it had a link to Bakuda’s systems. She’ll know it’s been knocked out, and that means...”

“She’s coming.”

“Her, or someone else. Or some grenades. So, we need to move.”

I didn’t need to tell her twice. As we moved I checked in with Fleet and Survey. Things were still chaos in the courtyard. Fleet was getting plenty of practice with those turbines, and to devastating effect. Since you don’t see the thrust coming out of a jet engine so it’s easy to imagine the flow as something like a light fan. In reality it’s the kind of force that can send vehicles flying. My motoroid’s turbines weren’t on the level of a commercial airliner, but they were more than enough to badly inconvenience everyone in the area. 

It also made landing a hit with a grenade a nightmare. The dust made aiming difficult, enough that my drone was picking as many shots out of the air as Survey could manage. Those that got through the turbines were able to send off course. That had its own consequences, as I was fed footage of the grisly after effects of a misaimed grenade on a group of scattered conscripts. I was able to push through it, but Taylor seemed more seriously impacted after glancing at my display. Rather than break down she seemed to withdraw into herself, which didn’t seem like a good sign.

I noted more professional ABB members returning from somewhere holding what looked like rockets. Those would be significantly harder to dance around, but I guess I couldn’t count on Bakuda pursuing a losing strategy forever. Hopefully we could collect the Undersiders before she got her act together enough to send someone after us.

“Two people are headed our way from the courtyard.” Taylor’s voice was borderline robotic and I wondered how much focus she was putting into her insects.

“Conscripts or gang members?”

“No,” She swallowed. “It’s Uber and Leet.”

I never thought I would hear someone say those words with anything close to that level of concern and apprehension. “How long do we have?”

She shook her head. “Not long, they’re using something to move over the roofs of the units. They’re...” She trailed off and glanced at my map. “They’re circling around, between us and Tattletale.”

I cursed internally, but I guess our target would have been obvious. I pretty much declared my intention back at the courtyard. I considered trying to take the rooftops as well, but I didn’t trust Taylor’s footing and I was operating on accelerated physical conditioning and out-of-universe military training. I thought I could handle it, but didn’t want to risk it while in the middle of a literal minefield.

We did make decent time, particularly since stealth wasn’t the concern it previously was. I was freely frying bombs to open up routes with only a couple of close calls, one that detonated when disabled and one that was camouflaged beyond the ability of my sensors. Taylor was thankfully able to point it out and saved me from possibly blundering into a mystery explosive.

We had nearly reached Tattletale when Uber and Leet decided to make their appearance. By that I mean they literally made an appearance. There was a flash from the roof of one of the storage lockers and a blue backdrop appeared. Music started playing that I vaguely remembered from Mega Man stage selection, then the two least successful criminals in Brockton Bay appeared and started posing in front of it.

Taylor tensed, though from a surface level examination of the pair it was hard to share her apprehension. They looked like someone had covered them in glue and rolled them through a costume shop. No two items they were wearing seemed to come from the same game. I could pick out a few of them, such as the white gloves and Bowser horns from their Mario themed mint heist, but there was too much clutter to sort out anything. There was a mix of armor, martial arts clothing, cartoony weapons, and strange gadgets. I thought their outfits looked a bit disjointed back at the courtyard, but apparently they had added even more equipment in preparation for this.

They actually kept posing before the holographic backdrop as their names appeared beneath them in a blocky eight bit font. They were interrupted by the beeping of what sounded like a watch alarm and Leet made a cutting motion. While Uber finished his pointless showmanship Leet worked some device on his belt causing the music to cut off and the backdrop to collapse into motes of light. Almost immediately there was a crackling sound as a trail of smoke rose from the device, though Leet tucked it away and Uber made an attempt to distract from it.

To his credit few people could distract as well as Uber could.

“So, Apeiron has reunited with his Lady Khepri.” He was using what I always thought of as his ‘movie trailer’ voice, booming and overly dramatic. “Are they bad enough dudes to rescue the Undersiders before time runs out?”

Next to me Taylor brought both weapons up in a defensive formation. “So, how do you want to play this?” She asked in a not-quite whisper.

I looked up at the pair of villains and sighed. “Frankly, I’m considering just blasting them full force and getting on with this.”

Taylor shifted her stance and glared at them. “You know, I think I’d actually be alright with that.”

The villains stopped posing and each dropped a hand to an item on their belts. “Hey, we can hear you.” Leet called down to us.

“I’m well aware.” I drew my eyes across them. “So what’s the deal? This is a bit gruesome for your usual work.”

Uber stood slightly taller as he answered in his over dramatic voice. “Personal request from a long-time fan. How could we refuse?”

“Simply and directly while you still had a shred of decency?” I glared up at them. Operating against an elevated position wasn’t doing my military instincts any favors. “I assume you’re referring to the ABB’s new thinker. Anything you’d like to share?”

“I’m sorry, this is a spoiler-free confrontation.” He wagged a finger from his free hand. “Wouldn’t want to ruin it for the folks at home.”

And that reminded me. These bastards streamed everything. Usually with enough of a delay to not actually give away their crimes, but they wouldn’t be running with this level of showmanship if they weren’t playing to an audience.

Well, probably an out-of-state audience considering the city and surrounding area was dark, but this would no doubt end up online at some point. Without looking I entered some commands through my omni-tool’s haptic interface to scan for broadcasts, which I probably should have done from the moment I knew they would be on site.

“So what do you get out of this?” Somehow I doubted they would be quite as good at keeping secrets as Tattletale. It was a balance between drawing this out to get information and the potential of Bakuda rallying the ABB. Still, I needed to know about this thinker for one critical reason.

My passenger had nothing on them.

There was absolutely no reaction, no fear or confidence or affection. Not even indifference. It was just confusion. Whoever this was the safety net that had carried me was proving useless against them. Tattletale mentioned not being able to get a read, so there was the terrifying prospect of a stranger or counter-thinker power at work. At this point all I had was that Bakuda didn’t like her and there was something about providing timing to the ABB. As such I was willing to stretch out this nonsense if there was a hope of filling in that terrifying blank spot.

Huh, I was going into a situation with the level of uncertainty normal people faced all the time. It’s kind of incredible how quickly I got used to not having to deal with that.

“What we get is a chance to demonstrate our art, our passion, for a true fan of the craft.”

“You see this as art?” I gestured at the damage around us. Okay, more than a little of that was due to my own efforts, but the effects of Bakuda’s bombs were still prominently visible.

“Games are art. And in a world of chaos we’re keeping that medium burning in the public consciousness.”

“You tried to kill me with a jeep.” Taylor’s tone was a harsh contrast to Uber’s showmanship.

“Oh. Hey Uber, she’s the one that brought down Pinky. I wondered who managed that.” Leet fiddled with some device pulled from his backpack and a series of sound effects played that even I could recognize. Power pill. Pac-Man eats ghost. That sound of the disembodied eyes rushing back to the center of the maze.

Taylor was not amused.

Just then the Celestial Forge connected to a mote from the Quality constellation. It was called Unnatural Skill:Smith. Once again, it functioned exactly as advertised. Absolutely legendary, unnatural skill at craftsmanship. Unlike Smithing this power had both breadth and depth. It covered everything from ancient weapon craft to advanced technology. It even gave the dexterity for high detail work and the knowledge to accomplish borderline supernatural feats.

Given the level of work I was capable of I was starting to wonder when it would actually count as supernatural. Considering my previous level of skill was approaching that realm, and this compounding with everything else it seemed like the distinction was becoming largely academic. I mean, with this I could build things that changed size, make modern technology with medieval smith tools, and work with actual supernatural metals.

Those would be fun to try to transmute, especially the bone steel. Really wasn’t looking forward to that.

None of that was going to help me in this mess, so I put it aside and focused on the current standoff. After Leet little performance Taylor had fallen silent and was staring daggers at the villain tinker. I felt I should probably try something.

“Last warning.” I reached towards one of my reagent pouches. “Get out of our way and you get to leave without a beating.” From the way Taylor tightened her grip on the baton I was guessing she was more in favor of issuing said beating.

“No can do.” Uber stepped forward. “We’re seeing this through to the final level.”

Leet moved next to him and struck a pose. “You aren’t dealing with some shovelware knock off. This is classic, remastered, HD re-release Uber and Leet.” He raised a finger towards us. “And you’re going dow...”

He was cut off by a shotgun blast of concrete fragments. Taylor had smashed her baton along the wall of a storage unit. The enhanced impact had launched a spray of powder mixed with larger chunks of cinderblock at the pair. Uber recovered quickly, but Leet slipped and started to slide off the roof.

I grabbed my reagents and began mixing them as Uber started running in place. The red sneakers he was wearing created a kind of ring shaped blur as he built up speed. I quickly threw down the mixture for Flash. It was still my weakest formula but this time I wasn’t pulling my punches. At full power and with it spread over only two targets they would be in for a visit to the burn ward and a lengthy recovery.

As the sparks wheeled out of the mixture Uber leapt into a ridiculously fast somersault while Leet dropped from the roof and grabbed something from his belt. The fire washed off him as familiar music started playing and his body began to flash. He held up a fist sized golden star and glared at me.

There was a pulse around Uber’s spinning body that dispersed the flames and launched the burly cape towards us. I stepped forward and braced myself while Taylor dove out of the way.

The spinning dive collided with the effects of my Force Field formula, dispersing it but otherwise accomplishing precisely nothing. Inexplicably he bounced up into the air while still spinning and returned for another attack. The man hit like a truck, but between my reinforcement and low stance I shrugged him off. This time I was able to angle my body in a way that repelled him towards a nearby wall. In a display of acrobatics he kicked off the wall and landed on the ground, immediately building up speed again. That could have either been the equipment or Uber’s power at work.

Taylor had climbed to her feet and was raining blows upon Leet’s glowing form with her baton. Each of those strikes would have taken out a security door, but they didn’t even budge the tinker. Still, he was attempting to put some distance between them as he fumbled with the equipment on his belt.

Uber started bouncing back and forth between the walls of the storage lockers with blinding speed. With each pass he took a shot at me. The blows did no damage but were unbalancing enough to stop me from drawing any more reagents. I was getting ready to queue up a plasma round from my omni-tool when another of those electric watch alarms sounded.

Uber immediately stopped and kicked off the oversized red shoes. He strode forward like nothing had happened, but I could see the shoes begin to twitch and seize on the ground.

“So I wanted to ask...” He dropped into a fighting stance and the wristbands on his arms briefly flared with blue flames. “Autobot or Decepticon?”

The question was so unexpected that without my military memories I probably would have dropped my guard. Instead I raised my omni-tool while reaching for a set of reagents. “What?”

“Your robot transformer. Autobot or Decepticon?” He started circling warily, but was clearly enjoying the banter. I didn’t share his amusement.

“You want to talk about the ethical philosophy of drone software in the middle of a fight?” I mean there was devotion to a theme and then there was pure insanity.

“Come on, don’t hold out on us.” He darted forward and feinted with a jab before pulling back.

“It’s neither. Which should have been obvious.”

Uber actually seemed taken aback by that. “Seriously? But that doesn’t...”

“Dude!” Leet called from where he had managed to pull back from Taylor’s assault. “Tripredacus Council!” He had to shout over that stupid Mario Starman music that kept playing.

Uber grinned. “Of course. Third party agent. Should have seen it from the design.”

“Obviously.” Leet threw down the pokeballs he had pulled from his belt and in a flash of light a trio of creatures the looked like living cartoons appeared between him and Taylor. I recognized Charizard, but had no idea who the other two were. They looked something like salamanders that had crystals randomly attached to their bodies, so I’m guessing they were legendaries from one of the later games I never bothered with. There was another alarm sound and he quickly tossed the star aside. His body stopped flashing as the effect transferred to a patch of ground around the thrown piece of tinker tech. Said patch shortly began glowing a concerning color and emitting a column of smoke.

“Timing.” The answer to this hit me like a flash.

Uber stiffened. “What?”

“It’s all timing.” I mixed two parts ash with a piece of iron and threw the reaction behind me. Black mist flew from the glowing mixture and formed dark clouds above the three hard light monsters. With a thunderous roar a trio of lightning bolts struck them. Their holograms flickered out, leaving fried emitters to fall to the ground. Khepri began to advance on an undefended Leet.

Uber’s eyes darted over to his partner, then back to me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I just grinned. “You haven’t fixed the problem with any of your equipment. You just know when it will fail.”

“So what?” He brought his wristbands together at his side, then thrust his hands forward with a cry of “Hadouken!”

The plasma ball rolled off my coat without meaningful effect. Clearly this was hitting a nerve and I meant to press it for all it was worth. “You’re still the same screw-ups as before. You just have that new thinker propping you up.”

In the corner of my eye Leet was messing with the latch of a case that had an octagon made out of red and white triangles on the cover. In his haste the lid flew open spilling small disks across the entire area. I shifted my focus back to Uber. The cape’s wristbands were glowing as he slid forward into some kind of spinning uppercut. Luckily I was just able to dodge the strike.

Uber spun out of his failed punch and moved in for a grab, but I managed to counter his lunge with a slight motion of my blocking hand. My micromanipulators combined with the new dexterity from Unnatural Skilll were adding a level of precision to my blocks and punches I never would have imagined. I nearly turned the swing against him, but Uber was stronger than me and his power improved his fighting to near perfection once he had focused on a technique.

“The gear works. Doesn’t matter if it’s for a minute or an hour. It’s just like managing battery life.” He swung in with a rapid series of blows that I managed to deflect with minimal movements from a tight guard.

“You're ignoring the issue. Trading one problem for another. It’s just going to blow up in your face again.” Leet seemed to react to that, but I kept my focus on Uber. My combat training was carrying me through the fight by supplementing and mostly overriding my limited boxing experience. I did have to constantly remind myself not to activate my omni-tool’s melee contingency. That thing could range from ‘very lethal’ to ‘spectacularly lethal’.

“Gamers are used to working against the clock. It’s a welcome challenge. We’re going to show the world what Uber and Leet can do at the top of their game!”

He was gaining the upper hand. Uber was stronger, had more experience fighting capes, and was running a power that quickly brought his techniques to perfection. Despite my best efforts he managed to slip past my guard and land a grip on my shoulders.

For some reason the grip was stronger than it should have been, seemingly due to the effect of some kind of attractive force from his belt. And the red briefs he was wearing. The full implications didn’t hit me until Uber had already flipped me upside down and launched into a spinning pile driver.

The ground lurched away as we rocketed into the air. I felt my stomach try to drop out of my throat and had to fight off intense dizziness as I stared at the spinning ground from a terrifying height. It was the kind of situation that made you quickly reevaluate your previously agreed level of restraint.

Closing distance to a tinker can seem like a good idea. Closing distance to a combat engineer is much less of a good idea. Closing distance to a combat engineer who is faced with a head first spinning body slam and thus no longer that concerned about lethal force is a down right terrible idea.

I triggered the melee contingency on my omni-tool and sent a burst of high energy plasma, fabricated from my energy and omni-gel reserves, directly at Uber. To my surprise it was accompanied by four more jets of plasma, because I can’t turn my powers off and apparently Workaholic counts omni-tool fabrication as part of that power. I only had a fraction of a second to make sure it wasn’t a single burst twenty five times the size. That would have reduced Uber to the consistency of an overcooked pork chop.

I doubt he was grateful for that consideration from the way he screamed and launched me away from him. As we were at the peak of a thirty foot jump I slammed down onto the edge of one of the storage units before dropping to the ground. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, but aside from being a bit jarring and disorienting I was fine.

The same couldn’t be said for Uber who was nursing singed flesh and peeling off ruined pieces of equipment. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Time constellation as we squared off again.

“So that’s it? All this madness for the sake of your egos? You’re trying to convince people you haven’t been churning out crap all these years?”

“Fuck you.” The harshness of Leet’s voice surprised me. Apparently that cut closer to the bone than I imagined. A quick glance showed things weren’t going that well for Taylor. The disks Leet had scattered on the ground were some kind of fabricators, pulling in material from the broken concrete surface into animated constructs. It created the effect of a field of zombies clawing their way out of the earth. The sheer volume of them had put Taylor on the defensive. She’d finally brought my knife into play, but there were two zombies waiting for every one she dropped.

“Easy Leet.” Uber placated. “Don’t break character.”

I wasn’t about to let things stand at that. “No, let’s hear it. If you’re stepping up from petty theft to terrorism I want to know the reason.”

“Petty!” Leet screeched. “I’ll show you petty!” He fumbled with his backpack and produced a large gun with a thick glowing cylinder for a barrel and a series of claw like protrusions at the front.

Uber smirked at me. “I’d say not to let him bait you, but this is going to be good.”

The barrel of the gun glowed orange as he adjusted something and a piece of debris jumped up to float in front of it. Leet angled the chunk of concrete with seemingly no effort and launched it towards me at an insane speed.

My reinforcement was more than enough to take the hit but there were Newtonian effects that I couldn’t compensate for. More pieces of debris started flying towards me in a disorienting stream. It didn’t help that Uber was launching into some kind of spinning lariat at the same time. Together it would have been an impressively coordinated attack if not for the fact that Leet immediately began choking on a cloud of insects and another of those watch alarms started to sound from Uber.

I was very grateful he decided to wear the wrestling briefs over his costume. You would think that was a given, but there were horror stories about some of their more spectacular failures.

Apparently Taylor had been able to coordinate the insects without the slightest pause in her zombie slicing. She moved through them like a maelstrom, the speed enhancement of the wind runes on full display. The knife seemed to be flying out of her hand as she fought. Even the seemingly endless supply of fabricated zombies was having a hard time keeping up with her.

If she wanted to distance herself from what happened to Aegis this was a crap way to do it. Leet was watching her nervously while checking some reading on the case that had held the zombie disks.

“Fuck it.” He called over the melee while swatting away more bugs. “Uber, time to end this.”

The burly cape grinned at me. “You don’t know how long it’s been since we’ve been able to use this.”

“Think it’ll have any more luck than your last nonsense?” They were frustrating, but I still didn’t want them dead. An Overload burst from my omni-tool should put them down without any seriously lethal damage. I selected the blast while Uber took a guard position with his arms and raised his front knee.

“Don’t underestimate us.” There was a flash in front of him as he screamed “Shun Goku Satsu!”

The cape blurred as he surged forward. The burst of electricity from my omni-tool passed harmlessly through his shadowy form. Then he was upon me and everything went dark.

I can’t explain the experience that followed without resorting to levels of profanity that would make a longshoreman faint. On a basic level I was suspended in a void as blows rained upon me, but that was not even scratching the surface of how bad the situation actually was. Each hit sent a tearing sensation right through the core of my being. My durability was still there, but did nothing for the pain and the damage still piled up. The pain was especially bad. It was like this was designed to be particularly torturous.

The blows weren’t really blows, it was more like someone was reaching into my body and tearing things out of alignment. I tasted blood in my mouth and felt the splintering of bones. Muscles tore and agony rippled through my entire body.

When the world faded back I was lying on the ground and Uber was standing facing away from me with a large Asian character glowing on his back. To my even greater annoyance he launched into a grandiose speech.

“Raging Demon. Attacks the targets soul with the karmic weight of their sins.”

“Fuck your soul” I choked out as I pulled myself to my feet. “That was a dressed up concentrated spatial disruption.”

“I’m impressed you’re still conscious.” He played it off like a joke, but there was some real concern in his expression. “Few men can stand before that kind of power.”

“It was certainly an inconvenience.”

He frowned. “Those injuries...”

“Are nothing.” I focused on my nanites and blue lines spread across my costume. I could feel the damage from the stupid attack vanish as they rebuilt my body. In the end the only sign of the attack was a series of tears across my costume.

Damn it, Garment was going to be furious with me.

Uber was gaping at me and Leet had stopped fiddling with a copy of Link’s sword to join him. I turned to Taylor, who had been able to whittle the zombie hoard down to a pack defending the villain tinker.

“Khepri, how are you managing?”

She smashed a zombie’s chest with her baton, causing it to collapse into a pile of the concrete it was formed from. Without looking she took the head of another with her blade. “Not enough bugs around here.” She was playing things casual, but I could tell the constant combat was wearing on her endurance. I reached for one of my more obscure formulas.

“Oh, right. I meant to give this to you earlier. Either it'll solve that bug supply problem, or maim Uber and Leet within an inch of their lives.”

“So win-win?”

I had no idea if this was going to work. If Taylor could interface with it then with her level of control it should let her protect herself for the rest of this nightmare. If not it was still one of my better attack formulas and would take Uber and Leet out of the fight barring anything short of additional invincibility gadgets.

Why did those have to be so common in videogames?

I mixed the two drams of water and one of vinegar. The reagents for my Sting formula. Because Evermore Alchemy was all over the place of course it had a way to conjure insects. I tossed down the mixture and it floated through the air before forming into a facsimile of a wasp’s nest. Then the entire mass exploded into a swarm of insects that would put Japanese hornets to shame.

In normal circumstances they would blaze towards the target of the formula and tear into them, expending themselves after a single powerful sting. Instead the entire cloud held position before flowing over to Khepri. She seemed contemplative as she held them in a tight orbit around herself, then sent a single insect towards an approaching zombie.

It blasted through the creatures head like a gunshot before vanishing. Her posture shifted to an amused stance as the swarm dispersed, taking out the remaining zombies and tearing into Leet’s equipment.

Uber moved to help him but this time didn’t have his spatial nonsense defending him. My overload blast caught him and he collapsed into a flailing mess, various pieces of equipment sparking and twitching. I moved over and secured the barely conscious cape in a headlock.

“So I guess we can call this. Are you going to admit defeat or should the beating continue?”

Leet looked to me over the remains of his minions and twitching form of his teammate. A particular explosion from the direction of the courtyard seemed to catch his attention. He brought a finger to an earpiece and smirked at me.

“You think you’ve won? We just accomplished everything we set out to do.”

I glanced down at my omni-tool and saw the reason for his smug demeanor.

“What’s he talking about?” Taylor was drawing the ring of alchemical insects closer, causing Leet to tense, though the tinker didn’t back down. Instead he turned to her and gloated.

“What I mean is that Bakuda has just...”

“She’s taken out my drone. Rocket strike.”

The tinker glared at me but continued. “That’s right. Now that the cover’s gone your robot will be next, then you’ll have the whole of the ABB hunting you down.”

I sighed. “I can’t believe you were stalling us to take out my drone.”

His smirk grew a cruel edge. “Didn’t see that coming? What, didn’t plan on loosing that in the field? All that wasted time and effort suddenly up in smoke. Thought you were the hot shot new tinker, huh? How does it feel to lose?”

The Vehicles constellation passed by without a connection. “You don’t understand. I can’t believe that was the point of all this. Just to take out a drone.”

Leet was becoming agitated. “You can pretend it doesn’t matter all you want, but your still down an asset. You’ve still lost all the time and effort it took to build it.”

“What, this effort?”

I raised my omni-tool and began fabrication of a new drone. The capacitors had long since recovered from the last deployment. Oh, and with my Workaholic power insisting on affecting everything I did the single fabrication expanded to five drones. They appeared arranged in a pentagon formation behind me.

“Did you just make those? All of those?” His eyes were jumping between the rapidly spinning bugs and the array of glowing drones.

“What, you thought I was teleporting them in? Or using some kind of spatial pocket? Please.”

“Leet…” Uber gurgled from beneath my hold. “Think it’s time…” He struggled for breath against my arm. “For a reset.”

The tinker nodded apprehensively. His hand dropped to a thick blue bracer. Suddenly his body vanished into a thin beam of light that launched into the sky. Beneath my grip Uber dissolved into a cloud of expanding spheres.

“The hell?” The insects she was controlling seemed to react more than Taylor did.

“Mega Man reference, I think. Covering some teleport effect.” Given the rest of what had been displayed teleportation wasn’t beyond the pale. I climbed to my feet as Taylor sheathed her blade.

Huh. That was the first time she had put it away since I had found her. It seemed like a positive thing.

I keyed some commands to Survey. My omni-tool wasn’t really designed to command more than one drone, but between the A.I. coordination and the cheating nature of Workaholic it could be managed. Taylor watched as the cluster of glowing constructs rose into the sky and sped towards the courtyard.

Oh, they were going to ruin someone’s day.

“Alright, let’s get Tattletale before any other idiots show up.”

Taylor nodded to me and we pushed past the aftermath of the fight towards the next member of the Undersiders, and hopefully, finally, some answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Workaholic (Sonic The Hedgehog) 300:  
> Sometimes you wonder how some geniuses are able to build entire armadas within days or weeks of their last defeat. You become a walking factory of production. Building in masse is something that comes without issue to you. That one bot that took a week to build? Now that one bot is now 5. Or roughly 3x the size it was before. How do you even have the resources to build so much you say? The hell if I know.
> 
> Element Analysis (Bomberman 64: The Second Attack) 100:  
> With a little elbow grease, you can easily identify the elemental composition of ANY material and with the right resources, break it down to its base elements for further use.
> 
> Unnatural Skill:Smith (Percy Jackson) 200:  
> Whether from your heritage or just being that good you've got one particular mundane skill that your feats with border on supernatural. Whether you're a smith on the level of the Cyclopses, a near prescient tactician or a swordsman who is ny unstoppable with a blade your feats will be legendary. You are on a level within your skill such that only other beings of legend can hope to match you. This may be taken multiple times. You may not choose magic but you may choose a particular application of magic if you have it already (so curses, enchanting might work, more specific gets a bigger boost).


	24. 19 Restoration

I took a moment to take in the damage our brief confrontation had inflicted on the area. I still couldn’t believe that Uber and Leet were presenting themselves as a serious threat. I also was shocked that they’d signed on to something as monstrous as this plan. Before this I think their lowest point was that Grand Theft Auto stunt, the one where they decided to beat up prostitutes. That was awful, but still a far cry from hunting teenagers in a trapped arena with conscripted minions in fear for their lives.

It was a grim thought, but the increase in effectiveness and the brutality of their actions were probably related. Even though I was holding back, there were closer calls in that fight than I would have ever expected. There’s a chance that spinning pile driver could have knocked me out, and that special attack was probably the most dangerous thing I’d ever seen them bring to bear. Suddenly they weren’t afraid of equipment failure. Without that thinker’s help it’s possible this attack could have fallen apart when the entrance hologram fried, and I had the sense that the feedback from any of those pieces of gear crapping out would have been thoroughly unpleasant.

It seemed like Uber and Leet had signed on to this mess for the chance to take center stage. With the new thinker they could bring all their best equipment out of retirement. That kind of loadout would unquestionably make them serious threats. The only thing it cost them was a permanent association with one of the most hideous acts of cape brutality outside the Slaughterhouse Nine. Did they even understand what they had been signing up for? Somehow I doubted it. The pair always seemed like the kind who acted before thinking, taking an idea that could have been fun and cool and running with it to the point where everyone was uncomfortable or disgusted. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t given a second thought to what was happening here, instead focusing on showmanship and the chance to use their best gear. A large portion of which was scattered on the ground around us.

As much as I wanted to get a look at the discarded equipment the options weren’t exactly appealing. The invincibility star had a six foot glowing patch around it that was sending rainbow smoke into the sky. Glancing over the remains of the zombies showed no obvious sign of the disks that were animating them, meaning they would probably be a trial to reverse engineer. The shoes Uber had used were blurred and twitching so fast they seemed to be half inside the ground, and there was no way I was touching those wrestling briefs.

Depending on how this mess played out I might be able to cycle back for some salvage later, but right now we were on a time limit. I checked my omni-tool’s link to my drones. The pack had just arrived at the courtyard, to the considerable displeasure of Bakuda. Actually, was pack the right word? What was the collective noun for a group of drones? Swarm? Flock? Gaggle?

From the ABB’s reaction it seemed like it was probably a ‘profanity’ of drones. The worst of the dust from my motoroid’s initial strike had settled and the state of the ABB forces was coming into focus. I don’t know if it was an actual shift in leadership or just the general chaos but the focus of the group had shifted. Instead of being entirely guided by Bakuda they were more dependent on the professional gang members. To be fair, I had given them a problem they couldn’t exactly throw soccer moms with kitchen knives at and hope for the best. As such the serious members of the ABB were working to coordinate the more competent looking conscripts, to varying levels of success.

They were actually splitting out the conscripts with ranged weapons from those with random blunt or sharp objects. They began taking pot shots at my drones while other gang members tried to coordinate a press ganging of conscripts into managing the heavier equipment. Well, tried to various levels of success. They didn’t have access to Bakuda’s mystery detonator and the tinker in question was too busy trying to figure out a way to counter my latest move.

I watched one young ABB member, probably still in high school, unsuccessfully try to harass an older man in coveralls away from tending to a group of injured conscripts. The aftermath of one of the missed grenades. Thankfully the injuries were conventional, but that didn’t mean much to the wounded. The teenager seemed to consider if he should call the man’s possibly-not-a-bluff and interrupt Bakuda, then gave up, running off to find someone else to haul cases of rockets.

The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Size constellation as I noticed Taylor glancing at my display.

“We should have some time before they can get mobilized.” I killed the feed of the wounded conscripts back at the courtyard. “Any injuries before we move on?”

She shook her head. “Just a bit out of breath. Is there a limit? On how much you can heal, I mean.”

“Sort of.” If I harvested my nanites it would hamstring my ability to heal until they were replaced. It looked like getting distracted from that particular project had some advantages. “None I’m likely to run into tonight.”

She nodded and indicated a row of lockers. “Tattletale’s down there. It’s... It’s not pretty.”

I steeled myself and checked my omni-tool scanner. “Looks like they trapped the area, probably hoping to catch anyone who stumbled in.”

On that note, I remembered that I was walking around a mine field without my Force Field formula up. It was time to correct that. I dug out the reagents, a dram of grease and a piece of iron, and combined them. The mixture glowed and settled over my body in a protective, though ablative, barrier.

“What was that?”

“Force Field. Kind of like Glory Girl’s, but only good for one shot. Uber burst mine the first time he hit with that spinning dive thing.”

“That’s the ‘high energy chemistry’ thing you were talking about? The stuff that let you fight Oni Lee?”

“That was a different effect, but yeah.”

A handful of the remaining alchemical insects swarmed next to Taylor. “Same for these?”

“That’s right. They’re kind of like projections, or energy constructs. To be honest I wasn’t sure you would be able to direct them.”

I could see Taylor squinting through her goggles. “It’s not easy. Normal insects have minds and instincts, all this software that tells me what they are and what they can do. These things, it’s like they’re blank slates. Their senses are all messed up and I‘m pretty sure they’re not flying properly. I mean, not using aerodynamics.”

She looked off into the distance as the conjured insects slowed in their rotation around her. Seeing them clearly made me realize they didn’t really look like actual animals. There was no subtle movement of the legs or body and the wings seemed to be flickering in a manner that was completely unrelated to how they flowed through the air.

She shook her head and seemed to come back to the moment. “How did you make these? I thought you like, reinforced things with that stuff. But you can shoot fire? Lightning? Make insects?”  
  


I really didn’t want to get into the insanity of Evermore Alchemy right now. Partially because it was a distraction from a serious situation and partially because there was no real explanation at this point that didn’t get into the concept of magic. Capes who claimed they were using magic always put people on edge and I didn’t need that now.

“It’s really complicated. Tinkering works down some weird avenues, and mine is a bit more out there than most.”

Taylor’s eyes drew over the roofs of the lockers where the shape of one of my drones was just visible, shooting an electric discharge before veering out of the way of a rocket launched up from the courtyard.

“You don’t say.” Her voice was flat.

I looked at Taylor and the vulnerability of her situation suddenly hit me full force. The obsessive protectionism I’d been working under had been dampened lately. Mostly that was due to my passenger restraining his reactions following my near melt down after the incident with Aegis getting slashed apart.

You know, I needed a better name for that moment, if just to quantify the point where things had gone totally wrong. The Aegis slash? Aegislash? Eh, I’ll come up with something.

The point is, nothing about the situation that dragged me into this mess had changed. I was just reacting less strongly because my passenger wasn’t hammering things home with the same level of intensity. It was a sign of just how much my passenger had been influencing me, and I wasn’t too thrilled about that.

I’d been willing to draw out a fight with dangerous, experienced capes leaving Taylor at risk in the hopes of drawing out some information about the new thinker. Grant it, the capes were Uber and Leet, so even with Taylor’s warnings I was kind of expecting them to trip over their own feet into a pile of failure. The pairs history as failures and internet jokes coupled with my passenger not recognizing them as threats had even cause me to mentally separate them from the horrific aspects of this nightmare. They were as accountable for the forced conscripts and civilian casualties as Bakuda, but I just hadn’t made the connection at the time.

The situation was harrowing. Was I willing to risk the future of the world just because I had stopped being constantly reminded of its importance? It felt like I was being simultaneously enabled and obscured by my passenger’s ‘assistance’.

I needed to start managing these things myself rather than relying on my passenger, my implanted military experience, or my power to do the thinking for me. The first step would be taking the sensible precaution I should have put in place ages ago.

“Hold on.” I called to Taylor. “This should help.” She gave me a confused look as I mixed the reagents and the glowing energy flowed over her. Afterwards she kept checking her costume to see what I’d done.

“Force Field formula.”

“You can do that for other people?” I could see her eyes widen through her lenses.

“Generally yes. Some applications are more restricted, but this one works. The field will negate a single hit.”

“Seriously? You just handed out a Glory Girl force field?” The shocked tone more than made up for not being able to see her expression. “Just like that?”

“It’s only good for one shot. Doesn’t matter if it’s a howitzer or a bb gun, one hit will bring it down. Also, I only have the materials prepared for two more of those, so be careful. Still, it should protect you from a surprise attack or something you can’t avoid.”

“Like one of the bombs?” She asked hopefully.

“A lot of the bombs, but not all of them.” I clarified for her. “Some of these effects don’t count as damage for the purpose of that field. Also any ongoing effect is going to burn right through it. You’re not invincible, but it should help.”

She nodded grimly and looked towards Tattletale’s location. We didn’t say anything else as we covered the last of the short distance to the storage locker. Two of the traps I was able to disarm remotely, but the final one on the door was positioned such that I couldn’t access the triggering mechanism. I ended up needing to use my diagnostic tools get a reading and my omni-tool to burrow through the door and manipulate it remotely. It was inconvenient, but not really much of a technical challenge.

It seemed my level of technical knowledge could counter anything but Bakuda’s ‘A-game’. That infuriatingly complex deadman’s switch was the best example of what she was really capable of. For the rest of this stuff it looked like she had emptied her workshop of whatever had been thrown together in the time since her Cornell bombing. It meant I could deal with most of what she was throwing at me for the moment, but also meant if I didn’t get a handle on this situation soon I would be facing nothing but her ‘A-game’ devices.

With a few quick adjustments the trigger, simply attached to the door of all things, was disabled and the bomb was rendered harmless. I was able to enter the storage locker and see the results of personally pissing off Bakuda.

It wasn’t pretty.

I did my best to block Taylor’s view of the interior, but the girl pushed past to check on her friend. When she saw what was inside I was afraid she was going to bolt, break down, or even vomit. Instead she went dead still with only the movements of her cloud of insects letting me know she was still present.

“What happened?” She spoke quietly, but still clearly audible over the shallow labored breathing coming from the far side of the locker.

I took in the unpleasant sight. With a deep breath I pushed forward with the most technical explanation I could manage. “Most likely material phasing. Possibly an effect derived from Shadow Stalkers power. Probably a more even and controlled fusion than what happens with her, which is why none of it’s been lethal, no airway’s cut off or blood flow blocked. Still impeded based on her breathing and the paleness of her skin.” Eyes darted towards me from the mess in the locker, a mix of panic and hope.

“Can you...” Taylor swallowed audibly. “How bad is it? Is... Is she going to be okay?”

I walked into the locker and crouched down. “Probably not.”

Taylor tensed. “You can’t help her?”

“Oh, no. I can totally fix this.” I replied flippantly. “There’s no problem there.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” I glanced back at her. “She’s just going to owe me so much money.”

Taylor gaped at me and Tattletales eyes had gone from desperate to frustrated. Really, anything that broke the previous mood was a good thing and I was going to milk it for all it was worth.

“Money?” Taylor asked.  
  


“Crippling medical debt.” Tattletale squinted at me. “The deal was market rate for any medical care. Well, do you know how expensive it would be to get a team of doctors to try to do this?”

I put a hand on part of Tattletale’s costume that wasn’t fused with the wall, floor, or contents of the locker. Glowing lines extended from my glove across her body as nanites flowed forth. Unlike Taylor’s patch job this was serious healing, but still within my capabilities. I was leaning heavily on the innate medical abilities of my nanite control power. That was because the breadth of knowledge from my other powers was pretty light in terms of health care. I knew a bit of medieval chirurgery and some cybernetics with almost nothing in between. It was a good thing that a person’s understanding of the healing process was completely irrelevant to this power.

Despite the fact that the power was working on autopilot I still got a guided tour of the damage that had been inflicted. I was right. Bakuda had designed this to be non-lethal, at least initially. The portions of Tattletales body that had merged with her surroundings took precedence over the other materials upon fusion. Even part of a chair embedded in her torso hadn’t caused any organ damage, only a solidification of the tissue surrounding them and the integration of new matter.

It was a disgusting process, but I kept pushing through. These nanites could handle significantly more dramatic mutations than this. Bit by bit they worked away at the intermingled matter and flesh, processing it back into a normal human body. The horrific hybridization of wood, concrete, or metal with body tissue was broken down and rebuilt completely fresh and unmarred.

Externally the process looked much cleaner, and advantage of not having your awareness swimming through someone’s intestines. All that appeared to be happening was a set of blue lines spreading across Tattletale’s costume, briefly creeping up the objects merged with her, and then cleanly separating them. One by one the attached material either dropped off or, in the case of the wall and floor, opened a cavity to free the captive cape.

The process was smooth, but took an intense amount of focus and more time than any act of healing I’d attempted so far. When Tattletale finally fell to the floor of the locker, complete and unharmed, I felt a wave of mental exhaustion. Taylor rushed to support the panting girl as I tried to collect myself.

Nanite control was direct and personal. I was basically extending my will into the machines and directing their actions. Because of that I had felt every moment of the healing like it was my own hand. I knew exactly how bad that condition was and how impossible it would have been to fix. With the amount of incursion in the central nervous system I doubt even Panacea would have been able to patch things up. Actually, that disruption of her motor functions probably prevented her from hurting herself in a panic, so small mercies.

As Taylor tried to help Tattletale to her feet I looked over the aftermath. It seemed that she had been shoved into a pile of junk, probably the contents of the locker, before the bomb was set off. Now the various items had smooth cutouts anywhere they had fused with Tattletale, along with a few depressions in the wall and floor.

The girl was finally upright, though showing some damage from the encounter with Bakuda’s device. Anywhere the material had been separated it had taken a portion of her costume with it. Thankfully her outfit was still decent, but she was missing large patches around her neck, pretty much the entire right arm, the left leg from mid-thigh to ankle and the calf of the other leg. The rest of the jumpsuit had erratic gaps and missing portions, including a bare midriff.

The thinker took a few deep breaths then gently pushed Taylor aside to check her balance. After steadying herself she turned and glared at me.

“Medical debt?”

I shrugged. “Figured it would help get your mind off things.” With a more serious tone I asked. “How is it? Any lingering problems or effects?”

The girl closed her eyes for a moment then opened them slowly. “No, I think I’m alright. Thank god.” She did a quick pat down, seemingly checking that everything was where it was supposed to be, or just enjoying having range of motion and mobility once again.

While Tattletale pulled herself together I felt the Celestial Forge connect to a mote from the Crafting constellation. Like with a lot of my other powers it contained a gigantic amount of information, this time centered on the construction of armor. Despite the staggering volume of the data, for once there wasn’t any disorientation or difficulty processing the information. That was because unlike every other power that had dropped knowledge into my head, this one was actually intended to be dropped into someone’s head.

I was looking at an actual mental database, and I’m not using that term metaphorically. It had an index. It had a glossary. It had a God damn search function. This was a mental schema that had been carefully designed to give someone the abilities of a Master Armourer. Unlike everything else I’d been struggling with this thing was actually engineered to be as user friendly as possible. It didn’t even rely on previous knowledge. I’m pretty sure this could have been dumped into the head of an illiterate cave man and he’d be able to start churning out advanced protective equipment without any trouble.

The volume of information contained in the database was staggering, encompassing thousands of years from a population of billions. It covered everything from basic hammered plate mail to insanely advanced power armor that needed three layers of infrastructure to even attempt construction. The technical details behind the assembly was irrelevant. This was focused on the process of crafting and as such was completely devoid of any theory or principle behind the armor.

There was one other shocking detail. Similar to how I could tell the connection between the Master Builder and Science! powers there was a similar link between Armourer and my Laboratorium. I probably could have figured that out from the designs of the armor. I couldn’t quite build the kinds of suits depicted in the mural of that group of men with the winged woman, but I could see the stylistic similarities.

I had a feeling that with this power I was tapping into something similar to the robot civilization of Master Builder. There were clearly thousands of years of history connected to this ability, and while I didn’t have larger context there were hints of the culture. Details like the designs of the armor, the assembly methods, or the types of infrastructure needed painted a detailed, if incomplete picture. Skulls and religious iconography were very common stylistic choices, as if I wouldn’t have been able to figure that out from my Laboratorium.

There was also a massive inconsistency in the level of technology. Some of the suits of armor were advanced even by my standards, while others were basic in the extreme. There was a discordant fusion between them, where basic and advanced components were mashed together in a manner that kind of worked, providing you didn’t change anything or look at it too hard. Whatever design process went into this seemed to have a deadly fear of innovation and, while the works weren’t precisely dated, there seemed to be a distinct downward trend in complexity.

It was something I could deal with later. I had a database I would be able to plunder for technology and material designs, but that was no help with the current situation. Turning back to Tattletale she seemed finally satisfied that her body was fully intact.

The girl paused when she ran her hands through her hair, then turned to me. “You can fix hair but not clothing?”

I couldn’t tell if she was actually back to her old self, or just putting up a good front. Regardless, I doubted she wanted me to dig into the issue.

“You didn’t negotiate for tailoring. I can cut you a deal if you want? Decent rates and minimal rush charges.”

She took a moment to check the integrity of her costume. Despite the missing portions it was still serviceable and you saw less coverage from the average Boardwalk patron.

“I think I’m good.” She reached down to her boot, thankfully both were mostly saved from the fusion effect, and pulled out my stiletto from a well concealed sheath and looked over the design. “Don’t think I’m quite ready to embrace your stylistic initiatives.”

I noticed both of them glance over my costume at that statement. I couldn’t tell if that was a dig at my fashion sense or just a comment about her own tastes. Regardless, I let it go. If she wanted to head out in battle damage mode I wasn’t going to stop her. Also, from her posture she seemed a bit more defensive than usual.

Yeah, this was definitely affecting her. I’m not sure if she had the kind of thinker power that would help her deal with something like this, or the type that would make it worse. Still, as long as she could hold it together through the rest of this encounter I could manage.

Taylor looked between me and Tattletale, who was carefully sheathing the knife. “So, what next?”

“Well, I could use some context here. You were kind of brief on the phone and Bakuda wasn’t exactly forthcoming.”

Tattletale nodded. “I could hear your side of the conversation from here. At least from the point where you started using that speaker.” Her eyes drifted between me and Taylor and there was something there I couldn’t place.

“Well, we probably have a minute. Care to fill me in on how this mess started?”

After one last glance at Taylor Tattletale began her explanation. “It started with Bitch. She missed a check in and we decided to follow up on her. Bakuda had this whole place set up waiting for us. It’s her big debut, an Uber and Leet broadcast with extra coverage showing her taking down capes that messed with the ABB.”

“That does seem like her style.” The woman liked an audience for her ranting. Seriously, it was like she was trying to over play the mad tinker stereotype.

“Once we got here they split us up and started hunting us down. It was...” Her eyes went vacant for a moment before she seemed to pull herself together. Taylor also stiffened at the mention of the event. “It was about showing off, not stopping us. She wanted everyone to know what she was capable of, the kinds of bombs she made, her technology. She was drawing it out, even endangering her own people for more chances to show off.”

I nodded grimly. “I saw the effects of that.”

Tattletale swallowed and glanced at the back of the locker. “When she cornered me I tried to throw her off, get at her insecurities. I figured she wouldn’t do her finisher if it wasn’t something she could broadcast and gloat over.”

“I did wonder why you decided to start taunting the bomb tinker.” I tried to keep my tone neutral, but it clearly got to Tattletale more than I intended.

“Yeah, well it looks like I wasn’t the only one who pissed her off to the point she decided to retort with an explosive.” Her tone was defensive as she gestured at the cracked walls of the locker and the shattered ground outside.

Taylor made an awkward cough and I tried to look innocent.

“What?” She kept glancing back and forth between the two of us and I could practically see the wheels turning in her head. “No...”

“In my defense, it did prove to be an excellent distraction.” I pulled up a view of the courtyard on my omni-tool.

If I described Taylor as giving the device a hungry look when she first saw it then Tattletale was salivating like a starving man who wandered into a cruise ship buffet. She started reaching towards the glowing orange holograms before restraining herself, instead gluing her eyes to the display.

Despite the greater forces deployed against them the ABB had managed to impose some level of order. Heavier weapons were being distributed to the people in full gang colors and groups of conscripts were beginning to push out of the courtyard. The heavier firepower meant Fleet and Survey were harder pressed to keep the forces contained, as demonstrated when my motoroid buzzed a group of conscripts preparing to move out, only to have to pull up as a trio of rockets launched its way. Still that was an impressive improvement in aerial maneuverability over the ‘launch and fall’ tactic I began the battle with. I was proud of how Fleet was developing.

Tattletale’s eyes widened at the site of my motoroid, then further at my reaction to it. Whatever processing difficulties she was having weren’t made any better when Taylor leaned in and helpfully offered “He built it on Friday.”

The thinker rubbed her forehead for a moment before taking a breath and turning to Taylor. Before she could say anything her eyes fell on one of the remaining alchemical insects that were being kept in a slow orbit. She looked from the artificial creation, to Taylor, to me, then flinched and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Uh, we probably don’t have that much time before we’re swimming in gang members and forced recruits. Do you have a location for the other Undersiders?”

Taylor gave Tattletale a concerned glance before nodding. “Grue is closest. Should be closest. Not sure about a safe route.”

Tattletale forced her eyes open and took a breath. “I can probably spot most of the bombs and find us a safe...” She cut herself off as I shifted my omni-tool’s display to a map of the area, highlighting detected power sources picked up by the scanning suite.

I swear the girl was actually drooling.

“Looks manageable. Ready to go?”

With what seemed like a colossal effort she dragged her eyes away from the device on my forearm. “Uh, yeah.” There was a pause as she looked at the door and suppressed a flinch at the sound of a distant explosion. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

I took point as we moved out of the locker and started picking our way towards the next member of the Undersiders. Given the state we found Tattletale in I was dreading what was waiting for us. My nanites could fix anything that wasn’t based on a complete disregard of conventional physics, but there was a difference between fixing something and making it better.

Despite her efforts to hide it I could see that Tattletale was struggling. She would freeze up for a fraction of a second every time the sound of one of Bakuda’s bombs echoed across the facility. The first time I spotted a bomb she didn’t move or take a breath until I confirmed it was disabled. I could see the amount of effort she was putting into presenting the image of someone who was unaffected by this mess, especially to Taylor, but I had some concerns for how long she could hold it up.

She also seemed to be exerting nearly as much effort to keep from tearing into me about my technology. After the second time I disabled a bomb she was giving my omni-tool a look that was nearly predatory in its intensity. When one of my drones briefly appeared over the rooftops Tattletale physically bit her tongue and seemed to swallow a rant of questions. I couldn’t tell if Taylor was amused or concerned by the thinker’s reactions, but it was better than dwelling on the events of the night.

As we worked through the facility the Celestial Forge connected to a small mote from the Knowledge constellation. It was just called Engineering and provided yet another increase to my mechanical skills. This power did have a focus on robotics and other technological devices rather than mundane applications. It also had another aspect that none of my other powers had specifically focused on. This power provided actual hacking skills.

Really, I was already an effective hacker. My computer knowledge was extraordinary, particularly after Master Builder and its related powers. Military engineers ran ECM on a level that put most conventional hacking to shame, and enough of my other powers provided some level of computer knowledge that included some understanding of how to exploit systems. However, it was always a side application, never a direct effect of the power. This was the first time I had gotten an ability specifically dedicated to subverting other systems.

Also, unlike the arrays of powers I’d been receiving there was a chance that this could make a difference in the current situation. I pulled up Survey’s analysis of Bakuda’s deadman’s signal. It was still monstrously complex, but I could pick apart some of the surface layers more effectively. Depressingly that only served to reveal the nightmarish mesh of exotic effects and contingencies that lay beneath it.

It also seemed to be the thing that finally broke through Tattletale’s resolve. “What’s that?”

The girl was hovering near my omni-tool display. I pulled up a summary of the parts of the signal I’d been able to decipher. “Bakuda’s deadman’s signal. If I can crack it we can end this madness in one sweep.”

Tattletale looked over the readouts and flinched at the complexity. While she was focused on my display Taylor turned towards me.

“You mean kill her?”

I glanced between them before answering. “If it will end this and stop things from getting worse, then yes, I would.”

I was leaning into my military mindset for the assurance again, which let me make the statement with confidence. Tattletale glanced up from the display and quirked an eyebrow while Taylor looked conflicted. The thinker broke in before she could say anything.

“What she’s done here pretty much guarantees a kill order. Of course, until that order’s approved it's still murder.” She gave me a hard look, but there wasn’t any malice or disapproval in it. “Probably could be plead down to self-defense, but the courts are prickly about that when parahumans are involved.”

“Why wouldn’t they issue a kill order? I mean, this is just...” Taylor struggled to find the words before just gesturing at our surroundings.

“Kill orders bring out the crazies. You can have a dozen warrants on you and still walk into a PRT headquarters to collect on a kill order, and they have to let you walk out again. People have made arguments that the collateral damage from issuing a kill order is worse than the cape they’re designed to put down. It’s why you only see them for serious threats rather than every villain thug with three strikes to his name.” Once more acting as the dispenser of wisdom seemed to help Lisa center herself.

“So the Protectorate is still going to come after the person who puts her down? Even after all of this?”

Tattletale made a nebulous gesture. “Odds are they’ll come up with some excuse for not pursuing the case. Likely keep it in reserve if they need leverage later, but pretend nothing happened, that the problem just sorted itself out.”

Taylor looked particularly unhappy about hearing that detail. I wasn’t sure what the context was there.

Tattletale looked back at my display and shook her head. “She’s really gone the extra mile here. There’s stuff embedded in the code that was randomly determined, and properly random, not one of those crackable patterns. It’s designed to block attempts to decipher based on her behavior.”

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure she’s using more exotic effects than radio communication, though she could be piggybacking on other signals to prevent premature detonation based on interference.” I sighed. “I don’t think I’m going to be breaking this tonight.”

There was a complicated glance shared between Taylor and Tattletale that I couldn’t decipher. I put it out of my mind and pushed on.

“What about her control system? How’s she detonating the bombs?”

Taylor tensed and glanced away. “She said it's mental control. That she can trigger the bombs just by thinking.”

I let out a dry laugh, which drew a sharp look from the girl. “I doubt it.”

“What do you mean?”

“My neural interface is the size of a refrigerator. I seriously doubt Bakuda’s managed to shrink one down to the point that it can fit in her mask. Implants are even less likely. That’s specialized work and hard to do on yourself. If she could pull it off we’d be seeing an entirely different class of bombs out here.”

“He’s right.” Tattletale was giving me another serious look. “No external hardware and too much of a control freak to mess with her brain directly.”

“Could be a souped up EEG, though getting that calibrated for someone like her would be a trial.” I noticed her expression. “Unless you know what she’s doing and are waiting for an opportunity to show how smart you are?”

I put a sarcastic edge to my voice, but Tattletale smiled her fox-like grin, the first time I’d seen that expression since we pulled her from the locker.

“Toe rings.”

“Toe rings?” Taylor asked

I sighed. “Toe rings.”

“Target system in the goggles and she crosses the rings to select what to detonate. All for the sake of appearances. It makes her look like she got complete control.” She was making and effort at her usual smug posture but there was a brittle edge to it I hadn’t seen before.

“Well, that’s...” I struggled for the right word. “Disappointing.”

“What?”

“I mean, compared to the deadman’s signal it’s practically caveman tech. You could build that without being a tinker.” I shook my head. “Still, not easy to knock out. I can’t risk an Overload with the pacemaker system there. Best bet is to find some way of incapacitating her without giving her a chance to react, because I bet she’s petty enough to have some kind of shaped charge or personal explosive on her body.”

“Oh, she definitely is. Too much pride. She’ll take a mutual loss over letting someone beat her.”

The chance to flex her thinker muscles seemed to have improved Tattletale’s mental state. By the time we reached Grue’s location she was a lot more composed. I’m not sure how much of that was just show, but even being able to put up a front was a sign of improvement.

Unlike when we found Tattletale this locker wasn’t excessively trapped. In fact, it looked something like a staging ground. It seemed Bakuda had dealt with Tattletale where she had found her, but Grue had probably been brought to this location. That didn’t bode well.

I dropped into a lower stance as I approached the door and signaled for Taylor and Tattletale to hold position. They picked up on my intention, though Tattletale gave me a concerned look. Slowly I approached the door and performed a final scan. This close I could hear breathing from inside, labored but in a different way from how Tattletale’s had sounded. With a final breath I steeled myself and pushed into the room.

This was one of the larger lockers and had clearly been a headquarters for the early part of the arena. There were still bits of equipment, duffle bags, and scattered personal effects around the room. In the center was a large table that had probably been used for planning.

That was not what it was being used for anymore.

I was grateful for Grue’s powers. They did an excellent job of obscuring the details of the twisted shadowy mess on display. There were still ill fitting parts of his costume spread out across the form, but everywhere flesh would have been visible was instead sheathed in darkness.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

My pistol was in my hand and pointed at the source of the metallic voice within a single heartbeat. It was emanating from a camera setup in the corner, one of two within the room. They were more advanced than standard models, so probably part of Uber and Leet’s broadcast kit.

“It’s certainly striking.” There was a sound from Grue that I tried not to think about, possibly a groan or an attempt to speak with deformed vocal chords.

“I think you mean ground breaking. I emulated Vista’s power with a reversed Manton effect. Only living flesh gets warped, everything else stays the same. And you live through the whole process, feeling every moment.” She broke into a manic laugh over the speakers. I holstered my pistol after checking my omni-tool for other threats.

“So it’s nothing but pointless cruelty?”

“Cruelty is the point. It’s about power and fear. The entire world saw what I accomplished here. Who’s going to stand against me in the face of that?”

I faced towards the camera and opened my arms, earning a metallic scoff from the device.

“And what has that got you? You saw what happened to that mouthy bitch. Bet you didn’t expect that? Thought you could just swing in here and save everyone? How’s that working out for you? You’ve got one out of three intact, and not likely to stay that way for long.”

She didn’t know I’d healed Tattletale. I hoped to God for once that girl would have the sense to keep her mouth shut. We didn’t need to give up one of our few advantages just so she could show somebody up.

There was also the hint of something bad coming, and I had a guess on what it could be. A glance at my omni-tool showed what she was planning. I started keying commands to Survey through the haptic interface as I kept talking.

“What can I say? I keep my commitments, and unlike some people I don’t make deals with damaged merchandise.”

“I can guarantee you’ll regret not taking that deal before the night is...” There was a pause and I turned to see Taylor in the doorway, standing stock still as her swarm buzzed around her. “Whatever. Bug girl gets a brief reunion with her team leader, and the two of you can continue your little tour of what’s waiting for you at the end of this.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. Lovely conversation, but I think I’ll have to cut this short.”

Before she could finish the first metallic word of her reply I activated my omni-tool and fried both cameras. Survey still hadn’t tracked the broadcast. Leet’s streaming encryption went back to the early days of the pair when they were putting out top tier tech on a regular basis. It wasn’t on the level of the deadman’s signal, but there was a reason it hadn’t blown their operation in years and years of heists. Just confirming the presence of a transmission was a challenge.

Tattletale followed Taylor into the room and looked from the burnt out cameras to the shadowy form on the table.

“Can you...” She swallowed, then pushed on. “I mean, I know you can probably, but will you be able to...”

“Yes, I can totally add this to your bill.” The thinker glared at me. “Bigger problem though. Bakuda’s got mortars in the courtyard. We’re in for a bombardment.”

Taylor shifted focus. “I’m guessing those are the tube things they’re setting up now?”

I nodded. “Can you do anything about them?” She’d made some impressive claims about her range and control, but I wasn’t sure if she could handle this.

“Not with the bugs I have out there.” She looked apprehensively at the alchemical insects she’d been keeping in a close orbit. In the time since I conjured them they had slowed down and gotten somehow less distinct, but still had something of a dangerous edge to them. With a breath Taylor sent them flying out the door. “Can you make any more of those?”

Tattletale was looking at me very intently.

“Not with what I have prepared. I’d have to break down and rebuild some formulas, and we don’t have time for that.” I pulled up my omni-tool display as I approached the table. "My drones should be able to intercept anything that’s launched, but I’d rather not push our luck.”

Tattletale clustered near my display as I laid a gloved hand on an overly thin and spindly limb. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Quality constellation as I focused on my nanites. The spread of glowing circuitry lines across Grue’s body briefly banished the field of darkness. The effect provided a nauseating outline of the extent of Bakuda’s damage. The cloud quickly settled back, obscuring the warped form from sight but not from my awareness. Like when I had treated Tattletale I received a highly detailed picture of the extent of the damage.

Brian’s body had been warped and stretched. This might have initially been due to spatial effects, but once that passed the cells had settled in their new configuration. Parts had been stretched, folded, bent, or just horribly distorted. I tried to put it out of my mind as I focused on the work of restoring him to a human form, but the very nature of the process prevented that. I was acutely aware of every distortion, every warped bone and altered blood vessel. The morbid tapestry was spread before me as I worked.

I tried to split focus with my omni-tool in an attempt to coordinate our defense, but it was a token effort at best. The healing just required too much of my attention. I was limited to nothing more than an observation of the situation.

From my drone’s perspective I could see nearly a dozen mortars set up in the courtyard. Some seemed to have been pulled from the remains of the jeeps while others had been brought in with the new equipment. Bakuda was barking targeting instructions at the operators, who were clearly struggling with the unfamiliar equipment. I didn’t doubt that she would be able to target them with pinpoint precision, but you couldn’t just grab someone from a random office job, hand them a mortar, and expect them to know how to use it.

Taylor elected to wait until the last moment before striking. The remaining manifestations of my Sting formula flew down on the gunners in a single cloud. There were barely more insects than mortars and they were reaching the end of their useful existence. Sting was a direct damage formula, never intended to hang around for this long. It was also a mid-range formula. Even if I had direct line of site I doubted I would be able to target the effect across this kind of distance. This was pushing the formula to its limit and I didn’t know how it would impact the effectiveness of the conjured creatures.

The primary result seemed to be a substantial drop in damage output. Insect stings that had been able to blow through the head of a creature of animated concrete when freshly summoned were barely able to dent the launching equipment. Still, the disorder sowed from the coordinated strike bought us more time than I could have hoped for. I focused on pulling Brian’s body back into sane proportions as I watched the aftermath or Taylor’s attack on my display.

When handling Bakuda-level ordinance it didn’t take much to send people into a panic. The sparking impact of the alchemical insects sent the gunners and most of the conscripts diving for cover. It looked like maybe a third of the mortars had taken enough damage to somewhat impede their operation, usually from strikes to the barrel or firing assembly. 

One mortar began to spark, causing its panicked operator to hurl it into the crater my motoroid had created. For a moment it seemed like a false alarm, then there was a blast of wind immediately followed by a trio of tornados trying to aggressively drill into the center of the crater.

That could have been bad enough, but in shock one of the operators accidently discharged his mortar, sending a shell arcing directly towards Bakuda.

Everyone in the courtyard froze stock still, even in the dust choked wind of the constrained tornados. Thankfully it seemed Bakuda had designed some kind of identify friend or foe system for her bombs, stopping them from detonating on top of her. Thus miraculously, the misfire did not result in a karmically appropriate death for Bakuda followed immediately by a tragic death for everyone else. The only tragic death was the poor operator responsible for the misfire.

Bakuda seemed to be yelling something I couldn’t make out, and then the unfortunate gunner began to scream. There wasn’t a dramatic explosion, he just kind of fell to pieces. It was like a dozen invisible blades had swept through where he was standing. All that was left was a gruesome pile, including the scrapped remains of the mortar he was holding.

The tornados finally faded, leaving only a haze of dust hanging in the air. Bakuda started yelling orders, or gesturing like she was yelling orders since I didn’t have the audio to confirm it. She also pointed directly towards the video feed of my drone and suddenly the view got a lot less stable on account of all the dodging of rockets.

I doubled my focus in an attempt to speed up Brian’s healing. It didn’t actually make a difference, but things were getting down to the wire. At least he had reached the point where he could be mistaken for human rather than a creation from a John Carpenter film. If it came down to it he could probably be safely moved without snapping like a twig in three places.

The last few moments of healing seemed to take forever and weren’t helped by Brian trying to flail as soon as he had the capacity to do so. I needed to call over Taylor and Tattletale to hold him down and keep him calm while I finished repairing the last of the damage.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Brian sat up on the table, whole and under his own power.

He then promptly bent over the side and vomited on Tattletale’s shoes.

Taylor lurched to support his weight as Tattletale jumped back on reflex. “He alright?”

“Physically he’s fully back to normal. Mentally? There’s no brain damage, but some disorientation can probably be expected.” I checked a notification from my omni-tool. “But we need to go.”

“Is it safe to move him?” Taylor tried to help him off the table.

“Doesn’t matter. Bakuda just picked off one of my drones.” There was another beep. “Two of my drones. She using larger ordinance. Detonating it when they try to pick it out of the air. The blast is large enough to take out the drone. We have three more intercepts before bombs start raining on us.” I checked my omni-tool again. “Make that two more intercepts.”

Brian was not an easy person to move. We were roughly the same height but he was built like a body builder where I had what could generously be called a ‘runner’s build’. Even the boosts from my accelerated life fiber training only upgraded the task to ‘arduous’ from ‘downright impossible’. Taylor and Tattletale couldn’t provide more than token assistance so mostly made a point of grabbing the salvageable pieces of Grue’s costume.

Fortunately his faculties seemed to be returning fairly quickly and moving him rapidly transitioned from ‘sack of potatoes’ to ‘drunken roommate who can’t be trusted to make his way back to the dorm’. Even that eventually transitioned to ‘friend with twisted ankle’ and then basically a token oversight to make sure he was steady enough to walk under his own power.

We made it out with little time to spare. Bakuda had managed to impose enough order to send a barrage of shots flying but, in a move by Survey that I was particularly proud of, the last two drones sacrificed themselves in a manner that caught all the launched shells in the blast radius. It was a truly impressive show of coordination and foresight.

Unfortunately it meant the follow-up barrage was totally unimpeded. By that point we had put enough distance between us and the staging room that it was little more than a light show, though some of those effects were things I wasn’t comfortable being three rows of lockers away from. Honestly the worst of them I wouldn’t to want share an area code with. 

Rather than spread out the shots over the area in case she had missed us Bakuda seemed content to excessively pummel the same cluster of lockers beyond all rational sense. The reference to ‘rational sense’ was probably what explained her actions. At least it kept her occupied while we led a gradually more coherent Brian away from the blast site. Eventually we found a quiet corner where we could prop him up and watch the fireworks.

Taylor went to check on him and I pulled up the scanning data on my omni-tool, once again with Tattletale floating nearby and watching the output eagerly. Brian was able to stand on his own, but was maintaining that cloud of darkness across his skin.

“Are you...” Taylor turned towards me. “Is he alright? Under that?”

“...mm fine.” Came an echoy slur.

Taylor watched as the shadows slowly dissipated revealing a fully intact Brian. Physically intact. His expression looked like what would happen if someone with a thousand yard stare was hit by a bout of severe nausea. Still, I could see the effort he was exerting to pull himself together. After a few moments he had a somewhat brittle smile and slightly more confident stance.

“Thank god.” Taylor’s voice was barely a whisper and she seemed unsure of what to do with herself.

Brian put on a brave front and turned to face me. “Thanks for coming for us. We really owe you for this.”

“Oh, you have no idea.” I grinned at Tattletale who seemed reluctant to meet my eyes.

Brian glanced between us. “What?”

I smiled and left Tattletale to explain while I started sorting reagents. If I’d known what I was getting into or been aware of Taylor’s synergy with the Sting formula I would have come better prepared. Instead I would have to break apart reagents sets to try to cobble together more useable formulas.

“Uh, this isn’t a goodwill rescue. I kind of hired him.”

Brian’s eyes widened and it looked like a fresh batch of nausea was hitting him. “How?”

I wasn’t sure who he was addressing, so I decided to jump in. “Remember that medical coverage deal I told you about? She decided to call it in, reported injuries and all that.”

The only reason I had Sting prepared was a completionist desire to have everything on hand, just in case. While I only had one set of reagents prepared there were other formulas I probably wouldn’t need that I could raid for components.

Brian looked around at the shattered facility, the assorted destruction, and the still raining mortars a short distance away. “This counts as medical coverage?”

I smiled. “It does if you include house call and hazard pay charges.”

Taking apart my prepared formulas for Acid Rain, Double Drain, and Regrowth would yield enough reagents for two more Sting formulas. I’d have enough left over for a Super Heal as well, one of the stronger healing formulas.

Brian swallowed. “When you said ‘incredibly cheap medical coverage’, how cheap are we talking?”

Lisa broke in before I could. “Market rate. Whatever the normal cost of the medical bills would be.”

I finished sorting the reagents and packed them away. “That’s right. No worse than you’d get from any hospital. Plus the cost to get the doctors out into a parahuman war zone.” I smiled at them. “Don’t worry, I’m running a tab. Now let’s go and expand that crippling medical debt.”

Brian seemed to be having trouble figuring out if he should be concerned or amused and Tattletale was unable to clarify things for him. As long as he wasn’t dwelling on his experience with Bakuda then I was happy. Instead I turned to Taylor who had been sorting the salvaged parts of Grue’s costume.

“Do you have a line on Regent or Bitch?”

She nodded and handed the helmet off to Brian. “Regent’s closest. He’s not doing well. Not like...” she glanced at Tattletale and Brian before deciding to refrain from mentioning recent events. “I don’t have a good sense of what happened, but I can pick up stuff through my bugs. It smells burnt.”

That was a grim thought. Horrible in an entirely different way and more concerningly something that could rapidly prove fatal. Bakuda may have wanted her victims alive during her little show, but I doubted she was that concerned with their long term survival.

The Alchemy constellation passed by without connection as I turned back to Brian and Tattletale, who seemed to be debating the price of experimental surgery and how serious I was being about hazard pay.

“Taylor’s found Regent. We should move while Bakuda’s still occupied with that.” I gestured behind me at the sustained bombardment, which chose that exact moment to peter out to nothing. Well, nothing but a concerning column of smoke, crystal, exotic lights, and what looked like a crack in space with fire bleeding through it.

I glanced back, sighed, and then looked at the Undersiders. “Can I get a ‘fuck this’ on the current situation?”

“I’ll second that.” Tattletale replied in a monotone.

“Yeah, double for me.” Brian pulled on his helmet and the salvaged pieces of costume, which seemed to steady him somewhat. He left black smoke bleeding through the tears and missing pieces, creating a seriously impressive image for someone wearing salvaged jeans and leather.

“I’ll raise you to ‘fuck this shit’ with a side of ‘screw that bitch sideways’ thank you very much.”

The other two Undersiders looked to Taylor with shock but no hint of disapproval.

Tattletale turned to me. “Is your robot...”

“Robot?”

“...going to be able to give us enough cover without your drones...”

“Drones?”

“...backing it up?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s flight...”

“Flight? Excuse me?”

“...isn’t that maneuverable. It was never more than a distraction, and they’re too coordinated for that to work.”

“So can your scanner...”

“What scanner?”

“...find us a path clear of the bombs?”

“You can detect the bombs?” Brian turned to Taylor. “Can someone please fill me in here?”

“Possibly, but I should get some more drones in the air.”

“Again, what drones?”

“You can do that?”

“Sure.” I raised my omni-tool and triggered the drone fabrication. Five glowing celestial spheres the size of beach balls appeared above me and launched themselves into the air. I pulled up my display showing a live feed of the action across the facility.

Brian was making vague confused gestures. Taylor just put a hand on his shoulder and guided him with the group as we moved towards Regent’s location.

I may have been taking a little too much pleasure in keeping the Undersiders off balance, but it actually served a purpose beyond my own amusement. What they had gone through was nightmarish. I had no doubt it was going to catch up to them in a bad way later on. My main goal was to keep that ‘later on’ as later as possible. A breakdown in this environment would be lethal. I would rather have them calling bullshit on my abilities than dwelling on what had happened to them.

There was less distance to cover on the path to Regent, but the situation was becoming more complex. Small teams of ABB had started picking their way through the rows, still mostly confined to the area around the courtyard but slowly working their way outward. I wasn’t worried about the conscripts with their light caliber handguns and improvised weapons, but every squad had a professional member carrying either a rocket launcher or set of grenades.

There were also the mortars to contend with. Bakuda was maintaining an iron grip on the teams operating them and I had little doubt that the first sighting of us would be followed by a shower of shells. I knew it would come regardless of how many of her own people would be caught in the blast. It put stealth as a higher priority than I would have preferred.

My only hope was that Bakuda was still confirming the kill rather than taking offensive action. Otherwise she could just set to bombard the locations of the last two Undersiders. Then again, she clearly wanted to rub in the consequences of crossing the ABB, so would possibly hold off until after the shock value of finding another injured Undersider.

I turned to Tattletale as we worked through the rows.

“Any idea on Bakuda’s next move?”

There was a slight flinch at the bomb tinker’s name, but she pushed through and forced an answer. “She’s running on pride. You pretty much stole her big moment out from under her. In her mind that’s probably the worst thing that could have happened. She doesn’t just want to win, she has to prove herself.”

“Prove to who?”

The girl shrugged. “To the ABB? To the Protectorate? To the cape community in general? To the people watching at home? To us? To you? To herself?” She took a breath. “Bakuda has her wires crossed. This manic stuff, it isn’t an act. She’s running hot and it makes her hard to predict.”

“Like the new ABB thinker?”

She shook her head. “This is just an excess of variables, not some active effect. I can’t get anything on the new thinker.”

I nodded. “Me either.”

She clenched her teeth. “I was afraid of that. At least Bakuda doesn’t seem to be using her guidance anymore.”

“In the courtyard one of the gang members mentioned something about the timing they’d been given being shot. Any idea what that means?”

She considered. “Maybe? I’ll have to look into it. Assuming we get out of here.”

Taylor moved forward from where she’d been walking with Grue. “We’re getting close. Can we make it without tipping anyone off?”

I checked the display again. Tattletale had been glued to my side watching every readout and video feed. I’d seen children in a toy aisle at Christmas who were more subtle about their longing. I pulled up the local section of the map with Tattletale watching every twitch of my haptic interface.

“No way to avoid this bomb, and I don’t want to risk spoofing the trigger. No telling what the detection mechanism is from here.” I indicated another section of lockers. “If we slip over the roofs here we should be able to bypass it without triggering anything. Can you handle the climb.”

Tattletale shook her head glumly. “My shoulder...” She trailed off, then shot a hand up to her shoulder. “My shoulder is fine!”

“Uh, congratulations?”

“No, I mean, Glory Girl dislocated it. It was a mess. I’ve been on painkillers since Thursday.”

“Well, that’s a... shame?”

“You fixed my shoulder!” She exclaimed.

I was starting to have my doubts regarding my passenger’s regard for the strength of Tattletale’s thinker ability.

“Yesss....?" I left the word hanging.

“Oh. Uh, thanks for that? For fixing my shoulder?”

“You're welcome?” It was weird. I’m guessing being saved from horrific merger with a storage locker was a lot more abstract than fixing the damage of a dislocated shoulder. Small things were more personal than giant nightmare problems.

“My stitches too.” Taylor was running a hand over a portion of her arm. “Thanks for that.”

I just nodded awkwardly and the focus kind of shifted to Brian by default. “I’m just going to go with a blanket thank you until we get out of this and can figure out exactly how much we owe you.”

I nodded and we pressed forward towards the hopefully-not-dying Regent. I mounted the roof first, checked that it was clear, and then signaled for the rest to follow me. Once again Tattletale was giving me a strange look as I helped her over the row of lockers, but didn’t pursue it any further.

Brian took point with me as we approached the locker that Taylor and Tattletale assured us contained Alec. I had been smelling smoke from the moment we entered the row. It was accompanied by the concerning stink of other incendiary chemicals. Unlike the previous lockers there was no presentation and no booby-traps. The door wasn’t even fully closed.

I pried up the shutter, casting light on the collapsed form of Alec. All I’m going to say on the matter of his condition is ‘badly burned’. I can say that any hint of guilt over my use of fire on Uber and Bakuda was completely out the window. If anything those attacks had been two degrees too mild.

I was leaning very heavily on my military engineer mindset to push through this. It was different from the carnival horrors unleashed on Brian and Tattletale. This was just a set of awful and clearly hideously painful injuries. As a veteran I knew how to handle it. As a civilian I would probably be as paralyzed by the sight as Brian.

I guess that’s another quarter for the jar. Why does it feel like I’m selling my soul two bits at a time?

“Watch the door. I’ll deal with this.” Brian responded to my tone more than anything and turned, ostensibly to keep watch but mostly he was specifically positioning himself to block Taylor’s view inside the locker.

She wasn’t keen to peer around him.

I rested a hand on unburnt flesh, eliciting a flinch despite my best efforts. Really, I just wanted to throw a healing formula at him, but since that didn’t address scarring it was not an option. I focused and nanites flowed into Alec’s body, casting the locker interior in a pale blue light.

Compared to Tattletale and Brian this wasn’t a difficult healing. There was some flesh that needed to be rebuilt, but even the deepest burns didn’t go far below the skin. There wasn’t even that much to repair. It was limited to a portion on one side of his body. It was just that the injuries were horrible and I got an inside look as they were rolled back. Every monstrous aspect of them, all played in reverse to an incredible level of detail.

When I was done Regent was sitting with his back to the cinderblock wall of the locker staring off into space. A large portion of his shirt was missing along with one pant leg and part of his mask. I would have preferred to get him out of the room, but Tattletale advised against it and I was willing to trust her judgement on this. The rest of the group had clustered in, seemingly at as much of a loss for how to handle this as I was.

I was about ready to try something, anything, when he finally spoke.

“We’re going to kill her.”

“What?” Brian was the first to interject.

“Bakuda. We’re going to kill her.”

“Eventually.” The eyes of the group shifted to me, though with no real opposition to the statement. Even Taylor only looked briefly conflicted before nodding.

“Eventually?” Alec’s voice was deeply sarcastic. “Why not sooner?”

“Deadman’s switch.” Tattletale offered. “She goes down and she takes the conscripts and probably a good chunk of the city with her.” He didn’t look entirely opposed to the idea.

“Means we need to keep her heart beating. Everything else...” I made a dismissive gesture.

It was a horrific concept, but that seemed to be the theme of the night. I wasn’t going to limit myself when it came to options that could end this nightmare a moment sooner.

Regent’s lips quirked in a cruel smile. “I think I can get behind that.” He climbed slowly to his feed and seemed to be really present for the first time since I healed him. He took in the room like he was seeing it for the first time. “Where’s Bitch?”

“She’s the next pickup.” Brian seemed to be settling back into his leadership role, possibly out of habit, possibly as a welcome distraction from what had happened.

I pulled up my omni-tool map, drawing a whistle from Regent. Taylor pointed to a location near the back of the facility, not that far from us.

“Bitch is there. She doesn’t seem to be that badly hurt, but she’s pissed off. Really, really pissed off.”

“Sounds like Bitch alright.” I was a little concerned about how quickly Alec seemed to bounce back. Either he was unusually resilient or was very good at pretending he was. That introduced the concerning possibility of how much of his personality was actually an act.

I checked my omni-tool and the reports from Survey. “Mostly clear at the moment. If we hurry we can probably get there before this search closes any tighter.” Once we were spotted or they figured out what we were doing we could expect rains of mortars and swarms of panicked conscripts. I accepted the likelihood of the night ending up there at some point, but I quite reasonably wanted to put it off as long as possible.

As we moved out I felt the Celestial Forge make a connection to a mid-sized note from the Vehicles constellation. It was another cluster, this one with four equally sized motes in it. The power was called Valuable Memories and was something of a conundrum. I could tell the first mote was about vehicles, the third mote was seriously about vehicles. The fourth motes was about something at least on the scale of vehicles. I connected to the second mote. Do you want to know what the second mote was about?

The nature of memories.

I had just received the technology and knowledge necessary for memory manipulation on a shocking scale. And I got it from the Vehicles constellation. I swear, the Celestial Forge makes less sense every day.

And this was serious memory tech. It was basically everything you could want. Download, upload, copy, edit, delete, the works. With the cloning technology I could already manage this kind of thing had some terrifying potential applications. And once again it was of no help to the current situation, which seemed to be a consistent theme. Life or death situation gets you all these wonderful powers, you just have to survive the mess to be able to use them.

“What’s so funny?”

I turned to Regent and considered my answer. “Nothing. I just... remembered something.” Tattletale seemed to twig to something being up, but didn’t say anything. Regent just nodded along.

“So how’d you get roped into this mess?”

“Tattletale wanted to go into a staggering amount of debt. I decided to oblige her.” The thinker gave me a sour look much to Alec’s amusement. “Are you... You holding up alright?”

I wasn’t sure how to press this issue, but the speed at which he turned from despondent to a facsimile of his old self was disturbing.

The boy just shrugged. “I’m managing. After they grabbed me things weren’t too bad, at first. I was cornered by gas mask girl and her two thug-boys. All banter and lightheartedness to start.” His tone lost a lot of its levity. “People like that are lots of fun until the exact moment they aren’t. Decided they liked me enough not to try anything special, just the fire stuff.” His fist clenched so hard it shook, then he forced himself to release it.

I considered something. “Career ABB? About a hair under six feet? One with a neck tattoo and the other with the side of his head shaved?”

He nodded. “I see you’ve met them.”

“Yeah, I sort of set them on fire.”

Alec perked up. “Seriously?”

“I’m sorry, when was this?”

I turned to Tattletale. “Back when the initial negotiations went to hell.”

“Wasn’t that risky?” Taylor called up from where she was following with Brian.

“Not really. It’s a controlled enough effect that there was no chance it was lethal. Actually, hold on.” I started working my omni-tool, pulling up records from my previous drone. Once again Tattletale watched every motion and output of the device like a hawk, but this time she was joined by the rest of the Undersiders. A video feed began to play showing the sparks of my Flash formula wheeling towards Bakuda and her lackeys, including the failed dodge attempt, and the burning impact of the formula across them.

Regent burst into laughter while the rest for the Undersiders were amused but more restrained.

“Wow. No wonder she’s pissed.”

“Grue, she was already pissed. This is karma.” Alec suddenly stood bolt upright. “Holy shit. I need to start going to church.”

“What?” The word was echoed by most of those present. Alec just gestured at the screen.

“A prayer gets answered that quickly and specifically then you can’t not take it as a sign.” He turned to Brian. “Grue you must know a good church. Hook me up.”

“I really hope that’s not a race thing.”

“Oh, maybe I’ll join the choir. Won’t that be fun?”

“Regent.” Tattletale spoke slowly. “When’s the last time you were up before noon on a Sunday? How often do you get up before noon in general, barring mission obligations?”

Clearly a man of sophistication and taste.

“Don’t disparage my faith!”

A signal from my omni-tool chirped and I pulled up the grim report. “We’re going to have to move.”

“What’s wrong?”

I angled my omni-tool towards Brian, much to Tattletale’s annoyance. “Looks like a full mobilization. They’re emptying the courtyard.” The screen showed squads of ABB working their way through the maze of lockers.

“Are they coming this way?”

“Some of them, but look.” I pointed out the approximate directions of some of the farther squads headed towards where we found Tattletale and some more towards Alec’s former locker. “Looks like they’re checking up on where you are supposed to be. They confirm you as missing...”

“Then they might start dropping mortars on Bitch on principle.” He looked between me and Taylor. “I was pretty out of it, but you had something that held them off before, right?”

“The formula?” Taylor asked.

“Two sets salvaged from other reagents. Though from this range... Well, I’m not sure if it’ll do more than annoy them. The drones can buy us some time, but not that much.”

Grue nodded. “Can we make it?”

I pulled up another map. “We’ll have to jump two... no three roofs, but we should be able to get there while avoiding the bombs with enough time to spare.”

Alec leaned in and looked at the screen. “I think I might love that thing half as much as Tattletale, and that’s only because my feelings don’t extend to the biblical sense.” The thinker abruptly pulled back at the comment, but looked conflicted about it. “So three roofs. No problem.” He turned to Brian. “And you said that my parkour hobby was a waste of time.”

“It was a waste of time because you never did anything.” Brian answered as the group began to move at double time. “Filming yourself jumping down a flight of stairs is not parkour.”

The banter dropped off, though with a focus on covering the distance rather than dwelling on the situation. I had a feeling Tattletale was aware of how I was trying to manage group morale and at least supported it on a surface level. Distractions, confusion, or banter were all better than sudden breakdowns or collapsing into despair. The problems weren’t solved, I could clearly see that, but everyone seemed to have at least reached a functional place.

We managed to cross the roofs with varying levels of grace. Alec had very clearly not done parkour to any measurable degree. Meanwhile climbing an obstacle of this height was trivial with my new experiences and mild physical enhancements. It was clear that Tattletale was noticing something about that, but she hadn’t said anything yet. Assuming we got out of this in one piece I was probably in for another conversation.

At least this time I’d have some leverage.

As we moved the Celestial Forge made another connection to the Crafting constellation. This was a smaller mote called Fingers of the North Star. In addition to increasing my mechanical talents the power was specialized for projectile weapons. It would let me disassemble, analyze, and reassemble absolutely any projectile weapon I encountered as well as easily upgrade existing weapons. It also helped me design new and unique weapons based on more esoteric technologies.

I wasn’t exactly short on esoteric technologies.

It was another upgrade, design and refinement power. Once I got out of here I would need to completely rework pretty much my entire kit. That task was overdue anyway. I had been too focused on big idea projects rather than building up the equipment that would let me properly function in the field. Things had been holding together, but they were slapdash and relied too much on luck for my tastes.

Taylor led us to Bitch’s location. Rather than another locker of varying size it was a service room on the edge of the facility. I could hear grunts and profanity coming from inside. Once again I took point with Brian backing me up. I quickly picked the lock, something I could literally do one-handed without looking at this point, and we burst into the room.

I had been preparing myself for the worst. Never in my life have I been so happy to only find a tied up and beaten teenage girl. It really says something about my night when that was the high point. My relief was not shared by Rachel.

“What do you want you motherfucker? Back for more? Well fuck you!”

Her reaction briefly confused me until I realized she had only seen me in costume once before, for a brief period, and about three design revisions ago.

“It’s okay,” I checked the room for threats, then raised my hands in a nonthreatening gesture. “I’m here to help.”

“What the fuck... Grue?”

I let Brian move into the room to help Rachel out of her bindings. I followed after so as not to spook her any further. She had taken a bad beating, but compared to the horrors of the other Undersiders it was easy to fix and easy to stomach.

As soon as Brian had untied her Rachel franticly rushed to a corner of the room. When I saw what she was panicking over I immediately reevaluated my assessment of this being the least horrible rescue of the night.

“Well... shit.” Regent’s voice came from the door.

“Angelica.” Brian’s voice was a whisper as he spotted the dog. “Can’t you...” He turned towards Tattletale. “Can’t she heal her dogs?”

The blond girl shook her head. “They have to be conscious. Otherwise the power doesn’t connect.”

“Hey, don’t worry.” Alec loudly clapped me on the shoulder, then winced and shook some feeling back into his hand. “Tattletale called in some medical help. New guy can handle this.”

Rachel looked up from the barely breathing terrier she was cradling. I glanced at Alec before approaching. “It’s Apeiron, actually.”

“Right. Well, A Pie Run will help you out. Apparently we’re all in medical debt now. Might as well join us.”

I crouched down to Rachel and, with some conflict, she raised the dog towards me. It probably says something bad about my mentality, but seeing something like this happen to a dog affected me to a greater degree than all the casual violence I’d blown through tonight. Maybe it was because my military mindset wasn’t helping with it. Maybe because it somehow seemed personal. Maybe I just liked dogs more than people, which I understood wasn’t that uncommon of a stance.

Anger warred with grief and desperation on Rachel’s face. “Please. Whatever it costs. Save her.”

I smiled under my mask and reached out to rest a hand on the terrier’s fur. “Please. That deal was for the Undersiders. Your dogs can pay their own medical bills.”

Rachel gaped at me, but it kept her from reacting as the blue circuitry lines spread across the animal’s fur.

“You, what, expect Angelica to pay you?” The confusion was clear in her voice.

“Oh, no. Everyone knows dogs are horrible with money. I fully expect she’ll welch on the bill.” I focused as the nanites rebuilt damaged muscles and organs, mended broken bones, and fixed a hundred small wounds that I didn’t even want to think about being inflicted. I grimaced and pushed on with false joviality. “Tragic really. It’ll destroy her credit rating. She’ll never be able to buy a house or a boat. Probably be reduced to offering back-alley belly rubs to get by.”

“That’s his cute way of saying he’s not charging you.” Tattletale clarified for Rachel as Angelica began to stir in her lap. Tension melted out of the big girl at the sight of it and she held the dog closer.

“Do you want me to fix the eye and ear as well?”

She gave me a confused look with a hard edge to it. “You think I want my dog hurt?”

“I think your dog has had one eye for a long time. I don’t know how she’ll react to suddenly getting that vision back. That’s why I’m checking with you.”

Rachel looked at me and slowly nodded. “Do it.”

I focused and my nanites began rebuilding the missing and destroyed sections of the dog’s body. The ear reformed in a sheath of blue light followed by a ruined eye socket slowly restoring itself. Across her body dozens of old scars vanished and were replaced by fresh fur. Even before the events of tonight it was clear this dog had endured a hard life.

I finished my healing and pulled my hand away. The terrier opened one eye, then the other. She blinked them out of sequence, tilting her head before realizing that action wasn’t necessary anymore, then trying again out of habit. It was an adorable action from a dog I’d last seen trying to chew my wrist off.

I held a hand out to Rachel. “You’re next.”

“I’m fine.” She said dismissively.

“The hell you are.” Brian interjected, drawing her eyes away from the dog in her lap. She tried to look defiant, which wasn’t helped by the fact that twisting to face him caused her to wince in pain. “Take the damn healing while you have the chance.”

She glared at him for a moment, then nodded to me. Rachel was comparatively easy to heal. Roughly the same level as what I’d had to manage with Taylor. Contusions, scrapes, and a few small cuts. They told a nasty story, but not on the level I had to deal with from the rest of the Undersiders. When I finished Rachel climbed to her feet with a look of clear relief on her face.

“Alright,” I turned to face the team of villains. “Now let’s get out of here.”

Instead of enthusiasm I was greeted by a row of blank faces. Brian was the first to speak.

“Excuse me?”

“Uh, time to leave?” I pulled up my omni-tool’s map, earning a surprised glance from Rachel. I pointed to the various gaps in the outer wall, including one close to the maintenance room. “Get out while the getting’s good?”

“Yeah, fuck that.” Regent’s voice was uncompromising. “Gas-mask-girl is going to pay.”

“Not arguing with that,” I made a placating gesture. “But a customized murder arena with half the ABB plus conscripts as back up isn’t the place for it.”

“Not an option.” Brian stepped forward. “Bakuda picked us apart tonight and broadcast it for the world. Reputation is everything in this business. If we don’t hit back here the Undersiders are finished as a team.”

I wasn’t really seeing the downside to that, but bringing up that perspective probably wouldn’t help my case. Instead I looked across the team trying to find anyone who could see the sense of this.

One glance at Rachel was enough to inform me of her opinion. “They hurt my dog.” She spoke with an iron conviction that brokered no disagreement. I could understand where she was coming from, but it wasn’t the right time for this. Instead I looked to Taylor.

“We can’t let this go on.” She looked out into the facility and put a hand on the hilt of her knife. “We lose the chance to stop her here and there’s no telling what could happen. When are we going to get another opportunity?”

“At any other time? In any other location? Preferably when I’ve had more than eight minutes to prepare? Hell, we could fall back and hit her when she tries to leave.”

“Too risky.” Tattletale spoke. “Not with Leet backing her up. Could be looking at cloaking, teleportation, phasing, or any number of tricks he was afraid to use before.”

“Then we track her to her base and launch a proper strike. I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

“What if they’ve sprung Lung by then? You going to charge into a tinker’s workshop when she’s backed up by him, Oni Lee, and the mystery thinker? Oh, plus whatever Leet has on hand? Are you prepared for that?”

I wanted to say I could be, but there wasn’t a guarantee, not with my passenger’s silence on this new thinker. Plus, if I had to go in heavy there’s a chance Bakuda could be caught in the cross fire, which would just turn things into a prolonged version of taking the kill shot here and now.

Tattletale seemed to pick up on my train of thought. “We wouldn’t have been able to leave even if we wanted to. Angelica can’t carry the entire team and there’s no way we’d get away on foot.”

I sighed. “I could have carried a couple of people on my motorcycle. That would have freed up enough for Bitch to manage the rest.”

“Great idea.” Regent quipped. “But where’s the bike?”

I checked my Omni-tool. “Right now it’s dodging a rocket barrage above the west side of the courtyard.” Things weren’t looking good. The ABB seemed to have seriously gotten their act together and there were still the mortars to worry about. At the very least we needed to get out of this room.

“Wait, wait, wait. You have a flying motorcycle?”

“Well, it doesn’t fly in motorcycle mode.” I switched over to the perspective of one of the drones and showed Regent the motoroid swooping down to buzz the courtyard, leaving a cloud of dust and a set of disoriented mortar crews in its wake.

His eyes lit up like Christmas morning.

I watched the crews fight through the dust to try to reorient the equipment in a distinctly this-way direction. Fuck. Either they had confirmed the other Undersiders were missing or they were going to bombard this place on principle. Either way we needed to move.

“Mortars are being aimed this way.” The group tensed. There wasn’t really a choice in this. If Taylor was here then I would be staying. It was an obligation I couldn’t get away from. “I’ll back you up on this.”

Grue nodded. “We appreciate that.”

“Hey, gotta protect my debtors, right?” Tattletale was less than pleased with that joke. “Conditions though.”

“What are they?” Taylor asked as the group filed out of the room. I entered a redeployment command to my motoroid and drones as we moved.

“Keep things nonlethal, at least for the conscripts. I’m not going to make my debut as a cape with a dozen kids chewed up in the crossfire. This is probably still being broadcast, so keep things as contained as possible. We don’t want another Aegislash.” Regent’s beamed at that while Taylor dropped her head at the reference. “Shouldn’t need to say this, but don’t kill Bakuda.” That one was mostly aimed at Bitch, who looked indignant until Tattletale whispered an explanation to her. “Finally, we still bail if things go to hell. I’ll take that raid on ABB headquarters over a last stand for the sake of your reputation.”

“We can agree to that.” Brian looked over the chaos of the storage facility as he spoke.

“No argument from me.” Regent added. “Plus I want my stuff back.”

“Same here.” Bitch growled. Angela was starting to grow, sprouting spikes and bone plates as she walked.

“Likewise.” Taylor nodded, drawing her weapons.

Tattletale grinned. “Looks like everyone’s on board.”

“Great.” I checked the status of my motoroid and drones as the Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Size constellation. The mortars were back on target and the dust had cleared enough that they probably were ready to fire. We had sulked around long enough. Time to make our presence known. “Mind if I announce us?”

“Be my guest.” Brian made a gesture towards the courtyard.

I smiled as I entered the commands. My motoroid pulled out of a low run and launched into the sky. The rising robot was clearly visible from our position. When it reached the peak of its ascent it flipped and powered its turbines to maximum.

Brian craned his neck upward. “What is it...”

“Everyone, away from the walls. Get near the center of the rows. Low stances. Watch out for debris.” Tattletale shouted the warnings before I could give them. Taylor had already put the pieces together. Alec and Rachel may not have known, but they could see the panicked reactions from the ABB and their conscripts. Those included a few desperately launched and poorly aimed rockets attempting to stop the motoroid’s descent

They knew what was coming. Trauma does have a wonderful way of making things stick in the mind.

I hadn’t followed up on my opening attack, mostly because I didn’t think this facility could take it. I didn’t want to accidentally collapse it on top of Taylor or the other Undersiders. The most my motoroid had done was take a few light swipes with the tonfas during its flybys. Now it was setting for a proper follow up, a strike on par with the initial, earth shattering assault.

I watched my robot dive towards the courtyard with a smile on my face. It was time to go to war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Armourer (Light of Terra DLC 5 A Sky Filled With Steel - Warhammer 40,000) 300:  
> A mental database containing information on the most common types of armour found in the Necromunda Hive and how to build, repair and maintain them. While this doesn't sound impressive, it is worth pointing out there are countless billions of people dwelling within the hive, and they have been here for millenia - the list of things counted as common at one time or another ranges from Power Armour in the distant past to the more common hammered metal plates made by local Gangers to the standard Imperial Guard Carapace Armour. Don't expect to start churning out Adetus Astartes Power Armour the second you get this though - the infrastructure to build the infrastructure to build the infrastructure to build the armour was lost to ruin a long time ago. There's a reason the Space Marines use suits thousands of years old. 
> 
> Engineering (Teen Titans) 100:  
> You're a master mechanic and an expert at building robots and other technological devices. You also have a fair bit of knowledge about hacking into computers. 
> 
> Valuable Memories: the nature of memories (Big O) 300:  
> You have knowledge related to any particular concept-the construction of Megadei, the nature of memories, Bigs, or the creation of chimeras. Paradigm will have a vested interest in you, and will protect you and provide you with funds if you work for them.
> 
> Fingers of the North Star (Cave Story) 200:  
> You have a natural talent with machinery, and this extends to firearms creation. You can disassemble, analyze, and reassemble any projectile weapon you come across, and you have the ability to create unique, one of a kind guns that utilizes odd and esoteric technology. You also gain a free 'stamp' you can apply to any weapon you create, to show it's your work. Upgrading existing weapons is a breeze as well.


	25. 20 Offensive

I can only imagine what must have been going through the minds of the gang members and conscripts that were scattered across the storage facility as my motoroid plummeted towards the ground. These weren’t hardened criminals. Even among the gang members I doubted they’d seen a serious parahuman conflict more than once or twice. Now here they were, caught is a clash between capes with no way out.

The motoroid struck the courtyard for the second time that night, sending a pulse of force outwards. Materials like concrete and asphalt, steady reliable things that had no business acting anything like a liquid, rippled and surged outwards. The facility had been built out of cinderblock lockers assembled at minimum cost with only the loosest adherence to building codes. The only robustness that could be attributed to it was in the weight of its materials, not the resilience of its construction. That fact was plainly visible in the aftermath.

The second strike hadn’t leveled the facility, not exactly. Still, the damage was catastrophic. Lockers that had just held on through the first blow were now piles of broken concrete and sheet metal. The shattering of the foundation in the first strike had proved a mitigating influence on the following blow. Without a solid medium to carry the tremor the effect had been blunted. Rather than reduce the entire facility to rubble there were still a few lockers standing at the edges, along with sections of the outer wall.

But the maze of rows that had so effectively pinned in the Undersiders was completely gone. That was the point of the strike. Well, part of the point. I had needed a demonstration. Needed a way to show that the first blow wasn’t a one off, an outlier. It had been impressive, but without a follow up it would come across as a tinker Hail Mary, that I was breaking out some treasured one shot technology and expending weeks of effort on a single blow.

No one would think that now. I could plainly see it in the individuals climbing through the wreckage. That look of people who had the world pulled out from under them in an almost literal sense. Fortunately the facility had been nothing but single story lockers with sheet metal roofs. There was no second story or attic to collapse on someone. In fact, no one even had a reason to be inside at the moment of impact. It was a huge amount of devastation for a comparatively small amount of injuries.

But there were injuries none the less. That was something I had accepted coming into this. I didn’t like it, but staying completely soft handed would have left me and everyone else at the complete mercy of Bakuda. I didn’t have the strength or the resources to afford to take that kind of approach.

Well, I accepted the injuries due to my actions. The traveling shockwave had triggered more than a few of the planted bombs. Some of the bombs had been Bakuda’s good work, bombs with advanced scanning and detection systems, able to pick out targets and detonate for maximum injury. However, plenty of them had been of the most primitive models. Mines on the level of Claymores, bombs connected to trip wires, bombs set to recognize movement. Pretty much every one of these that hadn’t gone up in the first strike of my motoroid was detonating now.

Flares, blasts, and discharges of tinker tech explosives were going up all across the facility. Luckily the damage to the conscripts was proving to be minimal. The ABB gang members knew where they had been planted and the patrols had been giving them a wide berth. The question was whether that berth had been wide enough.

A group of middle aged office workers got flung like rag dolls away from one of the explosives, landing painfully in a scattered mess. Another group scrambled up a pile of rubble as a glowing blue liquid spread out from a device that pulsed like a dismembered heart. The liquid didn’t seem to be reacting with anything it touched, but no one wanted to be the first to test its effect on the human body. Another bomb sent out a wave of flame, giving an older man in a set of coveralls just enough time to shield a pair of tiny white haired women who would have looked more comfortable in a bingo parlor than a battlefield. The man dropped to roll out the flames as his group struggled to help him while their gang member fought to maintain some level of authority.

In addition to the scattered detonations the main impact had thrown up a fresh column of dust into the air. Through the murk the staggering and disoriented forms of the ABB were visibly shaken. Some of them were clearly at their breaking point. These were normal people who had spent the entire evening learning the classic definition of shell shock, taught to them in great detail by both sides of the engagement.

The ABB forces were in complete disarray. What objectives they had been given when the teams had been sent out were completely forgotten. Half of the paths were just masses of rubble and the odds were very good that any locker they had been dispatched to was no longer standing. Additionally the huge deployment of directionless forces had left Bakuda severely underdefended in the courtyard.

From her frantic reaction to the chaos she was well aware of it. The tinker was scrambling to redeploy her forces, calling back patrols and yelling commands to the mortar and rocket teams that had held position. In all the chaos one fact seemed to be overlooked.

This time the motoroid hadn’t left the crater.

In the smoke, dust, and fallout of still exploding bombs a person could be forgiven for overlooking a detail like that. That is, until an amplified voice echoed across the devastated storage facility.

“Disappointing.”

Bakuda froze in place and that unnatural stillness rippled out from her position. Attention started shifting to the dust filled crater. The sounds of heavy steps and servo motors were echoing across the area. Slowly, like a phantom from the night, my motoroid emerged from the cloud of pulverized concrete.

Before she could respond my transmitted voice blasted out again. “I’ve finished my ‘little tour’ and I have to say, I’m not impressed.” I could see Bakuda bristle at that. “Not at what you ‘accomplished’, and not at the condition of what you were willing to bargain with.”

“Big talk.” The tinker was clearly stressing her own voice modulator to its maximum output in an attempt to match my motoroid. It resulted in the normally monotone voice coming off screechy. “Big fucking talk. Think you can cover with that. I know that you’re scared. You’ve seen what’s waiting for you.”

“Scared? Of that?” The motoroid leaned forward in a very human way. “Juvenile efforts. Sloppy execution of concept. Overly showy tantrums without substance. Is that the best you have? Is that supposed to impress me?”

Bakuda grabbed her grenade launcher in a fit of almost frenetic rage. “Fuck you. Neolithic simpleton who can’t see the greatness of something when it’s plain as day.” Rather than fire she gestured at her surroundings. “I own this city. Me. My genius, my art brought it to its knees. Decades of stalemate broken in a single strike. It doesn’t matter what you think. This is my victory.”

“Yes, THAT was impressive. But tell me, is the victory yours?” The motoroid brought a hand to its chin in a gesture that almost looked natural. Would need to work on that. “...or is it hers?”

The tinker started shaking in a way that made those close to her start edging away. “That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t...”

The motoroid turned its head towards the sky. “Total blackout. From here to Maryland people will be really seeing the night sky for probably the first time in their lives. This will probably trump the Northeast blackout of 1965. It would require an insanely precise and coordinated attack to accomplish something on that scale. So tell me.” The motoroid dropped its optics towards Bakuda. “Are people going to give credit to the one who made the stone, or the woman who killed the giant?”

“No. She doesn’t matter. I did this. I broke this city. I freed Lung. I showed the world what happens when it challenges me.” She lifted the grenade launcher on target. “Are you even in there, or are you buying time for your miserable life while you run off with that bug bitch?” Her pitched up speech was becoming more erratic, making it harder to understand as she ranted faster. “Hiding behind your toys, too afraid to show your face, to face me. What does that say, huh?”

“That I stand on my own. Beholden to none but those I choose, and blessed...” my five drones dipped low enough to enter Bakuda’s field of view, causing her to mutter some half coherent commands to the conscripts around her. “With competent assistance when I require it.”

“Yeah, well there’s a problem with toys.” Her minions hastily lined up their shots. “They’re so easy to break.”

Before the first rocket could launch a blast of small objects tore through the dust clouds at the edges of the courtyard. The operators barely had time to register the horrible buzzing before the alchemical insects ripped into their equipment, shattering barrels, triggers, and delicate portions of the weapons. At closer range with a fresher formula the effects were dramatically stronger. Rather than the odd dented barrel or broken trigger metal was torn and rent by the projected creatures as they expended their energy on a single attack.

After the wave had passed only two mortars and a handful of rockets appeared anywhere near functional. The rest either had fully split barrels or shattered delicate components. Taylor had clearly been trying to avoid the ammunition chambers, but these people were not explosive experts and desperately tried to put as much space between them and the damaged equipment as possible.

Bakuda’s grenade launcher had taken a glancing strike, likely out of fear of accidentally detonating its ammunition. The tinker had shaken off the impact and was taking in the scattering of her forces with pure fury. With a scream of frustration she bypassed the damaged part and launched a volley of grenades at the stationary motoroid.

In rapid succession three sharp cracks echoed across the courtyard as glowing shots tore through the dust cloud, shattering the grenades. The wind-rune enhanced projectiles left a trail of vortex shockwaves behind them. The aftermath slowly cleared the dust from the air around a pile of rubble that had previously been a line of lockers. As the cloud peeled back the figures of Taylor and myself slowly came into view.

My pistol was drawn and held at the ready, though I was no longer in my firing stance. As the dust cleared enough for the people in the courtyard to make us out I activated my omni-tool, causing a nimbus of orange light to bloom in the dusty air. Taylor pulled the remaining insects from my Sting formula into orbit around her in a pair of rings at offset angles. The effect looked like a cross between hula hoops and an old model of an atom. It would possibly have been amusing if not for the immense damage wrought by the first wave she had sent out.

“Good. Now show off the robot. That always gets to her. She knows she can’t build anything like that and she hates you for it.”

I didn’t show any reaction to Tattletale’s voice as I keyed the commands to Fleet through my haptic interface. The motoroid spun up its turbines, then leapt into the air. As it launched it swung both tonfas into the lip of the crater, boosting its speed and sending an aftershock across the area that threatened the footing of the scrambling ABB. It twisted through the air with a precision that it never would have been able to manage at the start of the night before dropped into a three point stance in front of me and Taylor.

I had intended for it to drop into a defensive position, aimed towards the crowd, but it had landed facing us instead. Understandable as Fleet was still learning piloting and I hadn’t been that precise with my commands. Of course, the result was the motoroid kneeling before the pair of us like an act of fealty. It seemed pretentious, but apparently Tattletale didn’t see anything wrong with that.

“Ha, perfect! Can you do something with your drones as well? Oh, and follow up on that toy comment. She’s been excessively precocious her entire life and hates it when people dismiss her as immature or childish.”

The motoroid lifted a crackling tonfa into the air and the drones fell into a formation between us and Bakuda, ready to intercept anything coming our way. As it turned and raised both weapons towards the tinker my voice echoed from its sound system.

“Quick to break someone else’s toys when they out shine you? Most children learn better than that at a young age.”

I could see how much the taunt bothered her, but I wasn’t deriving any enjoyment from it. I didn’t like this kind of confrontation. I mean, after everything I’d seen tonight and everything I knew about Bakuda I was ready to drop some divine justice on her, but this didn’t feel like justice. It felt petty.

We hadn’t had long to plan after I launched my motoroid attack. Though granted, we did have more preparation time than if I had left things until the mortars started raining on us. Also the Undersiders were horribly underequipped, even by their standards. I could have fabricated something, but we were too pressed for time. Instead I took the disposable phones Taylor and I still had, slaved them to my omni-tool, and handed them out. That at least let us assemble a rough plan while we got into position.

I had also missed a connection to the quality constellation when we moved out.

“Children!” I’m not sure if Bakuda was actually screeching or if it was just her trying to match the volume of my amplification. “You’re the infantile one. I’m changing the face of the city, of the world! What are you trying to accomplish beyond indulgence in some trite sappy sentimentality?”

“Oh, this is good.” I had agreed to let Tattletale coordinate my interaction. It was our best chance of keeping Bakuda off balance long enough for the Undersiders to rally and prepare a counter strike. And I had to give the girl credit, when it came to a war of words she knew how to go for the throat. Bakuda was definitely off balance, even if I had to feel like scum to get her there. I think I would have been more comfortable putting a mass effect round through her head than continuing this farce.

“Now you need to take a dig at her love life.” No I do not. “She never had a serious relationship, told herself it was because she was too good for anyone, but really she just couldn’t make it work.” Yeah, not touching that. Is she still broadcasting this on Uber and Leet’s show? I still can’t nail down their signal. “You should tie it into academics, especially high school. That’s the root of the superiority complex and will hit her hardest. Hold on, I’ll come up with something for you.”

...you ever wonder if you’re working for the right side? Like, I’m not saying the ABB was the good side in this equation, but I was kind of feeling trapped between a rock and an asshole.

Miraculously Brian saved me from having to recreate the dialogue of a teen soap opera with his most welcome interruption. “Regent in position. Circling around with Bitch, ready for our entrance.”

I smiled at that and looked down at Bakuda. “I’ve accomplished more than you think.”

There was a metallic scoff. “You made it through with your hide intact. I suppose that counts for something.”

“More than just mine.” I glanced at Taylor who took a defiant step forward.

“Whatever.” She brought her grenade launcher towards us. “That’s one for five, and it’ll take a miracle for the two of you to get out of here alive.”

“Not exactly.” I made a gesture to cover the haptic inputs to my omni-tool and my drones rose to a more aggressive formation. The motoroid’s turbines started spinning, putting out just enough thrust to make my coat and Taylor’s hair dramatically dance in the wind. “You never asked what my contract was with the Undersiders. Shame, I expected better from you.” I relented to Tattletale’s prodding to make that final slight.

“What’s that got to do with any..." Bakuda cut herself off as a howl echoed over the battlefield. Not the kind of howl you got from a dog, or even a wolf. This sound had teeth, it rumbled in your chest and seemed to crawl up through the souls of your feat. This was the kind of hunting cry that primitive man had learned to fear, and passed that lesson down in their very DNA.

Mostly because the people who didn’t pass down that lesson didn’t live long enough to pass down anything else.

The howl went on for longer than I would have thought possible. Gang members struggled to pick out the source from the echoes reflecting through the facility while the conscripts looked to have collectively taken one more step towards the breaking point.

It stretched to the point where the dust clouds began to clear, but that only brought a new level of terror. Anyone with a comprehensive enough understanding of demolitions and mechanical properties would recognize that the dust clouds didn’t look right. They had been too thick, too imposing. If Bakuda hadn’t been focused on her confrontation with me, or more specifically her confrontation with Tattletale using me as a communication medium, she would have seen it in an instant. Instead she was only catching on at the same point as the rest of her minions.

That couldn’t have been good for the ego.

When the dust receded it didn’t reveal clear air. Instead ominous clouds of blackness choked the facility on all sides. A hulking armored shape with two riders was just visible darting through the edge of the effect. A cry in a language I didn’t speak and a point from one of the conscripts drew the gaze of the crowd to a grinning girl in a tattered purple costume, hovering at the edge of the darkness. A second pointed out a smiling but dead eyed boy half dressed in a charred renaissance fair outfit opposite her. Finally a snarl drew everyone’s attention as the muzzle of a dinosaur like facsimile of a dog edged out of the miasma just far enough to expose it’s riders, a hulking figure in a skull painted helmet leaking darkness from torn and missing pieces of his costume, and a harsh looking girl with dirty blond hair devoid of her usual dog mask.

I had been against this part of the plan. It was excessive and unnecessary showmanship. I hadn’t exactly been outvoted, but when Brian’s insistence of needing to make an impression to secure their damaged reputations fell flat Tattletale stepped in. A clear thinking Bakuda was a potential death sentence, even with all our precautions. We needed to keep her off balance, and showing her up at her big night was the best way to accomplish that.

It still felt like more high school level nonsense, but if it got us closer to putting her down then I could live with it, no matter how it came across.

God, I hope I don’t get permanently associated with spectacles like this.

Tattletale made a cheeky wave which was echoed with an overelaborate bow from Alec. Brian raised a darkness coated finger towards Bakuda while Rachel whispered something to Angelica that caused the now hulking terrier to start growling. The rune-knife I made for Taylor leapt into her left hand and she deployed the baton from her right wrist. For my part I raised my omni-tool and unnecessarily charged the hologram until I was a beacon of orange light. My drones mirrored the glow as they began charging their attacks.

The posturing stretched out longer than I thought it would, mostly because Bakuda seemed at a loss for how to react and no one present was willing to take any initiative without her permission. She spun franticly between the figures of the Undersiders like a broken garden sprinkler. I watched her body language shift through expressions of shock, confusion, anger, embarrassment, pain, doubt, and fear. Finally something seemed to snap and she shifted to pure rage.

And just like that the world was chaos. The woman dragged the grenade launcher in an arc, launching barely aimed rounds more at the clouds of darkness than at any specific target. Bakuda managed four shots before her leg was pulled out from under her and she face planted into the dirt. I just caught a glimpse of Regent's laughing face before he and Tattletale vanished back into the darkness.

The professional gang members, including Bakuda’s scorched lieutenants, tried to impose some order and coordination. Scattered groups had made their way back from the deeper patrols into the facility, but after enduring a second seismic event were not exactly ready to jump into a parahuman dust up. The mostly green gang members leading the civilian conscripts were having a hell of a time trying to keep them on task and were mostly getting only token efforts from their charges.

For all her talk about fear it seems Bakuda never considered what would happen if the thing in front of her forces was as scary as the thing at their back. Bakuda was too distracted to punish every case of insubordination and people weren’t keen to jump into the mouth of a monster dog, the weapon of an earthquake robot, the stingers of giant alchemical insects, or the shots of a lightning drone.

Not all the squads were breaking down, but the ones that did were going down hard. I watched one group completely abandon their minder as soon as one member decided he’d rather cower in rubble than jump into the melee. Another group had a teenage gang member berating a group of middle schoolers. In his frustration he went for a knife, at which point he was brutally sucker punched by a man with thinning hair in a charred janitor’s uniform. The Magic constellation passed me by without a connection as the unconscious ganger was shoved under some sheet metal. The group then made an unspoken decision to try to look busy while staying as far from the fighting as possible.

I stepped in front of Taylor as an ABB member managed to impose some coordination on one of the teams armed with an eclectic collection of firearms. They weren’t exactly marksmen, but fifteen weapons opening up on you means a few will connect. It dispelled my force field, but none of the rest even chipped my durability with my height and coat completely covering Taylor. I fired back with some intentionally missed shots which, when combined with two of Taylor’s reserve alchemical insects, was enough to break their formation.

Bakuda had managed to get her feet under her and was pulling herself up. I scanned for Regent, both figuratively and literally, but the darkness effectively blocked my omni-tool. It was clear he was still doing something. Bakuda was showing seemingly random twitches, tremors, and hiccups, it was just that none of them were enough to keep her out of the fight, which was the single task Alec was responsible for.

“Tattletale, what the hell is Regent doing?” I sent another couple of shots painfully close to the head of a gang member who was doing a better job at imposing order than his peers. The shockwave from the runes was enough to completely take him off his feet and I noticed a couple of people from the back of the crowd of conscripts decide to take their chances running blind into the darkness over whatever he’d been planning for them.

“What do you mean?” There was a pause and the sound of someone scrambling over rubble. “...oh shit.”

“That doesn’t sound encouraging.” I called down a drone on a near collision course with one gang member who had grabbed a mostly intact rocket launcher. We had managed to keep the exotic ordinance contained, but I’m not sure how much longer that would last. Taylor was sending an alchemical insect after anyone who looked like they could get off a shot, but her supplies were running low. I only had one mixture of that formula left and wanted to hold off in case any serious surprises showed up. 

“He’s going off script. It’s... fuck. If it works it’ll solve all our problems but there’s no way he has time to pull that off here and.” Her voice had a level of concern I wasn’t used to. The only thing I’d heard that was close to it was the call that brought me into this mess in the first place.

That would have been worrying enough, but my passenger decided to chime in. I was getting waves of impressions I hadn’t picked out since my first research into the Undersiders. Impressions of Alec’s past.

I knew there was something messed up there. The sense was Alec was involved in something terrible at the behest of someone even more terrible. Something that actively disgusted my passenger. He wasn’t comfortable about it being part of Alec’s past, but was happy the boy was distancing himself from it. Whatever he was doing here, whatever he was bringing back from his past was enough to cause some serious concern.

“What’s he doing? What is he bringing back?” I remembered that dead stare in the locker that smelled like chemicals and charcoal and how quickly it had shifted back to the happy irreverent practical joker. Alec was not alright, he was very far from alright and I needed to know just what we were getting into.

“How did you... Never mind. I can’t talk about it now, and it’s not going to make a difference. For now we need some other way of pinning down Bakuda.”

There was no question about that. Despite near constant twitches of her neck, arms, shoulders, and the odd leg muscle Bakuda had managed to rally a decent crowd of conscripts. The level of obedience probably had something to do with the smoldering skeleton everyone was making a point to avoid looking at. So in exchange for one summary execution Bakuda had managed to bring a pair of patched up mortars, three rocket launchers, and her own obnoxious grenade launcher to bear against our elevated position.

Yeah, it was well past time to abandon the show-off high ground. Before we fell back I signaled Fleet and my motoroid prepared for launch. One tonfa swung away to free the hand for support while the other was held at the ready. The whine of the turbines amplified to a scream, sending a torrent of wind across the pile of rubble. With a sudden burst the motoroid rocketed forward a few scant feet off the ground, barreling towards Bakuda’s artillery placement.

This was a maneuver I would never have dreamed of attempting at the start of the night, but the software of my A.I. was progressing as well as I could have possibly hoped. Within a single night Fleet had advanced from roughly controlled jumps to precision vectored thrust flightpaths. As the motoroid skimmed over the ground it tilted to one side and jammed its crackling HF tonfa into the surface of the courtyard. The enchanted weapon sunk into the cracked tarmac like it was water and, following that theme, the ground behind it split apart like the red sea. The depth of the chasm and what simple conservation of mass did to the surface meant anyone in the general vicinity of the motoroid’s path was thrown into chaos.

Fleet did not fly through the ‘general vicinity’ of Bakuda’s artillery placement. The motoroid barreled straight through the team of severely undertrained weapon operators, tearing a ravine right in their midst. Experienced soldiers might have been able to peg the less than maneuverable robot with a rocket during its approach. As it stood I’d say Bakuda was the only one with a chance of landing the shot and she was too busy trying to coordinate her minions. By the time she realized what was coming she was already at ground zero for the latest earthquake of the evening.

With the heavy armaments literally split apart, and some of them more than half buried, Taylor and I could finally get off of this stupid, elevated, and exposed position. My military experience was light on precise memories, but two things I could confirm from this stunt was I did not like exposed positions and, judging by how speaking in public made me feel, I was probably not an officer. Maybe it was just the subject matter being fed to me my Tattletale, maybe it was residual social anxiety from before I got my powers, but I did not feel comfortable leading that discussion.

Bakuda was the kind of problem I’d want to deal with using long range bombardment, or at the very least a well-coordinated alpha strike. Instead I got a mess of half coordinated super-powered teenagers who it was now apparent all had different objectives.

Tattletale had been light on analysis since the combat had started. I don’t know if she was building to something or if her power was just less helpful in chaotic situations like this. My best hope was she was off trying to get Regent back on task.

And Regent had clearly decided to do his own thing. As the situation stood there was no way to reach him to find out what he was trying or why he decided to abandon the plan. I swear I’m never trying this nonsense again without proper communications in place. Preferably implanted in everyone’s God damn head.

Does that count as a quarter thing? It seems like it should count as a quarter thing, though hell if I know what it’s connected to.

As Taylor and I pulled back I spotted Grue riding shotgun with Bitch. Honestly he seemed to be putting more showmanship into his efforts than was strictly necessary. I was still worried about his mental state and how much emphasis he had put on redeeming the Undersiders’ reputation. That was particularly worrying since, as the leader, I was relying on him to keep the rest of the team on task.

He didn’t seem to be doing a stellar job of that with Rachel. Bitch and Angelica were dancing against the line of my conditions for joining the fight. Conscripts were merely body checked out of the way by the giant rhino dog that had previously been an adorable terrier. Generally survivable injuries, but that assumed a robust opponent, not whoever could be grabbed off the street. Still, it was better than the fate of the gang members who were grabbed and thrown aside like chew toys.

Bitch was clearly furious and venting her anger, but I had to admit that she was holding back and exercising excellent control. Her dogs must have been masterfully trained just based on the fact that everyone was still alive at the point when she left them. I have no idea how she managed to teach a creature that size that level of restraint.

I still had concerns about severed arteries or punctured lungs, but frankly I could live with more serious injuries from career ABB than I could from their forced conscripts. It was still horrific, but that kind of thing was different for people who had chosen a life of violence rather than been recently kidnapped and enslaved.

Moving down the pile I found a consequence of sending my motoroid away. It seems my initial idea about the imposing nature of my robot keeping away anyone who would think to swarm me was right on the money. It looked like one of the patrol groups had wandered back through Grue’s darkness, which proved to effectively conceal them from Survey’s constant watch on my sensors. 

They had held back at the edge of the obstruction until my motoroid took off, then decided they wanted to be heroes. Heroes for the ABB, that is. This wasn’t one of those groups of old women and young children. My guess is that the two career gangsters had picked out the most compliant of the conscripts to form something of a brute squad. It was over a dozen men in their early twenties all with some form of violent melee weapon. About a third of the group, including the tougher of the two ABB members, decided to charge me on the spot.

They fell over themselves skidding to a stop as my omni-tool baked the ground in front of them with a jet of high energy plasma. With my reinforcement I wasn’t bothered by the heat, but I could still feel the intensity of it. That intensity was very evident on the front most conscripts whose skin turned an unhappy shade of pink and clothing began to singe. The professional ABB, leading from the rear, tried to rally his squad, but it takes a lot more influence than he had access to in order to get someone to leap into a high temperature blaze.

Before the heat from my plasma burst could dissipate I turned to back up Taylor and was shocked at the image before me.

When I saw her cutting down zombies it looked like the knife was flying out of her hand. Well, it didn’t just look like that anymore. The blade was clearly twirling out of her reach as it sliced a pool cue in half, then circled back as the cue’s wielder flailed to escape the reach of the flying knife. It looped around her in what looked like an uncontrolled arc, except it split a giant bowie knife in two before tracing the shallowest cut across the man’s arm. A handful of the group who were debating getting within melee reach of a knife that could clearly end their lives were suddenly peppered by high velocity debris as Taylor repeated the opening move she had used against Uber and Leet, swiping the baton through the rubble and sending an effective shotgun blast of concrete fragments flying towards her opponents.

It only took one last burst of plasma to convince the group they were badly out of their depth and that discretion was preferable to the loss of limb and eyebrows. With their retreat the knife circled back to Taylor, its hilt landing cleanly in the palm of her hand. With the blade slowed I was able to clearly see the secret behind her trick.

“Spider web?”

Despite the full face mask I got the sense she was smiling at me. As we moved she let the blade drop and I could just make out the gossamer thread connecting it to her hand. Loose threads trailed from other parts of the knife, but suddenly went taught, pulling the knife into a spinning arc that returned it to her hand.

“You said to practice with it.” Around us I could see insects, actual living insects, not my alchemy creations, moving with thread trailing behind them. “This knife, whatever you did to it, it’s incredible. I mean, obviously, but thank you.” She dropped her head before continuing. “Uh, I was experimenting with it, seeing what I could do and it was just so light. I was trying to find out how much strength it actually took to swing it and, well...”

Once again she released the knife and it did a pirouette on a strand of silk before returning to her hand. I nodded knowingly to cover my shock at the event.

Quickly I checked on my drones and motoroid with my omni-tool. Bakuda was still recovering from the first scattering strike, but was calling in more conscripts into a close formation. It seemed she’d realized that her command structure only worked if she was personally there to keep the conscripts in line and that human shields were of limited use if they weren’t actually shielding you.

With them that tightly packed a repeat of my previous move would result in a mass of pasted civilians. As a consequence my robot and drones were limited to disrupting the coordination of the rest of the forces. It diminished the ABB control over the area, but didn’t deal with the tinker sitting on top of a pile of damaged ordinance.

I felt the Celestial Forge make another connection to the Crafting constellation as we moved into the now ruined murder arena. It was a mid-sized mote simply called Engineer. Incredibly for once the power did not increase my mechanical abilities. Instead it improved my capacity to come up with novel and creative designs. I had encountered intelligence boosters before, but this was the first time a power had increased my creativity. It was an interesting concept and the novelty of it was just about enough to outweigh the innate concerns about how much my mind was continuing to be altered.

As novel a concept as that was it wouldn’t have been enough to get me excited over a mote of this strength. Really, it was the second aspect that was truly impressive. This power let me hold any blueprint perfectly in my mind without needing any external reference what so ever. Despite all the ‘intelligence’ boosts I’d received I was still working with a mortal memory. This power completely dealt with that problem. My mind had an effectively infinite amount of storage space for all the plans, blueprints, and technical reference I could ever want. I wouldn’t have to write down anything ever again. No data that could get compromised or lost. In the event I somehow was separated from my computer core I would still have all my projects at my fingertips rather than have to try to redesign them with whatever human technology I could scrounge up.

Ok, that’s one more quarter for the jar.

Tattletale’s voice chirped through my omni-tool and I amplified it enough for Taylor to hear. “Bakuda’s working on something with what’s left of her equipment. No line on Regent, so regroup where Apeiron met up with Khepri.”

“Confirmed.” I called out.

“See you there.” Grue answered over his own phone. We really needed better communications. With my latest power I could already start designing the plans for a simple com link that I’d be able to fabricate with my omni-tool. This wasn’t the kind of nebulous planning to build some general device, it was precise blueprints with exact measurements and detailed components. With this power I could manage design work in the middle of a battlefield as easily as if I was at a drafting table.

That said, a battlefield was definitely not the place for design work. I shared a nod with Taylor and we moved out, though she gave the knife a final spin to float it into a reverse grip.

On reflection magic was quite frankly bullshit. I sort of knew that when I was getting into it, but it was blatantly clear here. The wind rune array I had engraved into the web pattern of the blade, which I noticed had actual spiders on it now, had a simple purpose. Make the knife light. Make the knife fast. Make the knife accurate. However, I hadn’t connected that to the scale of the effects or how they could be exploited.

My Decadence power let me engrave runes to a level of detail I hadn’t imagined possible. That was responsible for the stronger than expected results from the runecraft on the knife and baton, but there was another factor at play. Runic effects scaled in power based on the weapon in question. Usually what it scaled with was the literal scale of the weapon, size equals strength and all that, but because this was magic there were all kinds of crazy synergies that I hadn’t taken into account. In short, certain weapons had affinities for certain elements.

It wasn’t exactly obvious what weapons worked best with what elements. I doubt I would have been able to piece it together without my recently increased smithing skill, and some aspects, like what separated a water affinity sword from a fire affinity sword, were incredibly arbitrary. Regardless, the wind element liked small, light, and sharp weapons. The knife I made for Taylor was a perfect match for her. I had accidently created a flying blade.

As we moved away from the center of the fighting Taylor showed off a few more twirls and spins of the knife. It was enchanted to be light enough for anyone to wield, fast and responsive, and accurate to where you intended to strike. Normally that wouldn’t extend to her spider puppet show, but whatever effect linked Taylor to her insects effectively made them part of her body for the purposes of the enchantment.

“Do you have any trouble aiming the blade when you do that?” I asked as we crossed another pile of rubble that used to be a locker. She had been confident enough to use it in a hectic combat where a single misplaced swipe could have removed a limb, and not necessarily one of her opponent’s.

“Not with my bugs helping me.” She grasped the handle again and showed the spiders on the web pattern. “I can sense their location. That lets me know exactly where it is. I just need to put some bugs on whoever I’m fighting and I have a full picture of what’s happening.”

And there was the terrifying level of situational awareness that separated the low tier masters from the stand out ones. If the claims she made about her range and the quantity of bugs she could control were true, and it all saw this level of accuracy then that was possibly one of the strongest coordination powers on the planet. The only thing that kept her from being a top tier threat was the relative harmlessness of her minions.

Which was a factor I had removed by giving her that knife. She had kept it on close defensive arcs, but what was her range with that thing? The full three blocks of her bug control? Jesus, that was terrifying. Maybe there would be something to that savior-of-the-world impression after all.

We had reached the edge of the walls of darkness that Grue had set up during his prep work for this attack. It was terrifically intimidating and effectively isolating for the courtyard forces, but not the most team friendly power. My scanners were registering nothing inside the miasma and it was hell on conventional communications as well.

“I can navigate with my bugs. Do you need me to lead you through?” Taylor looked at the weapons in both her hands, clearly reluctant to relinquish either of them in the current situation. I wasn’t too keen on being led by the hand like a kindergartner either. 

“It’s alright, I have a formula that will let me see.” I dug out one of my Revealer formulas. After its usefulness the first night I had been sure to prepare multiple sets of reagents for that particular mixture.

“It lets you see in Grue’s darkness?”

“It lets me see in a lot of situations. It’s not specific to that stuff.” I gestured at the imposing black clouds. “And it’s not perfect. I don’t get a lot of detail, but it’s good enough to let me navigate.”

She nodded as I dug out the ash and wax mixture and combined them. Suddenly, rather than a solid wall the darkness presented a transition to a low resolution wireframe version of the world. Taylor stepped into it and was suddenly a rough outline of her usual appearance. Still, as unnerving as that was it was miles better than stumbling through blackness.

My formula helped with visibility, but did nothing for the other effects of the darkness. I couldn’t even read my omni-tool’s display in the limited detail and sound was murky and directionless. I was just able to make out faint wisps signifying Taylor’s conventional insects, picking over the rubble or sweeping for obstacles. I also noticed the dozen or so that had found their way onto my costume. Apparently she was getting in the habit of tracking her allies as closely as her enemies.

You know, considering I knew how effectively she could target that blade with her spider web puppetry, finding out I had tracking insects on my body should have been a cause for concern. My passenger didn’t think it was any threat, and I was inclined to agree. I still wasn’t sure how she was tied to the fate of the world, but of the Undersiders she seemed to have the best intentions.

Of course, saying that about the person responsible for the Aegislash would seem like a bad joke to anyone without proper context of the group dynamic.

It took some work to pick out where our meeting place had been. The question of how Tattletale knew where we ran into each other was just another query for the pile concerning that girl’s power. Without Taylor’s insect senses or my Revealer formula I doubt we could have made it, but combined we made excellent time across the ruined storage facility.

And it was ruined. This place had more occupied lockers than I assumed, probably long term storage for locals who had run out of garage space. I didn’t regret my actions, but the array of shattered furniture, broken china, and household items mixed in with the rubble was unfortunate. Still, I would have reduced this place to a cinder if it meant a better chance of stopping Bakuda before she could repeat her cranial bomb madness on anyone else.

As we approached what I could see as outlines of three figures and a monstrous dog the Celestial Forge missed a connection with the Knowledge constellation. There was a sudden violent transition as we moved from murky low detail darkness to the bright light of the overhead flares. Brian apparently had fine enough control of his darkness to open a gap for the five of us to meet.

The mood of the group was mixed. Tattletale seemed frustrated as well as somewhat out of breath. I’m guessing her power hadn’t let her navigate the darkness quite as easily as Taylor and I had. Bitch was running a hand over the plates on Angelica’s head and neck. She still seemed to be quietly fuming, but the battle had gotten some of the steam out of her system. Brian looked somewhat agitated and had turned his attention to us as soon as he spotted us through the darkness.

“About Regent...” He stepped forward to speak, then seemed at a loss for how to proceed.

“Any word on him?” Without Grue’s darkness blocking all EMF I was able to check in on the courtyard. Bakuda was working on something, which was concerning, while still twitching erratically. The jerky motion seemed to annoy more than it impeded.

“No luck. He’s dug in somewhere.” Tattletale gave the display a concerned look. Bakuda had advanced from figurative human shields to literal human shields. Particularly, anyone too old, young, or infirm to be of help was being hauled in front of the rest of her forces. My drones and motoroids didn’t have the precision to work around the targets or put them down without risking critical injury to the conscripts.

“What’s Regent trying to do?” Taylor’s attention was half on the screen and half in that unfocused way she seemed to communicate with her swarm.

“Don’t worry about it.” I was worried about it and Tattletale could clearly pick that up. “It... It’s not a terrible idea, but it’s probably not something he can pull off in time.”

Grue stepped forward with renewed resolve. “Look, I’m sorry about this. I know we had a plan...”

I shook my head. “No, we had a last minute strategy.” I would be lying if I said I was alright with the situation, but these weren’t soldiers. I would barely expect them to stay on task if they came into this fresh. After what they went through tonight it was really inevitable someone would go in an unexpected direction. “I said I would support you.” I assured Brian. “It would have been great if everyone had held to task, but that’s not happening. We need to figure out what we’re going to do from here.”

He gave a grateful nod and turned to Tattletale.

“Bakuda’s running low on munitions.” She indicated my drone feed. “She’s been dipping into equipment that was intended for some kind of follow up after she finished here, and she’s burned through most of it.”

“What was she going to hit? The PRT building?” Brian leaned in to check the display.

The thinker shook her head. “Not with this level of ordinance. The Protectorate gets really defensive about their civilian staff. A hit like that could bring a response on the level of Eidolon.” She saw our reaction. “Okay, she might try it, but this thinker is coordinating things. It was probably a crippling strike on the Merchants, or a serious territory grab against the Empire.”

Well, at least we’re helping to keep drug dealers and Nazis safe. Okay, to be fair the Empire actually fits into both of those categories.

“Bakuda barely has anything left. She’s basically running on fumes. She was already manic and we’ve been keeping her seriously off balance.” She smiled at me in a way I didn’t like. “Series of poor decisions, things she didn’t prepare for and running into a more competent opponent means defeat is inevitable, and now she knows it.” Her smile turned cruel. “There’s nothing she can do but run down the clock.”

There was a blast from the courtyard as a rebuild mortar sent a shell high into the air. It detonated in an almost soundless ripple that was barely visible until it encountered the fields of Grue’s darkness. The black smoke was boiled away like cotton candy in a blast furnace. Some secondary effect of the blast caught my motoroid, spiking it into the ground. It also tore apart my drones, effectively cutting off our visual link to the courtyard.

Brian was the first to speak in the face of the now blank screen. “Uh, what the hell?”

“She didn’t have that before.” Tattletale’s voice had no small measure of concern in it. I shifted to the sensors of my half buried motoroid as I prepared to fabricate more drones. The conscripts were edging away from a hastily constructed series of launchers clustered in the center of the courtyard. It looked like Bakuda had taken every piece of equipment we’d damaged and mashed it into one giant assembly of rockets and mortar barrels.

“Someone’s been busy.” I kept the concern out of my voice as I analyzed the potential firepower of that assembly.

“No.” Tattletale frantically shifted her eyes from the screen to me and then back again. “She should barely be functional. We’ve been hitting every button of her trigger. There’s no way she could have been coherent enough to be able to manage this.”

The statement dragged me out of my highly concerned analysis. “Wait, that’s what you were doing? Going after her trigger?”

“Yes?” She answered defensively. No one here seemed that comfortable with the concept. Seeing that reaction she pressed on to defend herself. “I know it seems cruel, but we needed to keep her distracted.”

“It’s not cruel, it’s stupid.” I pointed at the device on the screen. “You’ve been... Fuck, no I’m a party to this as well. We’ve been pushing a God damn chaos tinker into her Sechen range all night!”

“Senchen range?” Taylor asked in a concerned tone.

“It’s a theory.” Tattletale answered quickly. “The idea that powers get stronger if you’re in a situation closer to what happened when you triggered.”

“It’s not a theory. You’ve been strengthening her connection to her passenger with every one of those stupid insults and now we have to deal with the consequences. Fuck, she probably doesn’t even understand what she’s built there.”

“Passenger?” I ignored Taylor’s question. Without the darkness we were badly exposed. If I didn’t get something in the air soon we would be sitting ducks for the next barrage. I flash fabricated five more drones and sent them on a blazing path towards the courtyard.

As soon as they crested the rubble a rocket launched up from the mass of weaponry and veered towards my drones. She had never used tracking systems on her rockets before, but with an attuned chaos tinker there was nothing we could rule out. Taking no chances I directed a drone on a straight suicide run towards the projectile.

The rocket detonated, but not in a conventional blast. A mess of black crystals flew out of the warhead in a cloud of shrapnel. They tore through the eggshell thin casings of the remaining drones like paper, but the real threat didn’t start until they hit the ground.

I almost hated my materials and nanoengineering knowledge because it let me tell exactly what was coming. The crystals hit the ground as the seed for a fresh lattice and immediately began pulling in material for expansion. Rather than the towering mass I had seen earlier these grew like brambles, thick jagged twists of angular dark stone. What was worse, somehow Bakuda had made the reaction exothermic. I could see the heat distortion in the air around and between the strands of crystal and even some small fires sprouting on the ground nearby.

They were also advancing, and advancing quickly at that. The momentum of their impact had created a growth vector for the strands and we were staring down a forest of rapidly expanding crystal spears set to completely overrun us.

Without thinking I dug into my reagents and grabbed every copy of my last resort dark alchemy formula. Two drams of grease and a measure of gunpowder. My strongest attack formula, Explosion’s older brother, Nitro.

Despite the feelings of desperation I took care when mixing the reagents, cultivating the energy for the maximum effect available to me. The micromanipulators on my hands allowed insane precision during the process and I drew on every shred of supporting knowledge my power had provided me. 

When I threw down the mixture in the face of the burning forest of stone it flew into the approaching mass with a titanic detonation. The advance slowed, but kept coming. Fortunately I had been able to recognize enough of the effect to know one formula wouldn’t be able to save us. I launched another one, and another. One after another six of my most powerful alchemical mixtures exploded against the abomination of material science. The final detonation was close enough to nearly take me off my feet, but the encroachment finally stalled with only a few meters to spare.

My efforts had bought us a pocket of safety in a burning nest of crystal. The sides had closed in behind us, effectively pinning us down. The heat didn’t bother me thanks to my reinforcement, but it was clearly seriously uncomfortable for the rest of the Undersiders. Even Angelica looked unhappy, though that was probably more to do with being penned in than due to the radiating heat.

My motoroid was still trying to free itself from a pile of rubble without impairing our view of the clearly unhinged Bakuda. Too far for audio reception, but she was undoubtedly pleased with the results. Something else launched from the assembly and I feared a second missile before recognizing one of Leet’s snitches. It soared away from the courtyard until we could spot it through a gap in the crystal canopy. Bakuda didn’t seems at all disappointed with our survival and instead happily went to work on the apparatus.

My mind raced as I tried to figure a way out of the situation. The situation I had caused, or at least been a party to. Even for someone as twisted as Bakuda I hadn’t been comfortable digging into her college trauma. I was nearly two years from my first breakdown and those memories still felt fresh and painful. Imagining my own state barely a month after it and well, Bakuda’s instability made a lot more sense.

That low blow hadn’t served to accomplish anything and in fact had proved to work against us. Effectively we dumped a probable chaos tinker who was consumed with rage and running enhanced powers on top of a pile of damaged highly advanced equipment of their own design and somehow thought of it as a victory. Judging by the power of the first two explosives I had little hope for our survival against the full barrage.

Retreat was definitely the best option here. I still had Escape formulas prepared, but my experience with that effect wasn’t that comprehensive. I could probably manage two additional people, any more would be risky. That left two to escape on Angelica with Alec hopefully being able to take care of himself.

The problem with that plan was the complete lack of an escape route for Angelica. I didn’t know the exact limits of how high Bitch’s dogs could jump, but reaching the top of the crystal hedges wouldn’t be enough. She’d have to clear it completely, plus deal with the heat being emitted. Judging from the shimmer above the crystals even if Angelica could endure the conditions there was a decent chance that anyone on her back would be flash cooked.

As I rapidly considered my options the Celestial Forge connected to the Crafting constellation for what was perhaps the most generic and far reaching power I’d ever encountered. It was called Masterwork Craftsman and it made me exceptionally skilled at crafting... things. That was it. Things. Anything that counted as a thing was covered by this power. How skilled was I? Literally the worst I could ever produce was masterwork quality, as in the product of a master who had devoted his life to the craft. That was now my ‘phone it in’ level.

I watched Taylor try to send her remaining alchemical insects through, over or around the crystals. Unfortunately I was proved to be exactly correct regarding the intensity of the heat. The crystals may have stopped growing, but they were still radiating tremendous amounts of thermal energy. Nothing that she could summon or that I could conjure was making it through that mess alive. Any hope of repeating our opening strike was completely out the window.

Brian was talking hurriedly to Tattletale and Bitch was working to keep Angelica calm. Taylor gave me a hopeful look and I made my decision.

Thanks to blunting their growth with my formulas the crystals hadn’t extended nearly as far behind us. There was a decent chance I could blaze a trail. My sword would be able to handle the heat and could extend the reach of its blade thanks to the HF capacitor and shockwave runes. The effect would be more precise than trying to blast our way out, which could easily backfire on us or see me run out of formulas before we were clear.

“Hold on,” The group turned their attention to me. I swallowed before continuing. “I think I can deal with this."

Even with all the upgrades I’d built into it my sword might not be enough. Luckily I had something that might take it over the top. I drew a formula consisting of a piece of quartz crystal and a slip of iron and mixed them together. The assembled capes watched as the Energize formula glowed and flowed into my weapon. It wouldn’t last long, but the formula would rapidly pull alchemical energy into the weapon, enhancing every aspect of its performance to an incredible degree.

I held out my now glowing pistol and activated the fabricator for my customized omni-blade. That was the moment I realized my mistake. I understood how manufacture by my omni-tool counted as building something for the purpose of my powers, but I honestly didn’t expect that to extend to my pistol’s blade mount. It wasn’t really crafting, it just churned out the same tool every time. Regardless, the fact that it was manufactured out of omni-gel meant it counted and I had a split second to decide, five copies or bigger manufacture.

I chose ‘bigger’ solely to keep four loose monomolecular blades from flying loose of the assembly. So instead of killing the Undersiders with carbide shrapnel my pistol manifested a sword that could be best described as a surf board with a handle.

That wasn’t an exaggeration. The thing was over eight feet long. I had to shift to a two handed grip just to maintain some semblance of control on it. The mass field of the comparatively tiny projectile weapon was pushing itself to the breaking point just to keep the mess together. I had a matter of seconds before this went to hell.

But there was more going on than just a size increase. My latest power decided now was the time to make itself known. The runes along the blade had been printed and thus were usually of middling power with most of the enchantment provided by the body of the pistol. They were more for continuity of effect and would probably have been rendered useless by the size increase, compromising the enchantment of the entire weapon and reducing it to junk. Runes are complicated and you can’t just photocopy them at 120% for a power boost.

The thing was, with my new power I was physically incapable of producing junk. Not only were the runes corrected for the new scale of the weapon, but their quality and detail was increased by the level of my new mastery. The sword itself, already an excellent weapon, was further refined and actually subtly adjusted for its new size. It was about as well designed as a sword the size of a motorcycle could be.

That’s what led to my current situation. Runes scale with the weapon. Both the affinity of the weapon for the element and the physical size of it. Masterwork Craftsman had ensured the blade was optimally designed for wind affinity. The size of the weapon could handle more magical energy than anything I’d constructed before. The consequence was such a concentration of wind magic that just holding it at the ready was producing vortices on the ground around me, catching my coat in the gusts and causing the Undersiders to edge away from me.

The dangerous glow that was building as the Energize formula pulled in more and more power probably didn’t help.

I looked at my display of the courtyard to see Bakuda gaping at her own display. I turned to glance up at the snitch and she bolted upright. Frantically she started hammering controls on the assembly of artillery. I watched helplessly as the last of the munitions were armed and, with the throw of a final switch, three dozen flavors of death came flying towards us.

I had absolutely no idea if this would work. I had never dreamed of going this far into runecraft. I hadn’t even used the Energize formula before. What I did know is that if I didn’t do something immediately none of us were likely to get out of this alive.

The sword was heavy. Even with the wind runes and mass fields there was a level of inertia intrinsic to its bulk that couldn’t be ignored. The limited leverage afforded by the pistol grip didn’t help things. Survey stressed the meager mass fields of my omni-tool to assist with the swing and try to hold the weapon on target. I overloaded the HF resonant capacitor to the point of burnout and released every spark of alchemical energy into that swing. I felt muscles scream as I struggled with a power I never thought I would hold in my hands.

I swung the sword.

The night split in half.

I watched it happen from an island of calm inside a maelstrom of destruction. The slash of the blade tore an arc of baleful energy that exploded up from our position into the night. I don’t know if it actually cut a line through the clouds or just looked like I did, but that was only because I was distracted by the devastation being wrought around me. 

The crystal thorns split as a horizontal line burned through them. Then the split became meaningless as the shockwave of the slice caught up with the initial cut and tore the crystals apart. The same pattern repeated with the clustered munitions. A plane of absolute destruction obliterating anything it touched, followed by the kind of blast you only saw in footage of atomic tests. The bombs didn’t even have time to detonate. The ones that weren’t reduced to scattered components had the residue of their effects torn away into the sky in a dozen trails of crackling energy.

The impact on the facility was comparatively minor, but considering what it was being compared to that wasn’t saying much. Tornado-force winds tore across the ground sending people and equipment flying. The crystal forest was reduced to shards and spread like caltrops over the wreckage. The Undersiders were spared the worst of it, but even the diminished effects sent Taylor colliding into my back. Tattletale ended up sprawled on the ground while Grue clung to Angelica. Rachel was directing her to grip the ground with her claws, providing a much needed point of stability in the chaos

As soon as things settled enough for me to coordinate the action I collapsed the blade, managing it mere seconds before the mass field and energy cell of the pistol would have burned out. The excess omni-gell from the massively oversized weapon vented out as a cloud of glowing orange vapor that flowed across the ground. I held up the pistol and ejected the badly overheated thermal clip which pulsed an angry red and hissed as it hit the rubble.

The Undersiders were looking at me with shock and amazement. All except for Tattletale. From the look in her eye I could tell. She knew. She knew I hadn’t expected that to happen, that I had been managing the effects by the seat of my pants, that I was as surprised by the result as anyone else.

She wasn’t just looking at me with amazement. The expression she gave me contained no small amount of fear.

I was saved from having to deal with that by Brian taking the initiative. He guided Bitch into the group after she’d been edging Angelica back. Taylor had basically gone stock still until Brian helped Tattletale up and pulled the team back into a semblance of functionality. Finally he approached me and said what were probably the first words spoken in the facility since my counter attack.

“Thank you. Seriously.”

I nodded in response as the sentiment was echoed by the rest of the group, though the shock still hadn’t completely worn off. Taylor looked up at the rainbow of still burning explosive effects my slash had carved into the sky, then shook her head.

We followed Grue on the way back to the center of the facility. The five of us approached the thoroughly shaken inhabitants of the courtyard. Bakuda was struggling to pull herself up by the now depleted improvised artillery. There was a sense of hopelessness throughout our opponents. Some of the ABB members still had the odd grenade, but no one wanted to try their luck. On top of everything else Bakuda was still erratically twitching, showing whatever Regent was trying to do was still happening.

There was a sense of cautious relief that slowly spread through the group. Our enemy was broken, her weapons depleted, her allies disheartened, and her support gone. There were no more standoffs, no mind games, no sneaking around trying to get an edge. We had done it. We could finally end this madness.

A sudden siren echoed through the courtyard accompanied by an all-encompassing flash of blinding light. Silhouettes were just visible through the radiance and a voice cried out over the din.

“Challenger Approaching! A new foe has appeared!”

Fanfare played as the glare faded, revealing over a dozen figures clustered around Bakuda. Front and center was a bulky man in mismatched pieces of technological armor and a skinny figure in a blue and yellow jumpsuit with various gadgets strapped to it, including a katana slung across his back. The rest of the figures were an assembly of men in an erratic arrangement of outfits. I spotted an orc, some blue space armor, something that looked like a rubber suit for a power ranger’s villain, multiple military uniforms, a badly made robot suit, and a Roman legionary.

Uber and Leet were back, and this time they brought their henchmen. Their sorry assembly of henchmen who seemed to be outfitted in whatever RTS gear they had on hand. Some of it was potentially dangerous if it worked, but they had phased out henchmen tinker tech ages ago. I had no idea what they thought they could accomplish here.

I was getting more than a little fed up with this mess. I was tired and getting low on reagents. I had almost fried my pistol. My motoroid was only now extracting itself from being spiked into rubble. I’d had my awareness tour through more medical procedures than I’d ever wanted to know existed. And after all that I now had to deal with these clowns again. I had no idea who put them up to this, but I was ready to put them down.

A couple of henchmen helped Bakuda to her feet and handed her a headset and more concerningly a pair of cases that they were handling very delicately. At least I was more concerned about the cases until I heard the tinker speak into the headset.

“Yes, alright, just put her on.” She adjusted the headset and pulled a new grenade launcher from the case. “Fucking fine. I don’t care. I’ve had it. Just give me the timing.”

I shared a worried glance with Tattletale as Leet worked something on a device on his wrist. It seemed the ABB’s new thinker had entered the match. Leet launched something into the sky and a set of words appeared with Uber reading them out in his annoyingly over-dramatic voice.

“Round two, fight!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Engineer (Super Mario RPG) 300:  
> You're more adept at coming up with novel and creative objects. Any blueprint can be held perfectly in your mind without needing to draw it on paper.
> 
> Master Craftsman (Forgotten Realms) 300:  
> You are exceptionally skilled at crafting things. At your worst, your results are masterwork.


	26. 21 Closing Moves

I looked across the newly arrived figures. Leet’s stupid fighting game message still burned in the sky while he and Uber posed like jackasses. Behind them were their motley assortment of henchmen clustered around Bakuda, the last serious resistance that had been left in this hell pit.

The two villains were preening, presumably for cameras I still hadn’t tracked down. Either they deployed more when they arrived or Leet built his surveillance equipment to withstand disaster areas. Either way I was definitely taking that tech when this was over.

Behind the posing assholes their henchmen were grimly getting to work. Unlike the pair they did not seem happy to be here. Scut work for the city’s least successful villains wasn’t exactly the most envied position in Brockton Bay. It was probably limited to people who couldn’t stand the major gangs and couldn’t qualify for Coil’s tactical squads. Actually, they mostly looked like out of work longshoremen. I’m sure middle age blue collar workers were absolutely thrilled about having to put on a stupid costume and get teleported to a warzone on the whim of a pair of twenty-something gamers.

In any other circumstances I might have felt sorry for them. Now I was just done.

Despite their harrowed expressions they were still significantly more professional than the conscripts or even most of the career ABB members. They were scrambling around Bakuda with pieces of equipment and weapons, generally doing a good job of working around their ridiculous outfits.

I glanced at the Undersiders. Aside from the new arrivals we were the least injured people in the facility. The after effects of my slash had subjected everyone present to a massive range of cuts, scrapes, and bruises. Bakuda was trying to play up a second wind, but looked barely able to stay on her feet. One of her gas mask lenses was badly cracked and the costume and body armor she showed up with was in tatters. On top of all of that were the burns from my opening attack.

And she was still randomly twitching. Whatever Regent was trying he hadn’t relented in the face of facility wide disaster. I pushed my thoughts and irritations on that aside and focused on what I could actually accomplish.

A quick look exchanged with Taylor’s team confirmed that they shared my opinion. No more of this. No more dancing around, no humoring the villains, no mind games, and no showboating. This ended now.

Uber took a wide stance and hefted a rifle with an accordion like section on its barrel. The big cape glanced at Leet, then smirked at us. “It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum…and I’m all outta...”

His movie trailer voice was cut off as the mass effect round collided with his face. The impact caused a glowing barrier of light to flare into visibility around Uber’s body. The man was rocked back slightly, but the shot did no actual damage.

The rest of the Undersiders, Taylor in particular, gaped at my reaction but no one said anything. Whatever conflicts of faith they might have had over taking lethal actions were well behind us now.

“Excuse me,” Uber had the gall to look annoyed at being shot in the head. “Can you...”

“No.”

I fired three more rounds in quick succession, each aimed straight at his face. What looked like one barrier was actually a complicated interlacing of several types of force fields. They unfortunately had the sense to come into this expecting a serious fight, which was a step above their previous behavior.

The combination of the field effects negated the damage but the additional force from my pistol’s shockwave runes was enough to drive him back, causing him to drop to one knee. From what I could tell it looked like at least six different barrier types. Some kind of charged particle barrier, a type plasma sheeting, some kind of kinetic redirection, and a few other brightly colored effects I couldn’t identify yet.

“Do you mind? We’re trying to...” Leet flinched as a round bounced off a near invisible sphere around him that rippled like water. So far I was the only one to take action. Their henchmen were busy working on something around Bakuda, who was listening intently to her headset. They flinched at the sound of each shot, but didn’t spare more than a glance before hurrying with their tasks. The rest of the forces were either incapable or unwilling to intervene, generally pulling as far back from our two groups as possible.

We were facing off across a field of rubble. No cover or terrain features to take into account. Given how heavy Uber and Leet’s load out seemed to be that was probably more of a detriment to us than to them. I tried to get a look at what they had brought for Bakuda. The grenade launcher she’d picked up was actually smaller and simpler than her previous one. It didn’t have the oversized drum magazine of her old model and looked a lot less advanced. Probably a prototype.

So rather than a resurgence with upgraded gear they had most likely rushed in with whatever she still had in her workshop. Somewhat of a relief, but Bakuda wasn’t ever going to be considered harmless. The fact that she was apparently being coordinated by a mystery thinker certainly didn’t help matters.

“Khepri!” I called to Taylor as I drew a set of components from my belt. “Time to end this.”

She nodded as the thrown formula shaped itself into a wasp’s nest. Just before it exploded I heard Uber swear loudly as he brought up his rifle. A barrage of crackling blue spheres launched from the weapon and tore into the cloud of insects. Barely a handful managed to escape the blasts, but those were enough to wheel through the crowd and start picking off targets.

Bakuda dropped the grenade launcher just before it would have been pierced by one of the insects. The creature’s momentum carried it into the armored pauldron of the orc-dressed henchman next to her. He screamed and clutched his bloody shoulder as Bakuda dropped to scramble for the weapon. The more heavily armed henchmen had their tinker tech or conventional weapons splintered in their hands while Uber’s force field unfortunately managed to protect his rifle.

He lifted the weapon again and I took a position in front of the Undersiders. Tattletale stepped forward but kept me between her and Uber. “We don’t have the firepower or durability to deal with that. Can you handle Uber and Leet?”

I glared at the two idiots and scowled. When I first fought them it had been hard to get past their reputation as harmless internet clowns, gimmick villains more concerned with spectacle than profit or doing harm. It made it hard to treat them like a serious threat, even with my new military experience screaming at me. Maybe if I’d had that experience for more than six hours it wouldn’t have been a problem, but I hadn’t trusted the instincts like I should have.

I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. “Deal with Bakuda. I’ve got this.”

I triggered another fabrication of drones and ordered Fleet into the air. The drones spread out and soared towards the enemy formation. Uber began to pick them off with his plasma rifle, but they served to draw fire from the Undersiders as they circled around and disappeared under Grue’s darkness.

I moved forward and pulled out the reagents for a Speed formula. Uber’s eyes widened as I mixed them and he immediately shifted to hose me down with plasma orbs. With my level of thermal and kinetic reinforcement I was able to weather the storm, but the mixture of wax and water was vaporized before it could react.

Uber looked a little unnerved at the lack of damage, but still forced a smirk onto his face. “Should have speced for casting speed.”

I furrowed my brow and launched an Overload from my omni-tool. I guess it was too much to hope that I’d be able to keep pulling off that kind of alchemy with impunity. I just didn’t expect to be picked out for it so soon. Then again, I hadn’t exactly been subtle with it so far, and the glowing mixtures and combination time created a very tempting target.

The blast of electricity from my omni-tool washed over Uber and caused the closer of the henchmen to flinch away and fall back. This kind of effect was specifically designed to bring down shields. While it didn’t do a perfect job of that here, Uber’s layers of protective fields were looking a lot less vibrant and the ones that held on were flickering. Oh, and the sound of a watch alarm caused him to tear a smoking device off his belt and toss it to the side.

Leet had managed to deploy some kind of red tool box into a short turret that began spitting bullets in my direction. They were barely a distraction, but probably not for long. He was hitting the thing with a wrench that somehow caused the machine to swell slightly with each blow.

As Uber was bringing his plasma rifle back on target I keyed up an Incinerate command from my omni-tool. A portion of omni-gel was energized and projected from the device towards the flickering defenses of the cape. I fully embraced the effects of my workaholic and sent a blast three times the size with twenty five times the volume rocketing towards him.

The blast of plasma utterly baked the area around his position. Uber was lost in the fireball while the henchmen at the periphery found the distance they pulled back to avoid my Overload shot wasn’t quite enough to completely save them from the Incinerate. More than a few minions were sent diving for cover or trying to roll out the flames that had quickly spread over their costumes.

I wasn’t nearly as concerned about those injuries as I would have been at the start of the night.

I missed a connection to the knowledge constellation as the speed and intensity of the bullets ricocheting off me increased dramatically. The turret had expanded to produce a pair of rotary barrels that spun at an incredible rate of fire. Leet kept hammering on the thing and I saw what looked like a rocket launcher begin to unfold.

Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Without Uber to bake my efforts into vapor with his plasma rifle I was able to combine a formula consisting of a piece of limestone and a chunk of wax. Leet flinched as the glowing mix was thrown down, then craned his neck to follow it as it shot into the sky.

I caught the expression of panic as the massive stone fist dropped out of the night, crushing the turret completely and popping Leet’s shield like a soap bubble. He crab walked back from the wreckage while also trying to work one of the gadgets on his wrist.

I raised my pistol for a shot on his prone form, but before I could get the round off there was a glowing flash and something cut across my back. It hit hard enough to sting badly, even through my reinforcement. I spun around to find Uber standing in scorched and melted armor. His shields were flickering in and out of visibility and I could see badly burned flesh under the equipment. In his right hand he held the glowing shape of a weapon even I could recognize.

“Uber and Leet finishing the fight.” His voice had lost its grandiose tone and had an unpleasantly wet texture to it. “There are those that said this day would never come. What are they to say now?” He flourished the Spartan sword and took a fighting stance.

I shot him in the face again.

There was little damage, but the impact wasn’t negated to the extent it had previously been. The combined kinetic energy and shockwave did send the cape back a few steps, which was partially what I was hoping for. Even if I hadn’t basically fried my omni-blade with that previous attack I didn’t want to get into anything approaching a sword fight with Uber. The wind runes might have been enough to level the field, but it was idiotic to meet a physically superior skill-thinker in a battle of skill.

Instead I used the brief moment it bought me to swing my pistol back toward Leet. The tinker had been messing with a glowing disk that had been attached to the back of his costume. Whatever he did caused thin glowing lines to spread across his body. The rest of his form faded to monochrome just before I took the shot.

The round tore through the tinker’s head, but instead of a shower of gore it shattered into tiny cubic pieces that flew apart, then pulled back together. Despite the look of agony on his face Leet screamed in triumph.

“Yes!” He scrambled to his feet while laughing as I had to give ground under Uber’s renewed assault. “She was right! Oh my God she was right. I could barely get this working the first time, and now...”

I managed to drive back the larger cape with a trio of shots, then spun and dropped an Incinerate directly on Leet. His scream as the plasma engulfed him was chilling, but as I watched cubic pieces of his body that blast had blown off floated back into place. Uber moved to his side as the fire faded and stared me down.

“Digitization.” Leet had a mad gleam in his eye as he taunted me. “Existence as matter and data at the same time. Can’t damage information, just derez it, and that’s an easy backup.”

Next to him Uber spit out some bloody phlegm and smirked at me. The cape looked like he’d be lucky to survive the night in intensive care, but was still moving with as much energy as when he was fresh to the fight. “Health bar.” His voice was disturbing to listen to. “The only hit point that matters is the last one. Been more than two years since we used this tech.”

I clenched my jaw. That would have been about when Aegis joined the Wards. I didn’t know if there was actually a connection or if I was just connecting the grim form before me to the Ward’s condition during the bank fight. That said, if Leet had based whatever tech Uber was using on Aegis I didn’t enjoy the idea of having to fight it. It would be a frustrating and messy affair

Plus, if Leet’s defense worked anything like he bragged then that would be an absolute nightmare to counter.

Would it be hypocritical to say that I hated fighting tinkers?

“Did you...” I put a round straight through the disk Leet was holding to his chest, cutting him off. Once again the wound and damage took the form of shattered cubic pixels that quickly reformed, but the effect was still clearly unpleasant.

Uber charged, causing me to painfully deflect the glowing sword with my forearm. There was more to the effect than just plasma, but my reinforcement was blocking the bulk of it. I doubt anyone else on this battlefield would have been able to survive a single hit. Even the brief contact left glowing streaks on my jacket like metal fresh from a foundry.

Two more shots drove the big cape back slightly and caused one of his remaining fields to flicker out. He pulled out a cylindrical object and took a flying dive towards his teammate before driving it into the ground. A sphere of hexagons sprang up around them that reflected my following shots.

Inside the bubble Leet began his taunts anew. “Didn’t you find it strange how things just weren’t going your way tonight? Big tough new tinker rides in with his super weapons, his best technology, and an agent of the Tripredacus Council,” He said that last part with particular contempt. “but just can’t seem to land a win. It’s almost as if someone was working against you, rigging the game from the start.”

Uber started adjusting what I assumed were his shield emitters. There was the sound of a capacitor charging and one of his failed barriers flickered back into existence around him. I cursed internally and drew the components for another Energize formula.

“Your new thinker?” This seemed like elementary mind games, but that would be out of character for these two. Actually, this night had pretty much thrown out every assumption about their character, so who could say what they were capable of.

A quick glance showed the rest of the fight wasn’t going particularly well. There were enough rockets among the Henchmen that Fleet hadn’t been able to manage an attack run. Meanwhile I watched Bakuda as she seemed focused on the voice in her ear. She launched a grenade blindly, only for Angelica to burst from a cloud of darkness almost on top of it. The monster dog skidded to a stop before dashing back into cover and just out of range of the blast.

I mixed the reagents for Energize and let the glowing mass flow into my pistol. Then I shifted my attention as my omni-tool chirped a notification.

“You have no idea what she’s capable of.” Uber looked up from a device on his belt to smirk at me, but his bravado faltered slightly as I fabricated five new drones from my recharged capacitor and sent them towards the shield. Still, he continued taunting in his wet, hollow voice. “The whole city’s marching to her tune, they just don’t know it yet.”

I really hoped that was standard thinker bravado, the kind of blanket claims of control you get from inexperienced capes. There was no denying that this mess had been masterfully coordinated, at least outside Bakuda’s slip ups, and even then there was the potential for the thinker to have a hand in things. Spoofing Tattletale was also concerning, but I still didn’t have a good idea of how strong the girl’s power actually was.

But doubting if every move you made was part of a thinker’s plan could be as destructive as any manipulations you could be under. In the middle of a fight acting without a perfect plan is better than inaction. Gotta keep the momentum

“Yeah, right.” I charged an Overload burst from my omni-tool as my drones circled the translucent sphere. I needed to put these two down fast and start backing up the Undersiders. “Just another thinker with delusions of completely controlling society from the shadows.”

“You don’t know.” Leet finished checking the disk and switched it with the katana on his back. “You don’t know anything. She does.” He started laughing even as the electricity of my drone attacks danced over the shield. “I thought I was done, hopeless, but she knew how it works. How everything works!” His expression combined with the electric lightning really played up the mad scientist clichés.

My Overload and charged shot tore through the weakened shield with enough force to tear a fresh set of voxels from Leet’s body, but the spindly tinker just tightened his grip on the katana and charged straight for me, screaming all the time. Two of my drones were shredded by mad swings and I directed the rest after Uber, who was quickly falling back to the henchmen.

“Tech trees have branches! Dead ends are opening up! It’s changing, everything’s changing and we're going to ride the front of this wave.” He sort of leaped into the air, but it was jerky and awkward. It was clear he was being carried up by the sword and dragged along as it shot down for a brutal strike. Despite its relative gracelessness the action was blindingly quick and I barely had time to get out of the way as the blade struck the earth.

I had decent faith in my durability when facing conventional threats, but not against unknown tinker tech. I didn’t know what that glowing sword was and I certainly didn’t want to find out from firsthand experience. He pulled the blade up into a spin that I backed away from while letting the pistol gather energy. As he was dragged by the sword into another attack my energized shot caught him dead center, tearing a hole through his torso that dropped him to his knees. The damn sword stayed up and flailing in an attack formation, dragging it’s wielder behind it even as he was reconstituted.

At that moment my motoroid dove out of the path of a fired rocket and, with the worst luck possible, directly onto one of Bakuda’s lobbed grenades. That said, I was beginning to doubt how much of a role luck played in the actions of anyone connected to this new thinker. The grenade went up in a bloom of heat I could feel from halfway across the courtyard. It scrapped the entire left side and sent the motoroid spiraling out of the sky into the ground.

There went my air superiority. And given its performance in that role there’s clearly a good reason for not generally equipping aircraft with melee weapons. 

The impact must have damaged the magitek core because it was accompanied by a sudden flash of thaumic discharge. Incredibly every other cape in the area flinched and focused on the sparking wreckage in a motion so synchronized it was almost eerie.

Whatever they were focused on, it didn’t matter to me. I drew a bead and put an energized shot directly into the glowing sword, wrenching it from Leet’s grip and knocking the tinker down. With whatever entranced him broken he scrambled for another piece of gear, but repeated shots kept him from accomplishing anything. Even if they couldn’t damage his bullshit defense, he had half the mass of Uber and lacked the big cape’s exotic shielding. I drove round after round into the tinker. Hand, chest, chest, head, chest

I moved forward to close the distance and he pathetically scrambled, the pixel like damage repairing itself. Behind him Uber was working to reinforce Bakuda against the Undersiders. I hadn’t been hearing the constant barrage of explosions that characterized her earlier fights. Apparently this thinker was interested in conserving ammo and taking shots effectively rather than throwing out everything they could in a display as much about showing off the bombs as taking out the target.

It meant the battle was being conducted a lot more effectively. The Undersiders weren’t helped by the fact that they were at eighty percent strength with a third of their usual mobility options. Brian and Rachel were riding on Angelica while Tattletale and Taylor took advantage of the clouds of darkness. They were still badly out gunned and probably only saved by the fact that the henchmen hadn’t joined in the fight.

“She was right.” Leet spat. “It worked perfectly.”

I moved to close the rest of the distance and flipped the tinker into a hold with my knee on his back. “And exactly what about this has worked?” A point blank shot into the disc accomplished nothing, merely spreading more reforming voxels and earning another muffled cry from Leet. In the distance a bomb went off that made my teeth itch and sent a few henchmen who were too close to the blast into epileptic fits. I pushed past the sensation and increased the pressure on Leet’s back.

I could hear him laugh through the rubble his face was driven into. “She said you’d be mad enough to stay focused on us.”

I froze. I didn’t even need to ask what else I would have been focusing on. The henchmen had been working on something and thanks to Uber and Leet’s sense of showmanship it was announced to the entire facility with an electronic voice. I had actually played the game it was referencing.

“Chronosphere ready.”

They weren’t reinforcements. They were a rescue attempt.

I put one last shot through Leet’s head before jumping to my feet. The center of the courtyard had a baby version of the teleporter super weapon that I remembered from that game. It had split open and was spinning up and sparking. The only reason that it hadn’t activated yet was Bakuda had decided to delay the plan. Though for the worst possible reason.

Past the henchmen recovering from tangential exposure to the seizure bomb was the real target, who appeared to have taken a direct hit. Bakuda loomed over Taylor’s twitching form with the bowie knife drawn. The bomb tinker looked over at me and with a flourish brought the monomolecular weapon down towards the girl who carried the fate of the world in her hands.

Then her arm froze mid swing. Then flailed in the wrong direction. A chirp from Survey drew my attention to my display. A feed from a remaining drone showed a boy in a charred and tattered outfit approaching the courtyard. Regent was finally back. I was split between gratitude for saving Taylor’s life and rage for allowing the situation to get this bad.

Bakuda made another attempt at a swing, but it just flailed her arm open. Uber called something from next to the chronosphere, but she tensed and made one last attempt.

The knife flew away.

With the tinker’s hand still attached to it.

Bakuda stared at the bloody stump, then staggered back as the wind blade spun down, saving her head from being cleaved in half still catching a shallow cut that split her mask. The spider webs manipulating the knife were turning into bloody lines as it looped around for another pass, this time literally cutting her legs out from under her.

Uber rushed towards the crippled tinker and hauled her back from the flying knife. Bakuda was screaming a garbled mess of electronic profanity as she groped for something with her left hand. She then demonstrated why I hadn’t defaulted to amputation the moment I learned about the control system.

With a single pull of some kind of release more than a dozen blinking grenades spilled out across the ground. Uber took one look at them, then hauled up the bleeding cape and made a mad sprint for the chronosphere. That left Taylor surrounded by Bakuda’s last resort bombs while still convulsing helplessly on the ground.

I desperately fished out the only formula that had a hope of letting her survive that mess. There was a single effect that provided a stronger defense than the invulnerability of my Barrier formula. I combined two pieces of wax with a quartz crystal and sent the formula flying towards the girl. Simultaneously there was a brilliant flash from the direction of the henchmen and an electric voice called out.

“Warning, chronosphere activated!”

I watched a flickering distortion expand from the device to encompass the crowd of capes and henchmen. Everything it touched faded and vanished from the facility. The flashing of red lights on Bakuda’s grenades accelerated as the last of the reinforcements disappeared and my alchemy crossed the final distance to Taylor’s prone form. The Stop formula reached her just before the explosions started.

The blasts were so rapid and clustered that it was hard to pick out the individual detonations and effects. There was a plume of brownish red fog that was dispersed by a column of fire that shot a good forty feet into the air. Electricity tore into the sky, but spread like a growing tree instead of a normal discharge. The bolts shot up, froze in place, then sprouted new tendrils of lightning that repeated the process. On the surface deep gouges were being cut through the ground like a twenty foot area was being cleaved randomly by a giant invisible axe. A radius of rubble transformed into glass before being liquidated by the heat of the column of flame. I felt what seemed like a repeat of the splash of that seizure bomb, only turned all the way up to eleven.

The cacophony only lasted a few seconds, but the intensity made it feel like hours. Finally the effects of the detonations started to vanish. The column of fire pulled itself into the air and dispersed. The lightning tree stopped growing new branches and faded out of existence. The tearing of the ground ceased and the smoke cleared. All that was left was Taylor’s frozen form above a pool of molten glass.

I had to get to her before that formula wore off.

Wading through that pool of red hot molten silica was a unique experience and one I wouldn’t recommend, even for a person with ridiculous thermal resistance. Taylor was suspended maybe a foot over a crater filled with a shallow pool of liquid glass. Trudging through it, well it wasn’t like water. Imagine someone filled a kiddy pool with cold molasses that hardened slightly every time you pulled your foot up.

I knew there were only seconds left before the Stop formula ran its course. Fortunately I was able to reach Taylor before that point. She was horizontal over the pool, still contorted mid seizure. The frozen wind blade hung in the air next to her, bloody spider-webs trailing from it like a macabre puppet show.

I had no idea how she maintained any control over it during her seizure. It looked like she was lashing out instinctively, but I got the impression that controlling the blade took serious focus and coordination. Still, I had bigger concerns right now than the details of her power.

I kneeled down in the glass to catch her before the effect ended, then moved as quickly as I could to lift her away from the heat of the molten material. Despite my best efforts of fighting against the hardening material a few locks of hair brushed the pool and burned away. I rushed her to the edge of the rapidly solidifying pool, a task easier said than done with her in the midst of an epileptic fit, and began channeling my nanites. The knife whipped behind us as we moved like a kite.

As soon as she was clear of the pool I caught the still flailing wind knife by the blade, brushed off the bloody spider webs, and sheathed it. I needed to focus entirely on the nanites.

Her brain was a mess. That bomb, whatever it was, didn’t trigger a seizure, it induced a full, permanent case of epilepsy. There was all kinds of interesting damage my nanites were trying to sort out, a situation not made easier by her stupidly active corona pollentia.

Hers was lodged into her frontal lobe, typical for masters, and was lit up like a Christmas tree. Okay, she was having a seizure so her whole brain was lit up, but the corona pollentia was running so hot I was afraid it would explode. There was a gradual calming effect as the rest of the damage was repaired, but the corona pollentia was like a separate creature, and one my nanites couldn’t perfectly interface with. Whatever Bakuda had done I could only hope it would be able sort itself out on its own.

I looked up from my healing to find the rest of the Undersiders clustered around me, though still giving me a healthy amount of space. That is, barring Regent, who was still hanging back for obvious reasons. With the immediate crisis dealt with I suddenly had the chance to fully appreciate the magnitude of the fuckup that had just been perpetuated.

Fuck. God fucking damn it. It was even worse than before. Bakuda had dropped the knife that I could have used to track her. I had a sense of the blade on the other side of the crater, probably blown free before the more destructive effects set in. The sheath was just gone, likely dropped and incinerated. Damn it, if we left when I suggested I would at least know where their base of operations was. Maybe launched an attack when I was better prepared.

Survey drew my attention to the sky above the courtyard. In the aftermath of the teleportation and bomb blasts a single piece of technology was standing out like a sore thumb. A damaged camera drone of Leet’s design floated unsteadily above the rubble. From my readings it looked like it had started going through some kind of emergency shutdown and wipe as soon as it was detected. The signal cut off before anything could be determined about its source, but I fried its systems before it could completely self-destruct. That was something, I guess.

Oh, there’s a nice distraction from my failure. A Celestial Forge connection and my second mote from the Magic constellation. Don’t know why it’s called Maliwan Intern of all things, but it gave me incredible mastery of elemental weapons, both in terms of power and control. That would have been very useful if it arrived anytime earlier in this fight.

Oh, it even gave me the skills to create technological versions of some of the elemental effects I’d been making with my runes. That was interesting, and fairly useful. Also the elemental mastery portion covered all weapons, including my omni-tool. Once again, would have been useful at any earlier point, but that could be said about pretty much all of my powers.

Grue cleared his throat, which brought my attention back to the Undersiders. “Uh, about how this went down...” he petered off, seemingly at a loss for how to proceed. He glared over at Regent, then looked across the devastation of the battle’s aftermath, then just seemed to give up. Frankly I was right there with him. With the immediate threat gone and a moment of peace the reality of the situation was sinking in. I couldn’t find an element of this operation that hadn’t needed a drastic amount of improvement. This was a damn disaster.

I looked at the vacant ground that was the former location of Leet’s chronosphere. Simple silica based glass that had started to cool enough to become brittle crumbled from my arms and legs as I drew up Survey’s scans of the event, but I didn’t have enough information to discern the effect that was used, let alone determine the target location. I looked from Taylor’s resting form to Tattletale. She seemed to pick up my meaning.

“I have no idea where they went.” That admission seemed to hurt her, but I still resented my last hope of turning this around being squashed. “I have some guesses on Uber and Leet, but the new thinker’s throwing everything off. The ABB, well there are some front businesses I know about, but they won’t be using them to regroup from something like this.” She swallowed and looked down at Taylor. “Is she alright? I can’t see anything wrong, but...”

“Corona pollentia’s overworked.” I clarified. I took a deep breath and pushed my frustration at the botched mission aside. “It’s causing some kind of strain. I’ve fixed everything else, but I think she needs rest.”

I looked past Tattletale to where people were beginning to emerge from the broken cover of the storage facility. A few more shards of brittle glass fell from me as I quickly checked my omni-tool. The conscripts were still alive. Well, the ones that had survived Bakuda’s unfriendly fire and summary executions were alive. At least Bakuda hadn’t yet bled out. She did have Uber with her, so that was perfect medical technique on demand. She was also apparently impaired enough that she hadn’t just detonated them out of spite.

There would be time for self-recrimination later. At this moment I had a chance to make a difference.

I stood up to the tinkling sound of the remaining glass shards snapping and falling free and pushed past Tattletale. The looks of fear on the faces of the conscripts that greeted my action were more than a little disheartening, but all together understandable. I took a breath and called out across the rubble.

“Bakuda is gone.” The words echoed out to a mix of emotions on the faces of the forced recruits. “She fled and was badly injured. For the moment she can’t detonate any of your bombs.” There was a stirring at those words. “I don’t know if her wounds will be fatal, but right now you have a chance. Your best chance to be free of this. Stand down and I might be able to get those bombs out of your heads.”

I was met with looks of absolute shock, and not just from the conscripts. Brian moved towards Tattletale and the two had a muttered conversation with a concerned tone. Rachel looked stoic, but was running a hand across Angelica’s armored flank in a way that was probably giving more comfort to her than the monster dog. The conscripts were gaping at each other, seemingly at a loss. Probably waiting for someone to step forward and give them direction. Across the courtyard Alec just shrugged at the announcement.

Then the shot rang out.

The caliber of the weapon wasn’t even enough to make me flinch as it bounced off my cowl. I turned slowly to see a tall man in ABB colors holding a glock. He was sporting the bruises and cuts of the rest of the conscripts, but the smattering of burns identified him as one of Bakuda’s right hand men, last seen in person when I had set him on fire.

The gun was held in a shaking grip and he had a look of pure rage plastered across his face. “Fuck you!” Honestly, I was kind of stunned. I understood his anger, but what did he think he could accomplish here? What kind of Dutch courage was holding this guy together? “You think you’ve won? You think this will stop us? We’re the ABB. We’re going to own this city. Everyone here knows it. They’re ABB now and you’re nothing.”

More of the conscripts were moving forward at the man’s words. This was really not the type of direction I was hoping for them to receive. I saw weapons being gripped and an older man in a scorched and tattered set of janitor’s coveralls walked up to stand by the ABB lieutenant. The gang member smiled at him and turned back to me.

“See? These people are with us forever!”

Then the man in coveralls raised a small pistol and shot the lieutenant in the head.

The entire facility went silent as the gang member crumpled like a sack of potatoes. The man in the coveralls put the safety on his weapon, put it away, and pointed a finger at me.

“You start with the children.”

Well, I wasn’t going to argue with that. From the looks of things that was the push the conscripts needed to start organizing themselves. It also imposed enough order to prevent some kind of mad rush at my promise.

I missed a connection to the Alchemy constellation as I considered the new situation. Maintaining order would be a problem. I didn’t know if Bakuda was going to hit a mass detonator as a departing ‘fuck you’ as soon as she was capable of the action, but I wouldn’t put it past her. We had to assume we were working on limited time here. The conscripts knew it and would no doubt start fighting over position once surgery started.

Right, surgery. I was reasonably certain I could handle this. When it came to disarming the bombs I was probably the best person for that task on the planet. Between my omni-tool and diagnostic tools I could pick apart functions of the devices like no one else. My Deranged Alchemist power meant I at least knew my way around a scalpel, even if those talents weren’t exactly up for brain surgery.

I could manage the disarming and removal, but I couldn’t keep order at the same time. My motoroid could have helped with that, but it was scrapped. As I glanced at the crash site there was another burst of thaumic sparks. Every one of the Undersiders flinched in response and turned towards the wreckage. Even Taylor made a jerky motion before settling back to unconsciousness.

That was a bit concerning and I should definitely investigate it once I didn’t have a queue of bomb surgeries to manage.

Turning back to the group I saw that Regent had wandered over and was holding a safe distance while acting as nonchalant as possible. Quite the accomplishment considering Bitch was staring daggers, Angelica was growling, and Grue looked like he wanted to deck the boy. Tattletale seemed conflicted on how to act, and for my own part I would have been happy to join them.

As much as I wanted to lay into Alec for ruining the plan and letting Bakuda get away I didn’t feel like that would accomplish much. Especially not when I was working under an unknown time limit. Alec also didn’t seem like the type of person who would respond to being chewed out, so other than letting me vent my frustration what was I going to accomplish? I wasn’t even on his team. It would just be a waste of time that I couldn’t spare.

I grit my teeth and stepped towards Grue. “I’m going to need you to put this on hold until we deal with the current mess.”

I could see the tension dancing through his form as he processed my words. “What, are you okay with what he did? With how this went down?” His voice was a low whisper made extra unsettling by the reverb from his darkness.

“Fuck no.” I whispered back. “This is a disaster. But the only way we can keep it from being a complete disaster is to deal with the conscripts.” I turned to Tattletale. “Tell me, Bakuda wakes up and decides to hit the detonator for everyone here. What happens then?”

The girl pulled her gaze from Regent and processed things. “The PRT will report them as civilians killed in a clash between the ABB and the Undersiders.” She looked at me. “And Apeiron, I suppose. Threat assessment and response measures will be stepped up. Worst case scenario if someone in the governor’s office doesn’t like us we could end up lumped in with whatever kill order gets issued to Bakuda.”

Brian rocked at the news. “But, that... We didn’t have anything to do with that. We couldn’t have stopped it.”

“We could have left.” I interjected. “If we bailed when I suggested these people wouldn’t be under a ticking clock right now.”

“Are you saying this is our fault?” Rachel practically growled at me. Next to her Angelic literally growled at me.

“We chose to get involved and stay involved. You rush into a hostage situation and you need to take responsibility for the effects of your actions. Congratulations, you’re on the other side of the bank job, only you don’t have a PR machine to smooth things over.”

Brian lowered his head. “If Regent hadn’t...”

“Everyone fucked up tonight. We can figure out the serving size later.” Grue hadn’t exactly been focusing on obstruction of Bakuda’s firing lines. His clouds of darkness had been placed for maximum showmanship. Bitch had been more focused on inflicting pain than any clear objective. I’d already covered the magnitude of Tattletale’s fuckup, and if Taylor had held back I might have been able to disrupt the escape instead of covering her. And all that was only scratching the surface of my own errors and missed opportunities. “Can you keep your shit together long enough for us to pull some damage control?”

He tensed and looked around. “The Protectorate...”

“Not coming.” Tattletale clarified. “Whatever’s happening in the city has them stressed to the breaking point. This is bad and we’re only at the edge of it.”

“We could still be looking at a PRT squad, or just the cops.”

“If they show up they can take over. It won’t be our responsibility anymore.” I checked my fabrication capacitor and sent five new drones into the air. A wave of tension spread through the conscripts, but died down as the orbs rose away from them into the night. “That will give us advanced warning of anyone inbound and give us eyes on the area.”

Brian glanced to Tattletale, who nodded, then to Regent, who gave him a shrug. I felt an urge to deck the smaller cape, but bit down on it. I couldn’t afford this kind of conflict now.

“Look, you know the bill that’s headed for you after tonight?” Brian actually flinched at that. “Well, let’s call this a down payment. I need help with this, so I’m hiring the Undersiders. Time and a half on what you would normally get for a job like this, but we need to start now.”

The reminder of his financial obligations seemed to punch through his resistance. I had a rough guess of what their take was from the average job, but also a rough idea of how much they owed me for tonight. I could almost see the numbers being crunched inside his head, mostly presented as a cloud of dread that suffused his body. The chance to chip away at a piece of that looming debt was enough to bring Brian around.

He took a breath. “Okay, as a job.” He looked over the conscripts, specifically at the younger members who were being shuffled forward. “Can you really do that? Get the bombs out of their heads?”

I nodded. “I should be able to handle anything she set up. The surgery shouldn’t be a problem. As for the triggers...” I made a flippant gesture. Other than her deadman’s signal I hadn’t been overly impressed. I knew I was leagues better at mechanics and electronics than Bakuda could ever dream of being. She might be able to create impressive and exotic explosives but she was clearly working with support systems to facilitate her work, not as her driving focus. Limits of being a chaos tinker.

“Tattletale can probably help you with that.”

The thinker nodded. “My power can help spot things, types of bombs, medical issues. I can assist.” She didn’t look thrilled about it, but pushed through.

Grue was settling back into the leadership role he was so comfortable with. “Me, Bitch, and... Regent.” He tensed, then continued. “Can manage the crowd and keep watch.” He looked down at Taylor. “Is she going to be alright?”

I took a breath. I was in new territory on this one, but was hopeful of the result. “I’ve fixed as much as I can. I think she just needs rest.”

“Hey,” I turned to Tattletale. “That thing you used? It was a time stop effect? Like Clockblocker?”

I nodded. “Basically. More limited and doesn’t last as long, and has a kind of pseudo Manton Effect, but the results are similar.”

She looked like she really wanted to ask follow up questions, but just exchanged a worried look with Grue and gave a slight nod.

“Excellent.” Everyone turned to Regent. Most of them were glaring. “Let’s get this party started.”

“Fuck you.”

Alec turned towards Bitch and made a mock gesture of offence. “You heard him, gotta save the innocents.”

“What the hell were you trying out there?” Brian practically barked, and I got the sense it was only my presence that was saving Alec from a thrashing.

Regent shrugged again, but it was a lot less irreverent. “It just seemed like the thing to do.” His voice was distant and hollow and for a second I could see the empty eyes that greeted me when I walked into that smoke choked locker. Then the façade of irreverence was back.

Fuck, Alec was not alright. None of these people were, but he was apparently better at hiding it than the rest of them.

“Did you even manage anything?” Tattletale’s voice was both frustrated and for some reason hopeful.

“If I had another five minutes, maybe less.” He shrugged, though with a bit more emotion than last time. “Haven't gotten lost in it like that for a long time.”

“Since when does that happen?” Grue asked.

“It doesn’t.” Tattletale interjected. “It shouldn’t anymore.” She was actually looking fairly concerned. “But five minutes. That means one more appearance by Bakuda...”

“If she even gives us that chance.”

I didn’t like being left out of the loop. By the looks of things Rachel was also in the dark and enjoyed the state to roughly the same degree as I did. We shared a sympathetic glance at what we had to deal with.

“I probably would have stuck with it if something hadn’t distracted me.” He looked towards my crashed motoroid, which elicited a series of reluctant nods from the rest of the Undersiders. At that moment the wreck emitted another shower of thaumic sparks causing the entire group and Taylor to flinch.

“So tell me, is that thing powered by Hell, or what?”

I considered Regent’s question. The magitek apparatus was stable enough, but it was drawing from an embedded call bead and the core had clearly taken some damage. The bead was unaligned, but it did connect to the shared space of the passengers. I wouldn’t really classify that as any mythological realm, but it was seriously alien and passengers did keep data from the capes they were connected to. Even without an inside look you could see that in Butcher and the Fairy Queen. I guess if you stretched the definition...

“Fuck.”

Grue’s exclamation brought me out of my musings. “What?”

“Ok, ‘is your motorcycle powered by Hell?’ is not the kind of question that should take any level of contemplation to answer.”

I turned towards Regent. “Well, it’s not exactly Hell.”

The entire group just gaped at me in response. “Well, there’s a new item for the list of ‘scariest things your tinker can say’.”

I wasn’t thrilled about their reaction to my magitek drive, but it at least seemed to get their minds off internal group conflict for a moment. “Look, I’ll deal with the bike. Can you start sorting things out over here?”

“Yeah, sure. You do that.” There were more than a few unsteady glances towards the wreckage as I went. I left Grue to manage things and finally had a chance to check on the status of my downed Motoroid.

It was bad, but not a total write off. Okay, it might have been without my Mechanic power that specifically let me rebuild from devastating crashes. On a more important note the magitek core was still intact. The call bead wasn’t in good shape. Even if I got this fixed I’d barely have enough power to get home in motorcycle mode. No more flying tonight.

A lot of the support systems were damaged or just gone. That thermal blast had been no joke. Bakuda was probably shocked there was anything left to crash afterwards, but the hyper alloy had held out pretty well. Fleet wasn’t processing anymore, but the memory drive was intact so none of the night’s development had been lost. I powered down the core, put the systems in safety mode, and generally stabilized the situation to the best of my ability.

The Celestial Forge made a connection to a small mote in the Toolkits constellation. This was another workshop, but there was a particular element to it. Like how there’s been a connection between the Master Builder and Science! powers there was a connection between this workshop and Grease Monkey, the first serious technical power I had.

This workshop was designed to allow me to build or repair absolutely anything that was possible under Grease Monkey, which was basically all the cyberpunk technology you could ever want. My skills had improved and expanded tremendously since then, but it was still miles better than everything I owned, with the possible exception of my nanofabricator. This would make new projects so much easier in the future.

It also included a studio apartment. Somewhat rundown, but given what I was used to probably a major step up. It also meant I would be able to clear out all my crap from the entryway.

I put that out of my mind and hurried back. That man in coveralls had organized a rough line of the youngest members of the conscripts waiting for my first attempt at surgery. Grue was working with the crowd to keep a semblance of order, helped largely by the presence of Rachel on Angelica’s back. Regent had recruited some of the more mobile conscripts to start collecting equipment from around the facility. Though he didn’t seem to have any enthusiasm for it he was able to pick out various lost or trapped members of the ABB forces, possibly through whatever senses his power granted him.

Tattletale had set up a rough attempt at a field hospital. The bedding seemed to be salvaged or donated coats, but she had lighting and some other odd pieces of equipment on hand. Taylor was laid out on another improvised cot nearby. As I approached she dismissed other Undersiders away and moved to meet me.

“You’ve never done this before? Surgery?”

There wasn’t much point lying to her. “No, but I can handle it. I know I can, and we don’t have much choice.”

She glanced across the crowd of children and nodded grimly. They were only three or four years younger than her, but that didn’t really matter in this situation. She shook her head and pressed on. “Look, I... I don’t know what your power is doing, but I can tell it’s seriously affecting you. How you acted tonight...” She paused before continuing. “Are you going to be okay?”

I let out a breath. “With this, or in general?” She gave me a flat look. “I’m managing. I have a system. It’s not something we need to get into now.” Hurray for the regulating power of quarters and pickle jars.

The thinker swallowed, but relented and led me to the improvised surgery bed. “They’re ordered by age. I’ll help as much as I can. The bombs aren’t really inside their heads, Bakuda wasn’t sawing through skulls with that number of surgeries. Top of the neck, just underneath the skull. Almost no variation in placement.”

“Amateurish. And a hack job. Look at that scarring.” The middle school girl on the surgical bed tensed at the words and I stopped talking. Instead I pulled up my omni-tool interface.

“Can that handle surgery?” Tattletale’s eyes were glowing again.

“No. Well, not the way it’s set up now. I need some tools for this.”

This was it. I could finally get started on the surgeries. I’d been half terrified everyone’s head was going to explode while I got everything set up and talked people around. Now I just needed to get my damn equipment ready.

She watched as I entered the fabrication program. My work on a new item was glacial when compared to modification or repairs of existing equipment. It’s why I wasn’t just churning out gear for the Undersiders in the middle of the fight. The omni-tool was pretty much freshly issued with limited features activated. If I had been able to spend a day experimenting with it this night would have gone very differently.

I pushed those thoughts away for now. There would be plenty of time to ponder all my mistakes later. Right now I needed surgical and mechanical tools.

While I wasn’t at the point of designing new equipment mid combat, the hybridization with my micromanipulator greatly increased the speed and detail of entering parameters. Survey was also more developed now and was able to help with the process.

I had to work around the non-optional nature of my Workaholic power, but that just meant scaling down everything. The size boost also meant I could fabricate surgical trays, basins, and other items that should have been beyond the limits of my omni-tool.

Tattletale, and in fact everyone present, watched wide eyes as the improvised medical station was filled in with professional grade and beautifully made equipment. It was an impressive display, but I wasn’t done.

There was no question that Bakuda had booby trapped these bombs against removal. I could probably work around that, but there was no reason to make things harder for myself than they needed to be. I picked up a custom designed scalpel and an engraving tool.

I had never dealt with water runes before. Most of their applications were fairly mundane. Fluid strikes, flexible weapons, or blasts of water following your attacks. It would be significantly less impressive than the other elements. That is, if not for the fact that the human body was mostly water. So if you wanted to deal bleeding or festering injuries then water runes were the way to go.

My runecraft has snuck up in power when I wasn’t looking, feeding off every design and crafting power to incrementally increase its potency. It was an advantage I’d overlooked, but with my new mastery of elemental weapons it wasn’t one I could practically ignore any more.

I was making a blood scalpel. On its own this weapon would have been able to turn a tiny nick in the skin into an arterial spray. Despite its tiny size the scalpel was perfectly attuned to this function, an effect even further amplified by my customizations. When I drew the engraving tool across the scalpel I was able to etch detailed water sigils as easily as signing my name. The item actually glowed red in my hand when the final mark was added to the tip of the blade.

My diagnostic tools and scanner had been able to locate the device in the girl’s neck. She tensed as she lay face down, ready for the incision. Then the incision came and she gave no response.

High level elemental control of a masterwork blood weapon meant I could make the body essentially ignore the wound. There wasn’t even a drop spilled as I made the first cut and it went completely unnoticed by the patient.

Guided by the readings from my scanner I carefully entered the incision with my mechanical tools. This the girl did feel, but Tattletale sat down next to her and worked to keep her calm. I was half blindly disarming a tinker tech bomb embedded next to the brain of a middle schooler. It should have been insanely stressful, but I was drawing upon more technical knowledge than any person in history. It turned what would have been a harrowing guessing game into a set of rote tasks.

Block transmitter. Bypass detection trigger. Disable primary fuse assembly. Halt countdown of secondary assemble. Divert power to short out biometric detection systems. Extract device.

With a clink a small metal object the size of a walnut dropped into the surgical tray. I placed a gloved hand on the girl’s back and activated my nanites. Blue lines spread across the girl, perfectly sealing the incision without Bakuda’s sloppy scarring and patching up every scrape, bruise, and minor injury of the night.

The girl was crying and clinging to Tattletale as the thinker helped her to her feet. A woman rushed in from the now dead silent crowd and enveloped the girl in a massive hug while speaking to her in what sounded like Korean.

It was a touching moment, but one that could easily spark trouble. Murmurs were spreading through the crowd and I was seeing motion from further back. If they started rushing me for bomb extraction this whole thing would fall apart.

Luckily a combination of the naturally intimidating nature of Brian and Rachel combined with some very angry words from the man in coveralls seemed to impose a sense of order. I shared a glance with Tattletale and she nodded before bringing forward the next middle school aged ABB conscript.

It was a unique surgical setup. I was doing my best to convey a sense of professionalism, but my training was from the days when pharmaceutical commercials were telling people to ask their doctor ‘Is snake oil right for you?’. It was light on medical sanitation and bedside manner. My nanites meant infections were a complete non-concern, but no one liked being operated on with bloody tools.

This led to me making a dramatic show of sterilizing everything with jets of plasma between patients. Maliwan Intern gave me precise control of my omni-tool’s thermal output and the display seemed to reassure the patients.

People were also picking up on the fact that everyone leaving the ‘surgical center’ was completely devoid of so much as a skinned knee no matter the state they had been in to start. That led to a heated discussion over triage. There were some serious injuries to manage, including some who were not safe to move. I deferred the decision to Brian so I could maintain my surgical pace without distractions. I hadn’t encountered anything I couldn’t manage between Tattletale’s powers and my own sensors, but every one of the bombs had a different configuration of triggers and components to contend with.

Fucking chaos tinkers.

After the last of the middle schoolers had their bombs extracted I left to deal with the more serious injuries. It was a harrowing tour of the consequences of collateral damage and demonstrated just how much my overly flashy strikes had contributed to the injured. If I had come in with more of a plan, better equipment, or...

No, not the time for that. I pushed on my tour of the too injured to be moved, which happened to be conducted from the back of Angelica. If you want to make a striking appearance you can’t do much better than a rhino dog the size of a bull moose. Rachel was ‘driving’ and may have slightly contributed to the level of intimidation. Her mood wasn’t being helped by fact that Regent had coordinated the search for the injured.

“You shouldn’t have to do this.”

They were the first words she spoke to me since we began our tour. I had just climbed back onto Angelica with less grace than I would have preferred after dealing with a pair of partially buried businessmen who wouldn’t have been able to keep their legs without the help of nanotech healing.

I looked at the back of her head as we rode to the next location Regent had flagged. “We’ve covered this. The PRT will nail us for any civilian casualties. They’ll be looking for any excuse to increase the heat.” I looked across the facility where the recently healed were making their way back to the main crowd.

“It’s not our fault. We should just go, let them deal with it.” There was an exhausted and hollow edge to her voice. I had the sense that feel good charity work was an unfamiliar experience for her if the beneficiaries weren’t four legged and fluffy.

“Look, what’s happening tonight? It’s bad.” I pulled up my omni-tool again. Cell towers were still up, independent power systems were mandated for communication networks in the age of Endbringers. There wasn’t a lot of information on what was happening in Brockton with several states being dark, but what I’d gleaned was general chaos, violence, borderline riots, and actions from every criminal gang. “We pull this off then even if we let Bakuda get away…” I saw Rachel’s back tense at that. Frankly I was right there with her, and at least she didn’t end up being fooled by Uber and Leet at the last minute. “then we’ll probably come through looking better than anyone else in the east coast.”

Rachel let out a huff. I guess public perception wasn’t high on her priorities.

“Also, the bombs I’m pulling are the best chance we have of tracking her down and countering her technology.” I looked over the destruction. “I’m not letting this happen again.”

Rachel may have nodded or may have just dropped her head. Either way we finished the tour in silence.

On the way back the Celestial Forge made another connection to a workshop addition from the Toolkits constellation, and this one was complicated. It gave another room of living space and some more workshop area. Said workshop was a medical center specialized in cyborg disassembly and repair. It had a huge amount of supporting equipment, medications, spare parts, and even a 3D fabricator. Unfortunately it gave no additional medical knowledge or experience and I couldn’t exactly open my workshop in the middle of a ruined storage facility.

The addition also came with weapons, an heirloom blade that had been maintained for generations, and a God damn rocket hammer. The latter would be completely useless and probably a liability, but this addition to my workshop came with additional knowledge. I suddenly had solid theoretical and practical experience in a school of martial arts.

What school was it? Weaponized Tai Chi. That flowy stuff that old people do in parks on Sunday mornings? I know how to use that to fight. Specifically I knew how to use it to fight cyborgs, which basically amounted to hit fast and get the hell out. The style did serve quite well when it came to directing a rocket spike at the end of a stick, so the new weapon wasn’t a total waste.

Putting aside the martial arts, the pure insanity of how I got these powers was a little frustrating. I spent a huge amount of time dancing around a cramped workshop, only to get a barrage of additions in a single day. I had gone from barely having spillover space to being able to access an entire multi-room apartment next to my heavily expanded workshop. There really was no reason to how these played out.

As we approached the medical area I spotted Tattletale rushing out to meet us. I slid off the back of Angelica with a lot more grace than when I left, the benefits of my new Tai Chi expertise. That earned me a concerned look from the thinker. Rachel just glanced between us before huffing and directing the giant dog back to her patrol route.

“We’ve got a problem.”

Of all the problems I’d considered this wasn’t high on the list of possibilities. Taylor was still in a fitful state of unconsciousness, but apparently her power was going strong. A swarm of bugs had been drawn from every direction and was massing around her. More were coming every second, and given that this was at least supposed to be a medical area no one was looking comfortable with the situation.

“She’s been calling them in her sleep. I haven’t been able to wake her up, and if this keeps up we’re not going to be able to manage the crowd, much less surgery.”

She was right. I could spot people clearly near the breaking point, particular near the back of the crowd. They were flinching in response to every brush with a moth or fly as a constant low density stream flowed towards Taylor.

“If we can’t wake her up we’ll have to move her somewhere safe, and safe is not an easy thing to come by at the moment.”

I nodded. “Right. Let me deal with the bugs, then I’ll see if there’s anything I can do.”

“How are...” Brian fell silent as I drew a formula from my pouches.

Most alchemy is pretty limited when it comes to splitting it over multiple targets. They all have to be in my field of view, there’s a hard cap of three targets, and the power gets severely gutted. One formula is different. I combined three drams of water with a mushroom and activated my Corrosion formula.

This formula is pathetically weak compared to the rest of my alchemy, only slowly breaking down the target over a period of time. Two things keep it from being useless. For one, the damage is fundamentally impossible to resist. It might be a pittance of injuries, but it would punch through Endbringer tier durability like nothing. The other advantage was the unlimited number of targets.

This formula was effectively ‘fuck everyone I don’t like’. It didn’t matter that there were thousands of insects in the area, every one of them got hit equally. While the damage would be petty on larger targets against small creatures it was a near instant death sentence. Within seconds the buzzing of insects was gone and only dust remained.

I got the sense Grue was gaping at me again, but decided to ignore him and check on Taylor. I reached out and extended my nanites. I did not like digging into someone’s brain, but with Panacea’s limitations I was probably the only person who could manage something like this.

Taylor’s corona pollentia was still highly active, but not like it had been before. There was some disruption in the neural tissue around it that had built up since the last time I healed her. I trusted my nanites to manage that while trying not to mess anything up. Within a few seconds she was starting to stir. I pulled back and turned to Tattletale.

“I think she’ll be alright. Can you take it from here?” The thinker nodded slowly and moved forward with Brian to help the groggy girl up.

I saw Regent approaching me. I bit down on my irritation and turned to face him. “Hey, Chen says they’re ready to start again when you are.”

“Chen?” Alec gestured to the man in scorched coveralls who had put down Bakuda’s lieutenant. He was coordinating a group of similar looking blue collar workers to try to keep some order to the queue. It looked like we were moving on to the older teenagers, which made up a significant portion of the conscripts, but there were some conflicts over that.

Strangely, they seemed to be coming mostly from the new arrivals who I had healed on my tour with Rachel. It was like there was a different character to them than the rest of the group, and more than just being pulled back from a near fatal injury would explain. It was a kind of determined, high energy agitation. And I had seen it before. I had seen it tonight.

“Fuck.”

The assembled Undersiders turned to me. “What?” Brian asked while still helping Taylor sit up.

“It’s all my fault.” I mean, I knew there was blame to go around, but I didn’t think this much of it would fall to me.

“I’m sorry?” He tried again.

“This whole mess. Bakuda getting away. It’s on me.”

There were some confused looks until Regent broke the silence.

“Hey, if he wants to take responsibility...”

“Shut. Up.” Grue cut him off and turned to me. “What are you talking about?”

“It was my healing.” There were some near panicked expressions forming and I quickly clarified. “It worked too well.”

“Sorry, what?” Even Tattletale was looking confused. I shook my head and continued.

“That healing? It fixes everything. Everything down to a cellular level.” Tattletale’s eyebrows rose, but she let me continue. “Not just damage. Exhaustion, nutrition, even regular wear. It can take someone worn to the brink and bring them back to full strength.”

“Okay, but I’m not seeking how that’s bad.” Grue glanced between his teammates. The penny seemed to drop for Tattletale.

“It doesn’t deal with mental or hormonal effects, does it?” I shook my head. Brian looked to her for clarification. “If you’re swimming in adrenaline, cortisol, stress based chemicals they’re designed to keep you going through pain and damage. You restore everything to a hundred percent while keeping that mix in your system, it’d be a hell of a trip. Fuck, we didn’t even notice.”

Neither had I. I’d only messed with nanite healing on this scale once before, and that ended with me almost killing myself with life fibers. This was 3 am thinking brought forward by six hours thanks to overclocking your body. God damn, no wonder they hadn’t wanted to retreat.

So, how much of this was my own mistakes, how much was impaired judgment, and how much was manipulation from that new thinker? This whole line of questioning was something we didn’t have time for.

“What, like meth or something?” Brian was looking seriously agitated.

“No, it’s not like meth.” Regent was looking contemplative and his tone had the unfortunate suggestion he was speaking from experience. “Less pronounced. It’s like a natural high mixed on top of stress. Probably why we didn’t notice.”

“Did you know this could happen?”

I turned to Tattletale. “I only went through something like this once before. I decided to try an experiment afterwards.” Brian’s head snapped up. “It didn’t go well.”

“Anything we should be worried about? I mean, long term.”

Both Tattletale and I shook our heads. I let her answer. “It’s more of an unfamiliar sensation than a drug. Still can affect judgment, but frankly the same could be said for any medical treatment.”

Brian took a moment to process things, but seemed to accept the assessment. He looked at me. “You wanted us out of here. Did you know?”

I shook my head. “Not precisely. It was more of an instinct.”

Brian nodded then turned back to the group. “Tattletale, is Khepri doing alright?” She was going to answer, but apparently Taylor was cognizant enough to make a vaguely affirmative gesture with one hand. “Great, then...”

“Right.” She sighed. “Back to surgery.”

I put the mental effects of my healing out of my mind and fell back into a routine of countering Bakuda’s sadistic project. Every bomb had its own little quirks that meant I had to stay precisely focused. It was a frustrating mix of busy work and puzzle solving. Every time I thought I’d seen every possible combination of countermeasures, contingency triggers, and detections systems some new insanity would present itself.

It was nothing beyond my abilities, but the process remained just challenging enough to be frustrating without being engaging. Imagine having to solve an endless series of placemat mazes if one mistake would result in someone dying. Nothing you couldn’t handle, but after the twentieth one it loses any appeal and just becomes a trial.

The only upside to the endeavor, aside from all the lives I was saving which was a good and noble thing and service to the community, etcetera, etcetera, was the variety of bombs I was amassing. I had hoped to thoroughly loot the facility after we captured Bakuda. Things hadn’t worked out that way, and my own actions had led to the destruction of most of what I could have salvaged. I was down to a couple of pieces of discarded Leet tech, whatever bombs hadn’t been triggered when they were buried in rubble, and the growing pile of cranial mines.

Given the variety on display that was still enough to not count the night as a total loss. There was a titanic assortment of technology on display. Some of the bombs were enhanced conventional explosives, or high tech versions of exotic ordinance like chemical, biological, or thermal weapons. However, a significant portion of them were based on more exotic properties, and they were all mine.

It was odd seeing a device that could alter the fundamental fabric with a triggering mechanism that could have been assembled from the remains of a toaster oven, but that was what you got with chaos tinkers. The conflicting technologies didn’t matter to me, only the exotic effects. I actually let out a cheer when I finally found a miniaturized time stop bomb in the neck of an accountant. He took it as enthusiasm for his sake, and I wasn’t about to correct that impression.

When I took a break to deal with the pile of bombs I felt the Celestial Forge make another connection, this time to the Quality Constellation. The power was called Tailor Made and it was an aesthetic power nearly as significant as Beauty in the Arts. Yes, it improved my skills as a designer to make beautiful objects, but its unique effect was far more significant. It completely removed the time and effort involved in design work or aesthetic construction. I could make the most detailed, engraved, immaculately carved object with the same time and effort it would take to churn out a standardized model.

Effectively everything I made was now being treated as if I had taken all the time in the world in its design and adornment. Given the upper level of what my design work was capable of it produces some absolutely incredible work.

Case in point, the cases in this point. Okay, bad pun but the cases I decided to churn out with my omni-tool to hold the small pile of bombs manifested like the pinnacle of a luggage maker’s life work. I had to ignore the openmouthed expressions as I packed away the bombs and got back to surgery.

So it was, after dozens of surgeries, I found myself working on the very last conscript. It had been a hell of an experience. The number of near complete families that had been dragged into this mess was shocking. I could see groups taking comfort from each other, silently waiting for the last members of their family to make it through the queue. That was heartening, but didn’t make up for the groups that were clearly missing someone.

Once the immediate lethal threat had been removed the emotional weight of the situation had started hitting people. The impact of the losses of the night was apparent, and the devastated environment didn’t make it easy to find remains, if Bakuda’s bombs had even left anything to find. There was a sense of a lack of purpose. That was probably not helped by the exhaustion of the hellish evening.

Once I realized the effect it was having I started being more careful in directing my healing. It meant people were wearily pulling themselves off the surgery bed, but at least I wasn’t releasing chemically unbalanced individuals into a high stress environment. It didn’t help that everyone was stranded at the edge of the city with no transportation, food, or water, and by all reports a state of chaos between them and any help.

At least they were free from Bakuda, and once I finished the last surgery we would be as well. It was more awkward than all the previous ones, mostly because of the significance. Because of course Chen had decided to wait until everyone else had gone before taking his turn. 

I dropped the final bomb into the case and sealed the wound with nanites. Tattletale helped the man up from the improvised surgical bed. “Thank you Chen, that’s everything.” He had already clarified that it was not ‘Mr. Chen’ or any variation there of.

The man looked at Tattletale and nodded. I felt I should add something. “Thank you for your help. I don’t know if I could have managed this otherwise.”

The older man stood up and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the place where the bomb had been removed. “You did a good thing here tonight. I just helped it happen.” He positioned himself so that Tattletale was completely out of his field of view when he spoke. She didn’t seem to enjoy the implication.

I looked over the clustered groups of former conscripts and steeled myself before asking. “So, do you have a family?”

He nodded. “My wife and daughter.”

I did not see anyone standing around who could have matched that description. I was dreading this question. “Where are they?”

He smiled. “With her sister in Vermont. Sent as soon as this mess started.”

I nodded. “Smart.”

“Risky.” Tattletale interjected. “Bakuda was making people bring in new targets. How’d you avoid the conscription quota?”

Chen smirked at her. “I didn’t leave the C.U.I. to hand my family to another crazy dictator. I told them I couldn’t find them, they told me to look harder. Happened over and over. No one really cares about a janitor.” There was a knowing look to his smile.

The man gave me a nod, then just left to talk to some of the former conscripts he’d been working with earlier. I could see cell phones in their hands, so presumable something was being arranged to get these people out of here. It was probably better for them to handle it than for me to meddle any longer.

Tattletale let out a breath and slumped. Meanwhile I started recycling surgical tools into omni-gel. She looked like she wanted to say something, but just didn’t have the energy. Though I swear she bit her lip when I recycled the blood scalpel.

I looked over at the rest of the Undersiders. Their dynamic wasn’t what I would call healthy, but it was at least functional. “Are you going to be alright?”

“What, as a team?” I nodded. She just sighed. “Tonight wasn’t exactly our shining moment. I’m not sure how this is going to play out.” She shook her head. “We owe you for this, but I may need some time to figure out the full accounting.”

“I’m not going to come around to break your knees, but we’ll have to settle up at some point.” She gave me a shallow nod.

The rest of the group approached with Brian supporting Taylor. Rachel was walking next to Angelica whose armor was beginning to droop and sag.

“Hey.” Taylor mumbled, then squinted her eyes.

“We done here?” Rachel’s voice was still harsh, but not as hollow as earlier.

I nodded at her. “That’s the last of them. Well, conscripts. Don’t know what happened to the regular members.”

“Scattered as soon as neck tattoo got himself shot.” Tattletale indicated to the grim site of that act that no one had taken the time to deal with. “They’re long gone now.”

“Oh, hey, got presents for everyone.” Regent dug into a salvaged backpack and produced the knives that had been taken from the Undersiders. Well, the remains of the knife in Rachel’s case.

The big girl looked at the scorched hilt and stub of a blade. “Two days, right?”

I nodded to her. “Should get the sheath back to.” Rachel seemed content with that but I saw Tattletale’s eyebrow twitch.

Brian grudgingly took his knife from Regent and checked it before placing it on his belt. I was still more than a little frustrated with the part he played in things falling apart, but everyone had clearly been dealing with a lot more than they let on.

That ‘everyone’ included me, if I was going to be honest with myself.

“Santa didn’t forget you! Presents for that pie run.”

“Apeiron.”

He ignored my correction and produced a bent katana and scorched shield generator. Uber and Leet’s discarded equipment. Two pieces of the tinker tech that had nearly stalemated me.

I’m not saying I forgave him, but the gesture helped.

“We’ve had it for tonight.” Brian looked over the crowd, still giving us a significant clearance. He sighed. “I hate to leave this hanging, but can we handle the follow up later?”

“No problem.” We really should have called it hours ago, but that wasn’t possible at the time.

“Do you want to head out with us? I don’t think the city is its safest.”

I shook my head. “No, I’ve got to fix my bike, then I’m heading out.”

The group looked over at the wreckage. Even Taylor seemed skeptical of the statement.

“Well, as long as you believe in yourself.” Alec ignored the dirty looks he was getting from the rest of the group.

“It’ll be fine.”

“Seriously?”

I turned to Brian. “Sure. Five minutes work, tops.”

It actually took me three and a half. The motor wasn’t the beast of unlimited energy I’d rode out here with, but it would get me home. Tattletale had her mouth open and the rest of the Undersiders looked about equally shocked.

“Never should have doubted him.” Alec laughed. “Should have taken book on that stunt. I could have cleaned up.”

I was beginning to realize how much of that attitude was just an act. It wasn’t a comforting idea.

“Uh, are all tinkers like that?” Taylor asked through shut eyes. Apparently trying to follow the work had made her dizzy.

Grue shifted his support of her. “I don’t know. I’ve never...”

“No they are not.” One of Tattletale’s eyebrows was twitching. She took a breath. “Look, we’ll reconnect in the morning. I don’t think anyone can deal with this right now.”

“Agreed.” I started the bike and keyed up Fleet’s control. “I’m going to need everything you have on the ABB, down to the last detail. This can’t go on.”

“You’ll have it.”

“We did good here tonight.” The statement from Taylor was a half question, but she was looking over the now freed crowd.

“We did... something.” That got a nod from the group. It was better than nothing. With a cloud of darkness from Grue we went our separate ways, leaving this chaos behind us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Maliwan Intern (Borderlands) 200:  
> At some point, you got lucky and figured out how Elemental Weapons really work. You know how to use them to best effect, allowing you to set enemies on fire regularly, melt people with acid bullets, and have ALL kinds of shocking adventures with electrical ammo. If you have any technical training, you can even jury-rig ways to apply elemental effects to other weapons, as well.
> 
> Workshop (Bubblegum Crisis) 100:  
> You need tools? You have ALL the tools. Using this, you can effectively build and/or repair any damn thing in BGC, though constructing orbital shuttles might take a while. Nevermind getting ahold of the plans. 
> 
> Apartment (Bubblegum Crisis) Free:  
> A run down, single-room apartment. Nothing special, but hey, it keeps the rain off. Don't worry too much about the rent.
> 
> Civilian Equipment Package (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) 100:  
> Cramped room in the Scrapyard, basic household belongings, clothing, one Heirloom Weapon for free. If you are employed, attached is enough space to setup a workshop, clinic, studio or whatnot.
> 
> Heirloom Weapon (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) Free with Civilian Equipment Package:  
> Everyone in the Scrapyard carries something. Yours is a lot better than most, something that an actual professional might carry. Firearms are illegal on penalty of death - but outside the Scrapyard anything goes. As an heirloom, it has seen hundreds of years of loving use and its craftsmanship compares very well to modern technology. To the right person, it could be worth a lot.
> 
> Cyber-doctor Equipment Package (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) 200:  
> As Medic, plus powered tools for cyborg disassembly and repair. Bulky diagnostic computer, ten kilograms of miscellaneous spare parts, very rare compact 3D fabricator capable of milling custom components and printing or repairing circuitry. Free Rocket Hammer.
> 
> Medic Equipment Package (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) Free with Cyber-doctor Equipment Package:  
> One clean blood-and-dirt-repellent jumpsuit, facemask, kit equivalent to a modern first responder’s kit. Assorted drugs and painkillers, and a few roughly bound texts on mutant and human care.
> 
> Rocket Hammer (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) Free with Cyber-doctor Equipment Package:  
> A two-handed warhammer with chisel-shaped head mounting a rocket booster that activated by a switch on the shaft. It can be disassembled and comes with a rolling case and replacement parts. A rare weapon in the Scrapyard, while very difficult to control it performs superbly against heavy cyborg armour and is fully legal despite the firearms ban.
> 
> Single Style - T’ai Chi Chuan (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) Free:  
> Solid theoretical and practical experience of a single form of personal combat. In the wasteland, what martial arts survive are pragmatic descendants of old world teachings. In the Scrapyard however, there are genuine schools of combat, though they are often overlooked – most human styles are ineffective against the crudest cyborg brawler, and the emphasis is to strike fast and run away faster.  
> T’ai Chi Chuan –This art is rarely taken seriously, owing to its firm rooting in qigong breathing techniques and ideas about chi, internal balance and fluid control of defence and counterattacks that have little appeal to cyborg fighters. However many elements of it have influenced the most advanced cyborg combat styles, and the therapeutic version is popular enough with the elderly that the original forms survive.
> 
> Tailor Made (Career Model) 100:  
> You are a brilliant designer, and can ensure objects you create are always looking fantastic, aesthetically pleasing and the like. Making something look good no longer takes any time or effort you can focus entirely on function, and whatever you make will look outstanding.


	27. 21.1 Interlude Dennis

Interlude Dennis

Dennis had never liked the Forsberg Gallery. It brought back memories of field trips with teachers overly enamored with whatever passed for art at the current exhibit. It always seemed the only things they felt were worth talking about were either painted over three hundred years ago or looked like they had been dragged out of a junkyard. After he joined the Wards it took on an entirely new flavor of discomfort as the most popular site of fundraising events. As bad as it could be when you were being led through by a stuffy teacher and enduring dry lectures about art theory, an extended night of ‘charity’ work was another story.

Hours of circulating in costume, being careful to precisely manage how you presented yourself, and giving the same list of talking points and canned responses over and over. It was like doing a public appearance, except everything was dressed up, excessively formal, and any missteps would be seriously reprimanded. After the liberties he’d taken at his announcement presentation Dennis had been watched like a hawk at these events.

They couldn’t really blame him for that. They had seriously wanted his cape name to be ‘Stopwatch’. Taking initiative at that point was practically a public service.

The pressure and scrutiny following that event had only recently been stepped down, largely shifting to the newer and most contentious member of the Wards. Shadow Stalker had made a point of pushing every restriction to the very limit. Despite her efforts she was still one of the more popular Wards, an easy task when they give you the edgy name and costume, not that Dennis was jealous or anything. That meant required attendance for her at fundraising events. And required headaches for whoever managed her.

The entire team would have been uncomfortable enough at one of these events if everything was going perfectly. By this time of night they would be on the third round of speeches, the buffet would have been thoroughly picked over and the team would be working through another round of whatever non-alcoholic beverage had been approved to look good in publicity shots without giving any chance of being mistaken for an actual cocktail. It was usually an orange fizzy mess that tasted overly of mango.

Dennis would have said that was the worst fate possible, probably with some melodramatic comparison to hostage situations or criminal organizations. Right now he could only wish he was stuck in a pompous party full of self-important businessmen, politicians, and local celebrities. It would be a big step up from the darkened gallery with harsh emergency lighting and clusters of frightened teenagers huddled around their phones.

The event hadn’t even officially started when the first bombs went off. No, they were in the pre-event exclusive mixer. Dennis had long since given up trying to figure out every obscure method the PRT had come up with to squeeze more money out of people. This was another one of those schemes. Throw an extra, publically undisclosed, donation and you get access to the Wards before the rest of the donors showed up. Personal time, one on one interactions, and as many selfies as you wanted.

The crowd was full of teenagers with the occasional parent playing up their influence. He actually recognized some of them from Arcadia, though none of them were exactly his friends. These were more of Dean’s social circle, the kids who were only at Arcadia for the prestige of being at a ‘Ward school’ and whose parents were a major factor in the school’s excessive budget. Fortunately that meant there was little chance anyone would recognize him in costume.

When the first blasts had sounded no one had known what was happening. Then the power cut and the gravity of the situation set in. It had taken fifteen minutes of desperate calls while trying to manage a near panicked room full of guests and staff before he had been able to get any word on what was going on.

It wasn’t good.

Confirmed bombings all across the city, including two close enough to the gallery to damage the windows on the ground floor. From what little they could tell The Rig was in chaos. Communications were down and there were signs of heavy combat. The PRT headquarters had been hit as well, just badly enough to lock down the garage and cripple any attempts to scramble the badly needed response teams.

Finally, after tense and desperate communications they got their orders. The entire team, even Flechette, was looking to him as the commands from headquarters came in. Everyone was at the edge of their seat waiting to find out where they’d be sent. This was one of the city’s darkest hours and what was their mission?

Hold position and defend the civilians in the gallery.

To say the news hadn’t gone over well would be an understatement. Dennis really hoped no one had managed to record Missy’s reaction. If word of that got out there would be hell to pay for the young cape. Not that Sophia had taken the news any better, but profanity was at least in character for her. The rest of the team had been set to task as Dennis worked with Flechette to try to get some clarification.

The lack of a clear chain of command was not doing them any favors here. Flechette technically outranked him, but just by a hair. Having to compare birthdays in the middle of a crisis was not ideal. That said she wasn’t ready to take command of the team and was still getting up to speed with local procedures and resources. That was the effects of her rushed transfer. Weld was in the same boat, but at least he would have had half a day of procedure meetings to draw on if he wasn’t stuck on the Rig or wherever.

So that left Dennis to try to get some clarity from an overly stressed administration that hadn’t been that well-disposed to his cape identity in the first place. What answers he had been able to glean weren’t encouraging.

The ABB was behind the bombings, obviously. Mammon’s warnings had been right on the mark. Maybe if he made his statements in a less dramatic and nebulous manner something could have been done about them. Instead the PRT and Protectorate had been tripping over that stunt to the point where they were probably less prepared than they would have been if he’d kept his mouth shut. The shocking part was the coordination being displayed in the attack.

This wasn’t the predicted city wide random bombing spree. This was a coordinated attack and disruption effort. Through his calls to headquarters Clockblocker had been able to confirm attacks on the Rig, PRT headquarters, airport, several streets, and key infrastructure. The first wave had effectively crippled the city’s ability to respond to the attacks. Worse, there were repeated explosions across the city, often catching response crews to the first wave. The result was a near total lock down of response and recovery efforts, made worse by the regional blackout triggered with the attack. With every Protectorate branch in the North East dealing with the chaos the power outage was causing in their own city no help was coming.

Simply put, the safety of the roads couldn’t be guaranteed. The nearby blasts suggested there could be more explosives hidden in the area, so the region around the gallery was off limits until it could be cleared by the bomb squad. The Wards were to lock down the building and protect the civilians until a safe extraction could be guaranteed.

It was insane. The city was in chaos. They had been trained for this kind of thing, and now they were effectively sitting in a corner when the Protectorate desperately needed every resource it could get. That was the general mood in the group, and Dennis largely shared it.

That said, he was bright enough to know what was really going on here. He might not be the natural leader that Dean and Carlos were, but he wasn’t the total fool that he played up for the cameras. He’d heard what people had been saying after the bank job. The presence of a Youth Guard investigation made the implications clear. The gallery was an excuse. The Wards were being kept out of the fight.

It frustrated him as much as any of the other members of the team, but he knew what was happening in the organization. People didn’t think he paid enough attention to really guard what they said around him. The full face mask helped as well, as people never were sure what he was focused on. Because of that he knew how close the team was to disaster.

Ward teams weren’t a right of Protectorate offices. You didn’t have them in exclusion zones or high conflict regions. There were levels of threat the public would never consent to subject a minor to. What Khepri had done may have been non-lethal to Aegis, but it made the situation clear to everyone who saw it.

Brockton Bay was a dangerous city. One mistake could mean a dead child plastered across the news. It was clear very early that no power was worth risking that on the Protectorate’s watch.

At least that was the policy being put in place now. Looking back at his career, all the villains he had fought, the patrols with no one but other Wards present, the idea that that wasn’t standard procedure in most cities was jarring. He had been swapping stories with Flechette and rather than being impressed at the times the team had driven off Lung or Hookwolf she had seemed horrified.

What she told him about how things operated in New York was equally unnerving. The length of time where you were basically doing foot patrols through safe areas before you could even shadow a Protectorate hero was mind boggling. New York was by all accounts a more active cape scene than Brockton Bay, but they held back half of their heroes.

Maybe that was it. Brockton was at a rough standoff. The Wards and New Wave had let the heroes meet the gangs on equal footing. Only now the Wards were being held back and New Wave was in chaos.

That was another thing. It was weird seeing one of these events without even a token appearance from Victoria’s team. They showed up to present a united front, boost attendance, and probably secure some of the take. Dennis didn’t really understand the finances, but the night had felt weird without Dean and Victoria doing that ‘pretend you don’t know each other’ thing. He secretly hoped they would be able to rally in the face of this, but some of the rumors flying weren’t encouraging.

Dennis was just finishing his walk through of the groups on the mezzanine level. The dozen or so teenagers and handful of adults were on edge, but reassured by his presence. It made him feel the real weight of the situation. Clumps of formally dressed teenagers huddled on benches with their friends, faces lit by the light of their phones as they sought any information on what was happening. All looking to him like he had all the answers and power in the world.

Little did they know the Wards were struggling with exactly the same problem.

He moved into the small side office the gallery staff has offered as a sort of command center. The rest of the team were clustered in the light of the few monitors that Chris had been able to keep active with some on-the-fly tinkering.

Chris was the only member of the team who didn’t look like they were attending their own funeral. It was kind of crazy, but the only one of them who wasn’t completely devastated by the failure at the bank was the one with untreated injuries, broken equipment, a confiscated invention, and a severe reprimand. You would never know it from looking at the boy as he had repurposed the broken pieces of his hoverboard and, despite being prohibited from building anything new before the review board’s evaluation, had been tearing into his old projects like a man possessed.

Dennis was fairly certain that the ‘new’ guns he had brought to the event had been assembled from the massive pile of half-finished inventions that amassed in the tinker’s workshop. Without the cellphone charger he had rigged for the guests things probably would have devolved sharply after batteries started showing red. What he had managed here, constructed out of a coil from one of his guns, an old PC the staff assured us wasn’t needed any more, and a scattering of salvage from the gift shop, was keeping the team better appraised of the situation than the sporadic updates Dennis had been receiving from headquarters.

“What did I miss?”

Chris glanced up from the mess of cables he was fiddling with. “Police band’s still a mess. Three more recorded bombings since you left, but response is minimal. Looks like the Merchant capes are trying something, but theory is it’s just to throw their weight around. Empire’s still patrolling their territory. Probably trying not to look weak in the face of all of this. More reports of assaults and looting inside the Docks. Private security has managed to lock down the boardwalk. Still no official word on what happened on the Rig, just that camera phone video from the shore. And the broadcast...”

He trailed off and Dennis glanced at the main screen. Possibly the only clear picture they had of what was happening in the city was coming from the time-delayed stream of Uber and Leet’s alliance with the ABB. Though with the direction it was taking it might be more appropriate to refer to it as a snuff film.

Dennis had switched out for his shift around the gallery right as Grue had been caught. He hadn’t seen the results, but enough people had been watching the stream on their cell phones for the audio to provide a very disturbing mental picture. The central monitor showed the aftermath, spindly remains of a human body thankfully wrapped in shadow.

The broadcast cut to showing the last two remaining Undersiders, Tattletale and Khepri, running for their lives through the maze of storage units. The entire situation was like one of those monkey paw wishes. Someone took every ill intention the Wards had manifested towards the Undersiders following their defeat and saw how they could be fulfilled in the most terrible way possible, both for Undersiders and the city as a whole.

“Shadow Stalker, you’re up.” Dennis didn’t have high hopes for her as a calming influence, but it would help to get her away from the broadcast. She had a history with Grue and hadn’t taken it well when he’d got himself captured. Dennis didn’t know exactly what was going on there, but between her frustration at being cooped up during the crisis and whatever unresolved score settling she’d just been denied the girl looked ready to explode.

It seemed like she just might do that instead of taking her shift. The tall girl pulled herself off the wall and looked ready to challenge him directly when Flechette stood between them. “Let me take this one? I need to stretch my legs.”

Dennis glanced between the two capes, then nodded. “Keep an eye on the adults. Some of them don’t seem to be dealing with this as well as their kids.”

The new transfer nodded and shouldered her metal crossbow thing. Arbalest, or whatever its proper name was. Dennis sent her some silent gratitude as she left, but another look at Sophia told him it was a temporary measure at best.

A fixed camera showed Khepri run into view, then drop to the side to avoid the blast of a bomb she couldn’t possibly have seen coming. She groggily pulled herself to her feet only to almost run into a pack of the armed civilians the ABB had forced to fight for them. Unfortunately they were only armed with melee weapons and were clearly no match for Mammon’s tinker tech.

The super knife was a blur as it sliced apart clubs and improvised weapons, buying her enough space to drag her baton across the cement wall of a locker, spraying the mob with shards of concrete. Before they could recover she vanished down a side path, out of sight of the camera.

“She’s trying not to hurt them.” The attention of the entire room shifted to the normally silent hulking form of Blake. He just shrugged. “Could have gone through them a lot bloodier than that.”

“Villains try to minimize casualties to keep the heat down. Not that it seems to matter for them.” Vista’s voice was bitter in the darkened office. Next to Sophia she seemed to be having the hardest time processing this mess. If it were anyone else her age Dennis would have kicked her out after that thing with Regent. He knew the girl well enough to understand what would happen if he tried. Vista had been on the team longer than him and had seen more field work at that. She could handle the grisly scenes being displayed better than her age suggested.

He shuddered just thinking about what had been shown. Trust Bakuda to come up with fates that made being pinned under frozen bugs look appealing. There was also the disturbing idea that she had designed her traps to one-up the Undersiders actions at the bank. It was a thought that made him even more concerned over what was happening out in the city.

“I don’t know, they let you all off in one piece. Except for Aegis.”

Vista’s head snapped towards the older girl and Dennis could see the rage on her face. Things hadn’t gotten any better between them since the bank. In fact, ever since her meeting with the new Youth Guard representative Sophia had been walking around with a huge chip on her shoulder. The current situation had only made things worse.

“You think that’s funny you bit...”

“Anything else from headquarters?” Dennis practically shouted as he cut in. All he managed to do was get both girls pissed off at him. If this is what being a leader means then it’s a mystery why Dean was so keen on it.

“Uh, no.” Chris fumbled for more at Dennis’s urging. “Got a list of priority dispatch areas, but the roads are a mess and response teams aren’t getting through.”

Sophia leaned forward and looked at the map on the second monitor. “Fuck it, I’m going.”

Dennis whipped his head towards her. “Not happening. We’re defending the gallery.”

“A drunk rent-a-cop could defend this place. We’re being tucked away because the rest of you screwed up. Well I’m not letting that stop me.” The girl started checking her equipment and drew both crossbows.

“Shadow Stalker, look...”

“No you look.” She pointed at the screen. “Priority doesn’t mean the area needs a photo op. It means there’s actual violence happening and someone needs to get there five minutes ago.” She strapped the crossbows to her thighs and turned to vanish through the wall.

Dennis swore to himself for a second, then burst out of the office. He could see Sophia climbing the stairs to the rooftop balcony. Going for the highest point, maximum glide distance. His mind spun trying to figure out what to do, how to handle the situation. Carlos could have brought her in line, but she at least partially respected him. Dean could have talked her around, but he didn’t have the charisma or thinker powers to pull off something like that. So what option did he have?

He made his decision in an instant. As fast as he could move without drawing attention he powered into the gallery, past guests and staff alike. He found Flechette by the scaffolding and plastic tarps that signaled an exhibit in the process of being installed. Probably one of those multi story scrap metal monstrosities that are supposed to represent the manifestation of an SAT vocabulary word.

He pulled the girl aside and spoke quickly “Shadow Stalker’s leaving. She’s heading for the conflicts in the docks.”

He could see the worried expression through Flechette’s visor. “Against orders?”

“She does that. Look, I can’t talk her down from this, not the way she’s set on it. She... She’s not as tough as she thinks she is. If something happens to her tonight...” He left the question hanging and Flechette seemed to understand.

“What do you want me to do?”

It was a big responsibility. Also, as his first serious act as leader it could easily be his last, but better a harsh reprimand than a dead Ward. “The only one of us who could keep up with her is Vista, and they don’t get along.”

“I noticed. You want me to tail her?”

“I want you to go with her.” Flechette shot him a surprised expression. “She’s heading for the roof. Tell her I sent you to stop her, then go along with her. She doesn’t have bad blood with you...”

“And if she thinks I’ve broken protocol as well she’s not going to slip off.”

Dennis nodded. “As leader I’ll take the heat for this, however it goes down. Just keep your phone on and try to look after yourself.”

Flechette bit her lip and looked towards the roof. “I will. And thanks.” She put an arm on his shoulder. “You make a good leader.”

Dennis felt a surge of emotion at that completely at odds with the dire nature of the situation. The girl hefted her crossbow thing and moved after Sophia. At least that was something. If things went sour Flechette would have the sense to bail or call for help. It could make the difference.

When he made his way back to the office Blake rose to meet him. “Look, I’m sorry about that.”

It took Dennis a moment to figure out what Browbeat was talking about. “Oh, right. Don’t worry about it. Everyone’s on edge.” He let out a breath. “I sent Flechette with her. It should be okay.”

That got a chorus of nods. Blake stepped forward and adjusted the purple jumpsuit he’d used since before joining the team. There were talks about replacing it, but with him having the only ‘win’ at the bank he’s been promoted enough that the look had become somewhat iconic. He’s probably be stuck with it for a while.

“I can take the next shift.”

“You don’t have to.”

He shook his head. “It’s alright. I don’t mind.”

Dennis could understand why. Blake was probably the most awkward cape he had ever encountered. He was probably the only one more comfortable patrolling a dark museum full of frightened civilians than sharing a room with friends. He nodded to the big cape and watched him pace out of the room.

After Blake left Chris turned towards him. “It’s not good for the Undersiders. They got Tattletale.”

Right, monkey paw. The results of it were clear as day on the monitor, the horrible meshing of flesh and inanimate material. Somehow the fact that the girl was still alive and conscious made it even worse. If Bakuda was going for intimidation she was doing an excellent job of it.

“She was trying to call someone when Bakuda caught her,” Vista added. “Trying to get help.”

He raised an eyebrow behind his mask. “Think it's Mammon?”

The two other capes shrugged at him. “Not many other options. You’d have to be pretty desperate to call your arms dealer for help.”

Dennis glanced from Chris to the image on the screen. “I think ‘pretty desperate’ is about the right word for this.”

“Just Khepri left.” From Missy’s tone Dennis couldn't tell if she was concerned for the girl or eager to see what Bakuda had in store for her.

“She’s doing better than people expected.” Chris pulled up another screen. “See?”

“People are betting on this?”

The tinker shrugged. “It happened on some of their streams. It was just all set up ahead of time here. Probably while they were prepping things.”

It was a disturbing concept, but worse things happened in the cape community. It was unexpected for the villain team, but that seemed to be the theme for the night.

“How do you think they managed to keep their gear working?”

“No idea. Probably change it before it can malfunction? If Leet’s been on a time limit then the only thing holding him back would have been commitment to his theme.”

That made sense, but was another worrying thought. Everyone considered the pair fairly harmless, but this was a big departure from their usual style both in competence and brutality. Meeting them in the field at this level of aggression was a scary thought.

The feed had shifted back to the main courtyard. Bakuda had climbed up on some crates and was making a grand speech about the glory of the ABB, a new age for the city, her genius, and so on. Most villains didn’t monologue, but the ones that did seemed to try to cram five villains' worth of clichés into a single speech.

She was just wrapping up a rant about how ‘no one would dare oppose them’ when an explosion rocked the courtyard. For a second he thought it was another of her bombs. She hadn’t exactly been stingy with the explosives. That idea was dispelled by her clear shock at the event and by the sight of what had to be a tinker tech motorcycle.

The vehicle barreled through the blast like it was nothing, turning into a perfect skid and stopping dead in the center of the courtyard. The dust trailed off it, highlighting every curve and angle of its bodywork. The bike looked fast. Rather than the glowing mess usually associated with tinker tech this bike just looked ready to launch itself at Mach speeds. There was something about it that made it seem like it was about to break the sound barrier when standing still.

Its rider’s appearance was both shocking and familiar. From one glance it was clearly Mammon, but he had either changed his costume or Amy had badly understated things. The costume was just incredible.

He wore a long coat fluttering in the wind and momentum of his entry before settling. The material was somehow both deep black and able to catch the light just enough to highlight motion and shape. He wore a cowl on his head, a far cry from the reported bandanas, but still had that steel visor. The same material was peppered across his costume, highlighting shape, contour, and equipment. Not the chunky plates that had been reported as a possible Empire connection. His torso was looped with belts and bandoliers of small pouches. The color scheme was simple but dramatic, black, grey and white.

He turned to Bakuda and raised a gloved hand. The microphone didn’t pick up his words, but from her reaction it was clear what was happening. This was the creator of the Undersiders’ weapons and the help Tattletale had called for.

“He can’t be serious.” Vista was staring at the monitor with mad intensity. “What is he trying to accomplish coming in like that?”

And then his bike split open, folded up, and surrounded the tinker in a suit of power armor. The transition was so fast, smooth, and natural that the shock of it almost overwhelmed the shock of the fact that it played the Transformers sound effect during the process.

All three wards stared blankly at the screen as the tinker, now identifying himself as Apeiron, squared off against Bakuda. Gradually attention shifted to Chris who seemed at a loss for words. Finally he found them.

“Uh, okay. That’s really good armor. Like, better than what I made for Gallant.”

“It has turbines. Can it fly? If it can fly why did he come in through the wall?”

“Drama?” Chris hazarded.

“And the... sound effect?”

The tinker just shrugged. “The same? Look, see how it moves? That’s full human range of motion, every axis represented at every joint. The engineering on something like that... well there’s a reason most tinkers don’t bother.”

Dennis swallowed. “So we have a highly skilled tinker who still drops cartoon references in his equipment?”

“Quiet.” Vista shushed them and turned up the volume so they could hear more of the exchange. Specifically the frank refusal to leave without Khepri. And the blatantly implied reason.

“Well, that...” Dennis dropped off mid-sentence.

“...explains how the Undersiders were able to afford their gear?” Vista offered. Her reaction to the revelation was complicated, sort of a mix of frustration and vindication. Dennis just shrugged and watched Apeiron, weird name that, banter further with Bakuda, even precisely identifying the effect of one of her bombs.

They looked to Chris for confirmation, but he just shrugged. “Sounds right? And based on her reaction...”

Based on her reaction he was right and rubbing it in her face. He then transitioned to threats, then bragging.

“He broke Oni-Lee’s arm?”

“That’s what he told Amy. Didn’t you read the transcript?”

Chris just shook his head. “Haven’t had a chance. Who do you think she’s talking about?”

Dennis shook his head. “No idea. Wait, is he giving up?”

The armor had opened up allowing the tinker to stride forward. Without the amplification his words couldn’t be picked up, from her reaction it wasn’t a typical surrender. Chris gripped the edge of his chair as the empty suit of armor strode forward with fluid grace and took a position next to the tinker.

“Do you...” He turned from the screen to them. “Do you know how hard that is to pull off? The kind of programming it requires? The control systems?”

Chris may have been excited, but all Dennis heard was ‘powerful tinker, really powerful tinker, really really powerful tinker.’ over and over.

A series of orange holograms appeared around Apeiron’s left arm. They seemed to shift through functions in a technical way. Some kind of interface?

The tinker raised his arm and a glowing orange sphere the size of a beach ball appeared floating in the air beside him. It seemed to be composed of overlapping partial shells of beautifully carved transparent material rotating around a glowing core. It looked technical, artistic, and threatening all at the same time.

Bakuda screamed and launched a grenade in a high arc. With speed reminiscent of Khepri’s knife and form that any PRT officer would be proud of, the tinker raised a small pistol and put a glowing shot straight through the tiny target.

The shot detonated the grenade in a lightning storm that caused the cameras to stutter out. The Wards exchanges concerned glances as the image returned. Bakuda and the two ABB members closest to her were smouldering from some type of attack the broadcast has skipped. A separate feed showed the tinker leap up and suspend himself from the floating drone. The explanation for the mysterious action was provided immediately.

“Where’s the fucking robot?”

The electronic voice was greeted by the sound of screaming turbines as the sight of the empty armor diving towards the courtyard with both crackling electric clubs extended from its arms like spears.

Watching the aftermath made Dennis wonder why they hadn’t felt the shockwaves when the attack happened. It wasn’t clear how delayed the stream was, but surely they should have been able to notice something like that? Or had they just dismissed it as another explosion?

The courtyard rippled in a way that looked like Vista using her power, but instead of a flowing spatial warp it fractured into hundreds of crevices and leveled every locker in the area. Miraculously, or possibly by design, an empty area had been targeted for ground zero, so casualties were minimal. When the camera settled it focused on the tinker walking towards a set of jeeps with his pistol drawn.

“What’s he planning?”

“Shot to the engine block?” Chris offered. “Powerful enough gun could shut down the jeeps. He’d be able to...”

He stopped talking as an orange blade, the same color as the holograms on his left arm, sprouted from the pistol. It crackled with the same energy as the robot’s clubs and was as intricately designed as everything the tinker carried. With three quick swipes the jeeps were reduced to a pile of sparking scrap.

They watched as he set commands for his robot and drone before disappearing into the facility. The three Wards exchanged concerned glances as the feed became a display of the tinker’s robots harassing the ABB.

“So...” Started Dennis. “I think we can confirm that’s the guy who equipped the Undersiders.”

“And not exactly with his top end gear.” Chris rolled back the stream to the destruction of the jeeps. “Not even close to them. And see the sparks? Reactive cuts. There’s a lot of energy going into that.”

“How bad are we talking?” Vista leaned in. Dennis followed her eyes and noticed how deeply the slashes had cut into the ground around and even behind the jeeps.

Chris made a confused gesture. “I don’t even know how that worked. It’s like he managed to destabilize matter in a projected plane, then somehow amplified the effect.”

That wasn’t reassuring in the slightest. The door opened to reveal Browbeat, looking as concerned as he could behind his mask.

“You guys saw that right?”

“Yeah.” Dennis nodded. “How are the guests and staff taking it?”

“Not terribly. It’s something else to focus on.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I think anything that’s standing up to the ABB right now is a relief.”

As much as he hated comfort coming from a villain rescuing other villains he could understand that. It was hard to get any information right now, and the clearest picture of what was happening in the city had been Bakuda’s tour of horrors. Seeing someone stand up to her was a big deal. He just wished it had been a Protectorate response team instead of a new terrifying tinker.

Chris turned to Missy. “How bad do you think that weapon would be if it was used Downtown?” He might have been a tinker but no one on the team knew more about the dynamics of structures than Vista.

Normally the shaker would have preened at having her authority recognized. Instead she just looked dower. “Devastating.” She shook her head. “That broke the foundation of the facility. The shockwaves must have been titanic. I don’t know if it would actually bring down a skyscraper, but I wouldn’t feel safe in any building after a hit like that.”

Which begged the question, why the hell did he have something like that on hand? Giant area attacks weren’t common loadouts for new tinkers. The idea that he just happened to have a weapon like that on hand when called was a disturbing thought.

“I’ll... I’ll take the next patrol.” Dennis almost thought about interjecting. Vista had made her feelings on the new tinker very clear. Sending her out where people were celebrating his arrival seemed like a less than ideal plan. Still, she wasn’t likely to start anything around the public, though would undoubtedly vent to the team in private. He nodded to her as she left the room.

“Any updates on the city?” His own phone had been silent with no updates from headquarters. It was frustrating that they could piece together a better picture from police dispatch, news reports, and social media posts than they could from official channels.

Chris shook his head. “More explosions, but the frequency is dropping off. Oh, the Rig’s not on fire anymore, so that’s something.”

Meaning maybe now they’d finally be able to get some news on what the hell was happening over there. And it might even come through a proper update rather than a leak to PHO.

Dennis let out a breath. The night was wearing on him. He’d had extended combat missions that felt less exhausting than being stuck in the museum.

After the tinker’s disappearance the broadcast had become much less engaging. It mainly consisted of the ABB trying to organize some kind of resistance or expedition only to get disrupted hard by Apeiron’s robots. It was a stalemate that was exciting for about the first two minutes, then became repetitive. The robots were tireless and seemed to be getting better as time went on, while the ABB and Bakuda only got more frustrated.

Dennis left for a brief patrol while Chris cycled through the security cameras he’d been able to power up. They showed the same thing they had all night, absolutely nothing. No one was threatening the gallery. No one even wanted to be in the area. It was clear as ever that they were being kept a safe distance from the fighting.

When he got back the broadcast had shifted from the courtyard to a faceoff between Uber and Leet against Khepri and Apeiron.

It was the kind of match up that wouldn’t do the rumors about the nature of Uber and Leet’s relationship any favors. Even after years that was still a popular trolling topic, mostly because of Leet’s juvenile tantrums over the subject.

Unlike the broad shots of the courtyard this was shown from close up, with the benefit of body cameras in addition to their floating surveillance devices. As such they could actually make out the dialogue as the fight began. It was a disturbing demonstration of extreme durability and unknown technology from Apeiron against Uber and Leet with actual functional technology. Even with all the unknown properties on display there was one question that had to be voiced.

“What the hell is the Tripredacus Council?” Chris just shrugged, but surprisingly it was Blake who illuminated things.

“Third party in the whole Autobot and Decepticon standoff. Usually plotting from behind the scenes. No real connection to either of them. Actually have a completely different origin, goals, everything. Usually they showed up to cause problems for both sides.”

The both looked blankly at the hulking cape, causing him to shrug in embarrassment. “I used to watch reruns after school. The sixth season of Beast Wars was really good once they got back to Cybertron.”

“Think that means anything, or are we just looking at another Leet?”

Chris shrugged. “Honestly? It could just be a style thing. Lots of tinkers add little flourishes. If you’re building a transforming motorcycle then making it sound like a transformer isn’t that much of a stretch.”

“Hold on, roll that back.” The Wards listened to the exchange between the capes again.

“So the ABB really has a new thinker.” Dennis shook his head. “Is that all it takes to make those clowns dangerous? Knowing when their gear will fail?”

Chris looked grim. “Probably? They can basically cycle through whatever they need. And with one shot items, well it’s basically a guarantee.”

“This is bad.” Browbeat’s voice was more deadpan than usual.

“It’s been bad from the first blast. But yeah, this is worse. This is a persistent problem.” Functional Leet would have been scary if all he was doing was game jokes. Functional Leet thrown in with a bloodier ABB was a nightmare.

Apeiron started to trade insults with Leet at a favorable exchange rate while Khepri cut through zombies in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of the end of the bank fight. Unlike most people Dennis had seen that from his pinned position rather than on the replay cameras. It was the kind of thing that stuck with you, even compared to the nightmare of being frozen under bugs. Watching her now it was clear no one in their right mind would get within arm’s reach of her, a fact made clear by Leet's call to Uber to finish things.

The capes watched the attack and aftermath mostly in confusion. “Was that a Street Fighter thing?”

Chris shrugged. “No idea. I’ve only seen those characters in the crossover they did with King of Fighters. Uber and Leet always reference the most obscure stuff.”

“I think they’ve kept making them.”

“Yeah, but nobody plays them outside of tournaments and really hardcore fans.”

Whatever the effect was it had caused the first real injury the tinker had shown in the entire fight. His costume was ripped and torn in dozens of places, exposing bloody flesh, battered skin, and some kind of machinery coating his arms. Then in face of Uber’s taunting blue circuit like lines spread over his body and the injuries vanished.

“That... is not what Amy described.” Dennis looked to Chris, but the tinker just shrugged.

“No idea. Looks like something technical, but I mean, glowing lines? That could be a thousand things.”

“Effective though.” Blake gestured to the fully recovered tinker. “I couldn’t heal nearly that fast.”

“I’m pretty sure Amy would need more time as well. That’s serious healing tech.” Which was in line with what they already knew.

What he did next was not.

“He can make bugs? He can make bugs that Khepri can control?” No one had any answer for that question, and the effectiveness of the bugs was as terrifying as their sudden appearance.

“Oh, and mass produce those drones.” Kid Win’s voice was tinged with envy. “That’s just great.”

The broadcast cut back to the courtyard with Uber and Leet’s sudden retreat in the face of capture, leading to another long shot of untrained ABB trying to deal with mystery tinker tech. What had been revealed in that fight wasn’t exactly encouraging. Between the drones and instant bugs it was a tossup of which news was worse. Vista chose to weigh in when she returned from her patrol.

“Mammon can make bugs? Mammon can make bugs that Khepri can control?” No one wanted to correct her on the name, and Dennis had a feeling she’d keep using that term in her own head long after his chosen name had been accepted by the public.

“Do we have any idea what he’s doing with that stuff? Amy said it was healing and teleportation, but he’s shooting fire, lightning, and insects from it?”

Chris had no answers, and the rest of the group was at a loss. Just something tied into the contents of his pouches. Any number of tinker devices could be hidden there. Dennis shook his head and took his patrol of the museum.

He wasn’t exactly patrolling the museum, just the party space on the mezzanine level. If not for the blackout this would have had a very nice view of Brockton’s skyline along with the bay and PHQ. At the moment the Rig was one of the few points of light in the darkened city, though the evident damage made that far from comforting.

Inside the museum things weren’t looking much better. The catering had been picked over and was now just scraps surrounding a melting ice sculpture. The event had been planned for far more than the tiny group that got caught in the blackout, but canapés and hors d'oeuvres didn’t make the most filling meal so had vanished fairly quickly. Now all that was left were clustered groups of frustrated, emotionally exhausted civilians trapped away from home and safety. At least the staff had taken some comfort in the assurance that they would be getting overtime for this mess.

The most popular viewing was clearly Bakuda’s broadcast, with the audio coming clearly from more than half of the phones. How many people in the city were watching it? In the country? They didn’t post exact viewership figures, but the chat, gambling, and online reactions were orders of magnitude greater than their typical broadcast.

A few people were edged away from the main group talking to friends and family members. Dennis had checked in with his mother at the start of the night to make sure his parents were safe. His mother assured him they were fine. That his father would be fine. Unless the blackout extended for days there shouldn’t be a problem with his treatment. That things would be fine.

He had heard it before. They had been here before. Things would always be fine, even when treatments got more and more severe, more draining. Even when they suddenly needed a bone marrow transplant. Things would be fine, but that had to be acted on immediately. There was no time for things to be fine.

No time. That thought, the needle approaching his skin, the horrible feeling of blacking out and then...

Then he was a cape. He had joined the wards, been the fun guy, broken the tension, kept Vista from getting too serious, played against Aegis, been there for Chris. Then the leukemia had come back. Then the bank had happened. Then the team had fallen apart, and no amount of humor would hold it together. He had to be a serious leader dealing with serious things that he just wasn’t ready for. That no one was ready for.

He had been so caught up in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed the man approach until he was right on top of him. He cursed himself. This was supposed to be a patrol. Yes, it was basically babysitting duty, but it was a dangerous night. He needed to stay on guard.

The man was one of the handful of adults that had been part of the pre-event mixer. That meant parent or influential relative of one of the teenagers. It was an older Asian man with a suit and demeanor that just screamed ‘corporate executive’. He looked fairly nervous about approaching him, so Clockblocker did his best to put the man at ease.

“Hello. Can I help you?” Stage voice, no hint of concern at the situation. Everything is calm and normal, nothing to worry about here.

“Oh, uh, yes. Thank you. And thank you to your team for staying with us during all this...” The man trailed off and checked his watch, probably a nervous habit. Dennis couldn’t blame him.

“It’s no trouble. We’re happy to help whenever we can.” This was hamming it up more than he intended. It turned out combining his own instincts with a question of ‘what would Dean do?’ resulted in something that could probably be described as ‘parody Legend’.

“Ah, yes. I wanted to ask, I haven’t seen Flechette in a while. Is she patrolling the area?”

Dennis didn’t change his stance, but a bit of unease started to creep up his spine. Only questioning about Flechette, no mention of Shadow Stalker vanishing, or Kid Win who had been managing the communications monstrosity since he set up the cell phone charger. Had this man come with anyone?

Cape stalkers weren’t unheard of, but usually were more subtle or at least age appropriate. The man didn’t seem the type, but the type was good at not seeming the type. He decided to brush it off and give the team a warning.

“She’s taking patrol outside the main area. Nothing to worry about. Let us know if there’s any trouble.”

He left before the man could say anything else. Making his way back to the office he tried to piece together his instincts on the man. Cape stalker didn’t seem right, but something was definitely off.

“Any news?” The faces that turned to him were grim. “What? Something with Bakuda?”

Chris shook his head. “Taunted Apeiron when he found Grue, then bombed the place to smithereens. They’re playing cat and mouse in the storage rows at the moment.”

The news that Grue was dead was a shock, even given his condition following Bakuda’s demonstration. That said, it wouldn’t have caused the reactions he was seeing. “Then what?”

Chris indicated a screen showing a PRT database he was fairly certain they weren’t supposed to have access to. “Casualty list from the Protectorate.”

His blood froze. “How bad?”

“No fatalities.” Vista offered. “But Armsmaster’s in critical condition. Velocity is stable but incapacitated. So is Assault.”

“Weld is listed as out of commission. No details on what that means.”

Dennis took a breath. “So they’re down to Miss Militia, Battery, Dauntless, and Triumph?”

“Plus any members of New Wave they can call in.” Chris offered dryly.

He felt rage and frustration at being stuck here boil back to the surface. They should be out there. They should be making a difference, not stuck here watching rich kids while the city was being torn apart. All because they screwed up so bad the entire future of the team was in danger. He took that feeling and pushed it down. He took a moment to consider the situation further. More clearly. And it came to him. “Movers.”

“What?”

“They took out the movers. Rapid response. Velocity has always been the first on the scene. With Armsmaster’s bike he was close behind. Assault and Battery have that speed trick they do to cycle kinetic energy. Losing either of them shuts that down.”

“You think they pulled off a targeted hit during a prison break while coordinating a blackout with half their forces supporting Bakuda?” Missy sounded understandably incredulous.

“They do have a new thinker.” That got some concerned looks from around the table.

“What about Dauntless?” Blake asked.

Dennis shook his head. “Infinite growth means he’s managed by the Protectorate as a whole. Focusing on defense at the moment, so probably the worst flyer in the city.”

“What about Stormtiger?”

He looked at Missy. “Fine, worst flyer who doesn’t launch himself on blind trajectories guided only by hope, Nazi insanity, and cocaine.”

That got a weak smile from the girl, but it quickly died. “I should get out there.”

“Oh, there’s an older guy, business suit. He was acting a bit off. Asked about Flechette pretty insistently.”

“Cape stalker?”

“Maybe? Not the vibe I got, but keep an eye on him?”

“Got it.”

Dennis let out a breath and sank into a chair. The broadcast was still showing the courtyard, the robot and drones buzzing around the ABB while they pushed out further and set up more equipment. “Still no progress?”

Chris shook his head. “Looks like a standoff. Probably going to putter out soon. There’s not much point in bringing the fight to Bakuda, so they’ll probably slip out soon.”

Chris turned his attention back to the screen just in time to see the robot diving into the ground, weapons extended, for a second time that night.

Nobody commented on the inaccuracy of the prediction. It was completely overshadowed by the fact that apparently the earthquake weapon was not a one shot. Apeiron hadn’t brought out some desperate one-shot big gun. He had the ability to do that, to cause that level of devastation, whenever he wanted.

Maybe there were limits. Maybe it had a cool down, or limited shots, or some other restricting factor. But they weren’t stopping him now. The second hit absolutely leveled the facility. The area was turned into a field of rubble. Fear and panic were plastered across the faces of the ABB. And then his voice came from the crater.

They watched the exchange play out in silence. Bakuda has set herself up as the most feared tinker in the city. Probably in the eastern seaboard. He mocked her. He belittled her to her face. He picked at her insecurities and reduced her to ineffectual attacks swatted down with contempt. Then he strode out of the mist with his glowing arm and Khepri at his side and looked down on her like she was nothing. The robot and drones fell before them like a royal court while Bakuda struggled to find any footing. It looked like things couldn’t get worse.

Then the howling came.

Concerned glances were exchanged in the office. “Hellhound.”

“They didn’t show her, just said they’d dealt with her.” Chris pulled up a clip on another monitor.

“Wait,” Blake asked. “They found Hellhound? And saved her.”

“He is a good healer.” Dennis offered as they watched the screen.

Then the dust pulled back revealing choking clouds of black smoke. A giant dog monster darted in and out of the darkness, just clear enough to show two riders on its back. One of the ABB hostages pointed something out and the camera focused on it.

Tattletale.

Her clothes were tattered, but she was alive, whole, and as cheeky as ever. On the other side of the courtyard Regent made himself known. The dog edged out of the darkness showing Hellhound and Grue on its back. 

He had healed the Undersiders. He had totally healed them from the worst injuries and mutilations possible. Panacea couldn’t handle some of what had been done. Regent, he hadn’t had much of his arm left, but he was as hale as ever.

“God damn.” Blake’s voice was reverent. “I don’t know if I could come back from that stuff, and he just...” He made an astonished gesture.

A horrible thought entered Dennis’s head.

“He said he sells his services?” He hated himself for even asking. Fortunately they didn’t know. They took it as an honest question, not a potentially traitorous one.

Chris nodded. “We won’t be able to stop him. Healing like that, they won’t care about regulations or villain status. Damn it, he’ll be funded forever.”

Dennis just nodded and tried not to think about his trust fund, whether it would be enough, could possibly be enough.

Contemplation of the miraculous abilities on display was abandoned as Bakuda opened fire erratically on the Undersiders. Hellhound’s dog started tearing through the ABB. Grue sent pillars of darkness into the sky. Tattletale and Regent vanished from the scene, though the effects of his power quickly became evident on Bakuda. Apeiron shielded Khepri from gunfire as she sent his manifested insects at the shooters, aiming without line of sight. All the robots launched into the sky.

When it looked like the ABB might be able to mount a defense the earthquake weapon was demonstrated not to be a two shot either. The robot performed a low flyby, tearing a terrifying chasm directly through Bakuda’s position. The rift swallowed numerous pieces of equipment, nearly taking the operators with it.

They watched Apeiron and Khepri abandon their position and walk through a squad of the toughest group of ABB on the field like they weren’t there, fire and blade flying as they moved. Then they vanished into the darkness and Bakuda was left cowering under human shields with broken equipment.

“Well...” Dennis didn’t know where to go from there.

“Fuck?” Suggested Chris.

He cracked a brittle smile. “Sounds about right.”

Blake was just shaking his head. “How do we deal with something like that?”

Dennis let out a breath. “In all likelihood? We don’t. Welcome to the new Wards, where we babysit while the city burns.” He dropped his head. “I doubt they’ll let us within a mile of the Undersiders at this point.”

Despite the frenetic pace of the broadcast there wasn’t a lot happening. Bakuda was messing with something while hiding from the sweeping attacks of the robot and drones. Chris distracted from the gloom and frantic chaos of the broadcast by cycling through the rest of their data sources. The bombings were at least dropping off, though response and rescue was still a mess. No update on the state of the Protectorate heroes or Weld. He did find a report of Shadow Stalker and Flechette stopping an assault in the docks, so that was encouraging.

The sound of a blast drew their attention back to the fight. Bakuda had launched something into the air that wiped out the drones, cleared the darkness, and buried the robot in a pile of rubble. The bomb tinker had assembled a nightmarish conglomeration of barrels and rockets being aimed deeper into the facility.

A fresh set of drones rose from the ruined lockers, but were met by the first tracking missile Bakuda had deployed. Its payload wiped out all five constructs, then scattered like seeds across the ground.

Impossibly the seeds started to grow, sending glassy black vines clawing into the air and towards the source of the drones. You could see the heat shimmering off them and small fires sprang up from any flammable items in their path. From within the horror brambles a series of explosions rang out, each seeming to slow the progress slightly. Finally the growth stopped, leaving a burning crystal thicket the size of a three story business complex.

Bakuda launched something and the view shifted to a remote drone. It showed the Undersiders huddled behind Apeiron in a clearing in the barbed strands. The ground in front of him was scorched and blackened, apparently the result of whatever had held the mess back.

They watched as he pulled an item from a pouch and allowed a glowing mass to fly into his pistol. Then he activated his sword and the blade grew from the gun. Then grew some more. Then it kept growing.

The tinker stood there with an honest to God anime sword, complete with swirling aura. Dennis looked to Chris for any explanation but just got a hopeless shrug. The blade was crackling even worse than before and the glow from whatever he had added to the weapon was mounting at a frightening rate.

Apparently Bakuda thought so as well because she decided to launch everything she had. Rockets, mortars, bombs, and grenades sailed towards the Undersiders. Then the tinker swung the sword.

That was the last thing they were sure of, because everything afterwards was a chaotic guessing game. You could see the crescent of orange light tear into the sky, obliterating everything in its path. You could see the initial shockwave tearing things apart. After that land and air became indistinguishable as everything was swept up in the blast.

When the display settled it was limited to an off center depiction of the former courtyard. There was a sense of stunned aftermath that the Wards would likely have enjoyed if not for the sudden frenetic knock at the door tearing them back to reality.

Dennis calmed his heartbeat and quickly rose to open the office door. He was greeted by the face of the man he had spoken with earlier, only several times more desperate and panicked.

“Sir, is there a problem?”

“I need to speak to Flechette.” His answer was frantic and his eyes scoured the inside of the office.

Dennis steeled himself. “I’m sorry, she’s not available. If you could return to the group...”

“No!” He practically screamed. “There’s not enough time. Have...” He checked his watch. “Seven minutes and I have to ask her about the train.”

“What train? What are you...”

“Clockblocker...” Chris’s voice was hollow. Dennis turned to the tinker and he held up one of his cobbled together devices. Dennis couldn’t make sense of the display, but Chris clarified. “His neck.”

A chill went up his spine. “Sir.” His voice was deadpan as he spoke. “Could you turn around?”

The man looked conflicted, but slowly rotated with awkward, shuffling steps. There, creeping just above the collar of his shirt, was the edge of a fresh scar.

Dennis fought his urge to pull back from the man, something Blake and Chris didn’t manage. He swallowed. “Sir? I’m going to need you to move away from the group. Down the hall please.”

He was practically crying as he moved. Dennis’s mind spun as he considered his options. Seven minutes. There was no doubt as to what would happen after that. What could they do?

Anything. At this point anything would be better. “Kid, I need something that can make contact with the bomb without setting it off.”

“What are you planning?” His hands were already scrambling through the gear scattered around the office as he asked the question.

He swallowed and put more confidence into his voice than he felt. “If it’s close enough to a continuous object I can freeze it. Then we can get it out.”

“Oh, yeah. Great idea.” His hands froze. “How are we going to get it out?”

Dennis shifted his gaze to Browbeat. It took a moment for the big cape to register his intention.

“What? No, God no. I can barely do self-biokinesis. This is another person. I don’t know medicine. All I could do is try to mash stuff in there. What if I screw this up?”

“The base situation has him dying a horrible death. Just try to take it up a smidge from there.” It was darker humor than he was used to, but these were darker times.

The improvised surgery took place in a bathroom off the side hallway. Chris had managed to cobble together some multi stage needle thing that he said should be able to make contact without setting off any sensors. Dennis kept a finger on it ready for Chris’s signal. Blake stood by looking like he might vomit or pass out and Vista stayed by the door, ready to stretch as much space as she could in a room full of people in the event something went wrong.

Dennis didn’t feel any difference in the device when Chris signaled him, but pushing his power into it he could feel the extent of the implanted bomb. Smaller than a ping pong ball, not perfectly round, and lodged just under the man’s skull.

The man practically stopped breathing when the bomb was frozen. He could see the skin distort around the embedded object as subtle shifts in the man’s body pulled on the frozen device. It reminded Dennis a little too much of the frozen insects that had invaded his eyes and mouth during the bank job.

He stepped aside and made room for Blake. The cape removed one of the gloves of his jumpsuit and placed a hand on the man's neck. Without the covering Dennis could see the bone plates and extra muscles that Blake manifested as part of his power. This was new ground for the cape, but they needed someone with an idea of the human body.

The man flinched as bones pushed their way through Blake’s skin and cut into the man’s neck. The apparatus extended like a living scalpel, guided by bio-control and tactile telekinesis. Slowly, Blake guided the man off of the time frozen device, keeping a palm pressed into his neck. When he pulled it back there was a greyish mass where the bomb had been.

“Collagen.” He panted. “Biologically neutral, no markers or allergens. Should be absorbed by the body eventually, or you can get someone who knows what they’re doing to deal with it.” He let out a long breath. “Damn thing was wrapped around an artery. Had to jiggle it out like a stuck piece of toast.”

“Great job.” Dennis congratulated him, but was overshadowed by the tearful hug the big cape received from the businessman. It took a few minutes to get the full story from him. Less than a minute after that he was on the phone to Flechette.

“Hello?”

The voice that answered the phone was a lot more upbeat that Dennis would expect for someone fighting muggers during a blackout.

“It’s Clockblocker. Can you talk? It’s urgent.”

“Oh, sure. Shadow Stalker and I just ran into a new cape.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Oh. Yeah, not like that. She’s awesome. What’s this about?”

“Does the name March mean anything to you?”

There was silence on the line. “Just a minute, I need to take this.” The voice was distant. She’d moved the phone away from her face. “Yes, thank you. Yes, you too.” There was the sound of rapid footsteps, then she spoke again. “What about March?”

Dennis took a breath. “She’s joined the ABB. From what we can put together she planned all of this, everything tonight.”

“Fuck. God fucking damn it.”

“You know her?”

“Old villain from New York. She can take a gang of pickpockets and turn them into a team they won’t let Wards near. With the ABB...” She trailed off.

“Yeah, looks like it. She was after you, had a plant in the gallery.”

“Figures. Are they, I mean, have you?”

“He’s fine.” He considered his next move. “He was supposed to lure you away by asking about the train.” There was dead silence. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“My trigger.” There was real rage in her voice. “March knows about my trigger. I don’t know how, but, oh God damn it.”

“Look, she’s coming here. I need everything you can give me. Strengths, weaknesses, habits, tactics, anything. If she’s coming she’s probably not coming alone. We have over thirty civilians here to protect. Anything you can give will help.”

Flechette began to talk.

And Dennis began to lead.

A big part of that was just stepping up and being the person who took the initiative. Come up with a plan, even if it’s not perfect. Utilize your resources. And report.

He pulled up the PRT.

“This is Clockblocker. We have reliable intelligence that multiple villain capes are incoming on our position. Arrival imminent.”

There would probably be a mountain of paperwork for this. As soon as Weld was back Dennis was going to dump as much as possible on him.

“This is Console. Prioritize the safety of the civilians. Support is... not available. You have clearance for intercept and engagement. Withdraw if possible.”

Now they tell us we can leave. They may have had less than five minutes to come up with a plan, and that plan may have endangered a civilian, but given the circumstances and the vindictive feeling of the civilian, it seemed appropriate. It might also be his ass once Piggy got ahold of him, but after tonight he could live with that.

Which was how Toyoda Tsuneo, fifty two year old business executive, found himself standing in a darkened hallway next to a feminine figure in purple half obscured by scaffolding and plastic sheeting. The man did not need to fake his nervousness as he paced back and forth in the confined space.

Slowly, steps began to echo through the museum. They grew closer and closer until finally a figure could be seen through the gloom of the hallway. It cast a striking silhouette, particularly the large rabbit ears emerging from the military cap on its head. There was a slight swish as a long object was swung back and forth behind the figure. Finally the approaching person stepped into the light.

She wore a red and green marching band uniform with peaked cap in the same shades. Her face was completely covered by a rabbit mask and two large ears emerged from the hat on her head. Behind her back the glint of a saber was just visible.

“I brought her.” The man volunteered. “Just like you said.”

“So you did.” Her voice was light and musical. “...just on time too, why a couple minutes more, and...” She made a popping gesture with her free hand. The man swallowed in response. “Now, where’s that device? So hard to keep track.” She made a show of patting down her pockets, then glanced up at the feminine figure. “Glad you could join us. Aren’t you just dying to find out…” Her voice cut out as her eyes fell on the figure.

With the wave of a hand a mass of plastic sheeting launched itself over the rabbit cape. The corridor behind them distorted, allowing the man to reach the end in a single step and a white clad cape covered in clocks to step into his place and with a single lunge the plastic sheeting locked in place like a force field. The purple figure swelled in size and stature, taking the familiar form of Browbeat. Meanwhile the corridor widened and warped, revealing a girl in green and a boy in gold and red armor, training a pair of pistols on the villainess.

The woman ran a hand over her impassible plastic prison. “Clever. Bringing out new tricks for me. I guess you had to learn something after that bank.” She sighed. “Such a shame.”

“Give it up, you’re trapped and surrounded.”

The woman tilted her head slightly, causing the rabbit ears to brush against the plastic. “Really, did you think I’d come here alone? Flechette isn’t the only one Bakuda made presents for. All those little rich kids, so vulnerable, and you’re not there to protect them.”

Vista just smiled at that. March seemed to catch on. “Really? What a pity, then I suppose...”

Oni Lee appeared in front of the cape shaking his head. Kid Win shifted to get a shot on him, but a new copy appeared in reach, causing him to roll and fire wildly while propelled by his new greaves.

“Lee? Change in plans. Bring the place down.” With a nod the demon masked ninja began reaching for his belt. Dennis exchanged a panicked glance with Missy before diving forward. He was barely looking where he was going, just tagging clones and bombs wherever Vista put them or him. Blake had bulked up more than Dennis had ever seen and was taking on four clones at the same time. A near constant barrage of stun bolts were flying from the erratic arcs Chris kept launching himself.

It looked like they might have the upper hand, like they might win the day. Then a crackling sound came from March’s prison.

The cape had extended her rapier through the time frozen material and was trailing it in a spiral, leaving a path of misty purple blue behind it. The path started to spark like a line of gunpowder. When it reached the end of the spiral the plastic exploded to shreds. Time frozen material completely negated like it was nothing.

“Bullshit!” The word came before he could process it. March raised her sword and lunged towards him.

Then she stumbled, her blade coming short. She shot Vista an angry glance, then her mood changed to levity once more. “Oh well, time to call it for today.” She slipped towards the railing of the mezzanine, dodging stun bolts and a clumsy swipe from Browbeat while also working around a dozen Oni Lee clones. She flipped onto a piece of scaffolding, saluted with her saber, then slid down it like a fireman’s pole while trailing a line of wavy purple-blue energy behind her.

The diminishing presence of Oni Lee’s duplicates was enough indication of what was happening. “Vista, get us out of here.”

The girl nodded and space warped through the mostly empty building. They followed her steps as the gallery seemed to turn backwards, inside out, and upside down around them. Finally they made it through all the distortions, to a reinforced corner formerly just large enough for a janitor closet.

At the moment you could fit a football team in it. Or the staff and early arrivals of a charity event, plus one very stressed businessman.

As soon as they were inside Dennis froze the door, the only portion not warped by space. With the gallery spread out by Vista’s power they didn’t feel the blasts, but they could hear them. A lot of them. And the collapse. Chris guessed March had hit a main support pillar. When the dust finally settled, the last of the time frozen clones dissipated and bombs detonated, they pulled the civilians out of the remains of the gallery with a combination of Missy and Blake’s powers. It was a mess, but they had come through alive. That had to count for something.

Plus no one would ever have to endure a field trip to the Forsberg Gallery again. There’s always a bright side to things.


	28. 22 Homeward

I rode out of the ruined storage facility leaving the former conscripts behind me. At the moment I was feeling a bit less than the triumphant hero. Focusing on getting the bombs out of their heads had let me put off contemplating exactly how badly things had gone this night. To be fair I hadn’t come into this expecting to be able to end Bakuda’s rampage in one swoop, but I think that was part of the problem.

I had approached things, been approaching things, like a freshly triggered tinker. I don’t think that was exactly unreasonable, because what else was I supposed to base things on? The problem, which was clear now, was that I was definitely not a tinker. At least not anything like a traditional one.

I could make stuff, incredibly advanced stuff, but that didn’t make you a tinker. I’d been fixated on how other cape powers work, how the PRT evaluates them. Tinker is a classification not just for being able to build stuff, but for all the issues around it. Logistics, time limitations, resources, research, workshop space. A tinker couldn’t just start building, they had to build up. That’s why tinker was a combat relevant classification rather than just the sub-ratings attached to their gear. They had expanded capacities, but also expanded limitations. I had taken that model as an outline for how to function as a cape, and in doing so had taken on the limitations of the classification as well.

Limitations I didn’t really have. There were vestiges of them before, but after tonight most of them were irrelevant. My workshop was advanced, persistent, and fully secure. My Workaholic power let me multiply any resource as long as I could even get the tiniest scrap to start with. I could complete mechanical tasks around forty times faster than normal, and if I was doing maintenance or modification of my own gear that ramped up to four hundred times faster. I was getting entire fields of technology fully developed without needing research or testing. When I did need testing or research it was built on established and shockingly advanced principles that I received in full detail.

I needed to stop thinking about what a tinker would do and start thinking about what I could do. What I could be capable of.

For instance, magic. Magic essentially gave me a shocking array of parahuman abilities on command. Finally breaking out my Dark Alchemy made it clear exactly how strong that could be. I might only have two connections to the Magic constellation but they complemented each other perfectly. Runecraft had been a bit of a novelty when I first got it, but it had been empowered by all of those ‘useless’ aesthetic powers I’d been accumulating. I didn’t even know what the upper limit would be for what I could accomplish with it.

Potions were also something I needed to start properly leveraging. A single duplication potion could have swung the fight in my favor, and invisibility might have let me take out Bakuda without giving her a chance to set off any of her contingencies. That entire alchemy field was even more important now, considering what Natural Alchemy was capable of.

Looking back, I just didn’t have enough time. There wasn’t time to practice, utilize, or develop my abilities. After that first horrible week following my trigger I had gotten so caught up in the fact that I had gotten any power that I hadn’t considered how best to leverage what I’d received. The rate powers arrived at had been accelerating, no question, but my ability to manage them hadn’t been improving at a similar rate.

The modifications to my mind from those military memories scared me, but without them I don’t think I would have made it through the night. They had helped, but they were memories designed for a very different situation and still clashed pretty hard with my mentality at times. I really needed some time to get a grip on them to know how to best utilize them.

Time. The one thing I didn’t have to spare. I had been working every second I could manage since the Undersiders attacked the bank, but it hadn’t been enough. Maybe it would have been if I’d known what I was getting into, but who could have seen this insanity coming?

Who indeed.

My passenger was being quieter than usual. The complete gap regarding the ABB’s new thinker was more than a little concerning. She had managed to stump Tattletale as well, so it might be an anti-thinker effect. That was scary enough, but I never got the idea that my passenger was limited by parahuman interactions. This seemed like something else, and that was a very concerning thought. He had been my safety net since I triggered, and now that net had an obvious hole in it. That was not a comforting idea.

It also made me wonder if there had been any gaps in the other information I’d received. Information regarding the end of the world and what was necessary to prevent it. Once again, not a comforting idea.

I put those thoughts out of my mind and tried to decide my next move. I pulled up Survey through my omni-tool and tried to get a sense of the city. While I’d been occupied in the north end storage facility things had gone to hell across Brockton Bay. It didn’t look like the string of random attacks I’d been afraid of. It wasn’t even targeted to maximize casualties. No, this was far more coordinated.

I didn’t have a perfect picture since the data was being pieced together from disparate sources. Still, Survey had literally been made for this kind of thing so I was able to get a fairly accurate picture of how the attacks had rolled out, as well as a more concerning analysis of the reasoning behind them.

The first wave of attacks had been designed to shock. They were coordinated with the blackout and were the only ones that actually targeted civilian areas, about a half dozen blasts, enough to put people on alert. At the same time there were reported explosions on the PHQ and signs of heavy combat, though still no public announcement on what had happened. Once a response was seriously being mobilized the second wave came.

This was more numerous and tactical. The attacks targeted key roadways, the Brockton Airport, the PRT headquarters and the sites of previous bombings. The PRT headquarters wasn’t badly damaged in the attack, but the strike had hit the garage access with an incendiary bomb that was apparently still burning, though thankfully not spreading. The fire was hot enough that attempts to smother it, even with containment foam, had completely failed. Any PRT response vehicles not already on the road were completely locked down.

The secondary bombings had as severe an impact on response to the disaster as the PRT attack. The first few response units to the explosion sites triggered hidden secondary devices. Following that disaster blast sites needed to be cleared by the bomb squad before anyone could be sent in. It slowed the response to a crawl.

This led to the third wave of attacks. These were more spaced out and even more targeted. The third rounds of attacks weren’t designed to secure a tactical advantage, slow responses, or create fear. They were clearly targeted based on financial gain.

The blackout dealt with most electronic security and tinker tech bombs removed more conventional barriers. Thus the ABB had led an exceptionally coordinated string of heists across the city. With the chaos slowing police response to a crawl and the strength of Bakuda’s bombs backing them up they were able to essentially walk through the juiciest targets in the city.

It was hard to even guess how much they had managed to secure. The rich side of Brockton Bay skewed extremely rich and had services to match. The two auction houses had probably yielded the greatest take in pure dollar value of goods, but that would be difficult to liquidate. There were also the repeated jewelry robberies, hits on depositories, armored cars blown apart or hijacked, and even a good old fashion bank robbery.

It made sense. The ABB would likely have their traditional income streams gutted following this display. No one was going to be heading to ABB territory to partake in any of their vice industries. Protection money was a meager prospect with a depressed economy, even more so following something like this. Beyond that there wasn’t much stable cash flow to be had. It seemed their thinker had sidestepped that by ensuring enough take in a single night to support the gang for an indeterminate amount of time.

Actually, I had no idea what the economics of running a gang were like. Judging by behavior it seemed more territory was considered better and quality of territory was a factor as well, but the nitty gritty would have to be guessed from movies and police procedurals. What I did know is this was probably one of the biggest heist sprees in the city’s history, and something that could only be pulled off by fully exploiting the chaos of the attacks.

Oh, and the Forsberg Gallery had been taken down. Not ‘taken down’ on the level of what happened at the storage lockers, but it was definitely in a 'rebuild’ rather than a ‘repair’ category. There was probably a joke in there about not being able to tell when ultra-modern architecture collapses on itself. A few of the supports must have gone, as well as that weird lopsided part that hangs out, but the bottom floors were probably alright.

The damage was a bit excessive if all they wanted to do was cover an art theft. Also I wouldn’t really have pegged it as a high value target. Possibly there had been something else going on there, but Survey didn’t have any data ready for me.

The A.I. was stressed enough as it dug through social media posts, image board rumors, and news sites from outside the slowly shrinking blackout area. This was not something that would have been possible at the start of the night, but hours of drone coordination and scanner analysis had resulted in a significant boost in the A.I.’s complexity and capacity. Through those efforts I was presented with the worst news of the night.

Lung had gotten away. It wasn’t being shouted from the rooftops, and from the looks of things it might have been a close thing, but he was definitely free. There was grainy cell phone footage taken from the boardwalk of some fight on the rig. Not good quality footage. The person was using digital zoom to try to get a close up and turned it into a blurry shaky mess.

It showed a blue blur in what was probably a fight with a big burning blur. The situation wasn’t helped by multiple explosions around the two blurs and copious amounts of smoke. It ended with a scuffle between the blue and burning blurs. Then something knocked the blue blur away from the burning blur, the burning blur burned more, and there were lots of explosions. Afterwards the burning blur was gone, the blue blur wasn’t moving, and it looked like something had fallen into the bay. Then there were a bunch more explosions, the Rig caught fire, and the force field cut out, taking both the dome and road access with it.

Later on there was a sighting of Dauntless arriving on the scene, then flying back towards the PRT building. Various other sightings of him, Miss Militia, and Triumph were reported across the city, with Battery showing up later in the evening.

It wasn’t clear what had happened on the Rig, but a single cell phone photo from an apartment window was posted on Twitter showing a partially transformed Lung entering the city. There were no signs of him going on a rampage or participating in the other ABB activities, but it was clear he was out of Protectorate custody.

Maybe if I’d gone there first I could have tipped the scales. Of course, that would have meant trading the Undersiders’ lives, the lives of all of the conscripts, and letting Bakuda run free will all that ordinance. It could also mean a few more Protectorate heroes would be on the streets instead of their missing/status unknown situation, but I wasn’t sure how good a trade that would have been.

I could keep thinking in circles forever. The point wasn’t if I made the right decision. It was if there was anything else I could do now.

On that note there was something going on pretty much everywhere in the city. The Empire and Merchants were out in force, but unlike the ABB seemed to be having trouble figuring out how to take advantage of the chaos. And it was chaos. This was a blackout with the police heavily tied up and the fire and medical services stressed to their limit. Fortunately there didn’t seem to be an excess of firebombs deployed, but any number was a nightmare considering the technology involved. There were scattered fires across the city, likely unrelated to the bombings but still pushing the limits of firefighter’s ability to contain them.

Reports from the hospitals were not as horrible as they could have been. A slight shift to the bombing pattern could have clogged the emergency rooms and morgues of the city well past their capacity. Instead they had focused on disruption of response and financial gain, a small and dubious mercy. Still, that took the medical response from an insurmountable problem to a merely taxing one. They wouldn’t be doing post-Endbringer style tent hospitals and field amputations, but every medical professional would be on double shifts and earning their pay for the foreseeable future.

I missed a connection to the knowledge constellation as I considered what I should do. What could I do? Panacea was still in containment thanks to the reaction to our conversation. Could they release her for something like this? Somehow I doubted it. It seemed unlikely that containment protocols would have an exemption letting potentially mastered capes free just because their powers would be useful. That sounded like it would be the most exploitable loophole ever.

Thanks to my own status and my effective declaration as a villainous mercenary I couldn’t exactly step into her place. I was a suspected master using untested and unverified healing tech that I was not willing to submit to an examination. Medical nanites were wonderful, but in order to develop them a normal person would need to go through iterative designs that could cause all kinds of disasters, and that’s not even getting into the Protectorate’s stance on nanite technology in general. My alchemy might be a little better, but would raise even more questions. I couldn’t see a way to offer help without ending up in PRT custody by the end of the night.

So what else could I do? Somehow just rescuing the Undersiders in the face of all of this didn’t feel like enough. Okay, I had saved a bunch of civilians as well, stopped whatever Bakuda was planning to do with that insane amount of ordinance, and while she got away it hadn’t been in one piece. The blade hadn’t exactly taken her legs, more of a low cut through the shins. The left foot was gone along with most of her calf, but the right wasn’t cut all the way through. That said, the right cut was closer to the knee, so that brought its own set of problems.

She obviously didn't bleed out, so credit to either Uber’s perfect medical skills or Leet’s bullshit technology. This would seem like a victory, but really it just served to hand the ABB a crippled tinker. That’s pretty much the nightmare scenario for any tinker to find themselves in and the best present a gang could receive. It also would keep her out of the field, so while that would probably reduce random executions substantially it transfers command to more level headed capes. I’m not sure a less violent but more effective ABB was that much of a step up.

So what did I do now? In a way it was easier back at the facility. The goals were clear and even if the best decisions weren’t being made just doing something was generally an improvement. I could deal with a problem that was right in front of me, but a wide reaching, city scale disaster? No.

From what I could discern the wave of violence and looting that had sprung up around the blackout was dying down. Not due to the Protectorate, but surprisingly the activities of minor capes, independent heroes, and even Faultline’s crew. Though in their case the smart money was they were defending their stomping grounds rather than taking any stand for law and order. There was no evidence of a coordinated effort from New Wave, but individual members had been spotted on and off through the night. Even the gangs weren’t putting up with rioting or looting in their own territory, which clamped down on some of the worst hotspots. I couldn’t see any way to help with the general violence that wouldn’t throw me unprepared against one of those groups.

I couldn’t think of anything I could do that would make a positive impact without also causing excessive entanglement with the Protectorate or another group in the city. I didn’t want anything like that until I had time to leverage some of my new abilities. I had rushed into one situation under-geared and half prepared. I wasn’t doing it again. 

If there was one key takeaway from the night it was that there was a big difference between having power and knowing how to apply it properly. If I didn’t want to repeat my earlier mistakes I would have to get my shit together before anything like this happened again.

That led to me hunting for a darkened alley to access my workshop. That wasn’t something in short supply in this part of the docks and I found an acceptably isolated door fairly quickly. Despite the expansions to my workshop the entryway looked the same as ever. The scattered equipment and cast off civilian clothing from my rushed deployment were scattered across the floor. I secured the door, stowed my hoard of tinker tech, and started to get changed.

My costume was in a far worse state than when I left. Virtually all of that damage was due to Uber and Leet’s Street Fighter attack. I had defenses against a lot of things, but spatial distortions were not currently on the list. That had to change. I knew that broadcast had gone out, even if I hadn’t had time to review it yet. I had little doubt that I would be facing similar weapons in the future.

I didn’t have the advantage of anonymity anymore. Villains didn’t last in the cape scene if they were idiots. I couldn’t hope that they would come at me with attacks that had been demonstrated to be ineffective. Spatial warping drew blood, so any cape or tinker who could produce anything similar would be in extremely high demand.

I could build something to defend against that kind of thing, but that would involve digging heavily into the principles provided by my Skills: Physics power. There were fascinating concepts there, but unfortunately none of the engineering needed to bring them to life. I would have to develop my technology the old fashion way, and that meant research and experimentation.

As a positive, it did provide the basis for defending against time stop bombs and the construction of a personal force field. I had a few different personal force fields I could build at this point and should probably start prioritizing that particular project. There are effects from those bombs where the only safe measure is to avoid contact entirely. With some of that stuff there’s no level of durability that can reliably save you.

Despite the exertion and messy nature of combat the costume was still fairly fresh. I had The Flock's Fleece when I made this with Garment, so in addition to always fitting perfectly it created an ideal thermal equilibrium. Never too hot or too cold, and even when sprinting in full costume with a face mask you were perfectly comfortable. It was a minor thing, but I appreciated not ending the night swimming in panic sweat.

The state of my pistol made my costume look pristine. That mega slash thing may have been dramatic, but it was beyond anything that sword had been designed for. The HF capacitor has completely shorted out and I wouldn’t want to even try activating the omni-blade mount until I had a chance to see what was happening inside. Really I should have stripped it down right after the attack, but there wasn't time for even my accelerated maintenance. Given my new powers it was probably due for a complete rebuild anyway.

While I got changed I updated the copies of Survey and Fleet running in the computational core with the data from the night. Given how much they had been able to derive from a simple ride around the city this would likely be a feast of information for them. I would have to expand their parameters soon. If they hadn’t hit them already they would soon. Since I was basing their upgrades on the powers I received they were well overdue for an expansion.

After I finished getting changed I stowed my gear and made sure my reserve armor plate was in place on my shin. There was a chance that kind of durability could expose me but it was still dangerous out there. I would much rather have someone wondering how I survived a bullet than end up a corpse. In fact I should probably upgrade that as soon as I get the chance. I had an entire database of armor technology in my head, and that wasn’t even touching on what I could do with high gravity assembly now that element zero based technologies were an option.

Ultra-compressed high grade refined ceramite plates could come later. Right now I just wanted to get back to the relative safety of my apartment. This night had been draining even before I charges into Bakuda’s murder arena. Since then I had been running on desperation and conditioning, thank you military training. The moment the costume came off it was like a switch was thrown. All I wanted to do was sleep for a week.

That sounded like a great idea, but this wasn’t the place for it. I signaled Fleet and the motorcycle shifted back into civilian mode, changing from its aggressive shape and black and silver coloring to a still sleek but much less aggressive silhouette in blue and white. Still not exactly inconspicuous, but better than riding around in costume.

I wheeled my transformed bike out into the alley, sealed my workshop, and took off towards my apartment. Signs of violence became gradually more common as I moved into the more populated areas of the docks. Even as the damage reached its peak it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Going into this I had expected the entire city to be a rubble strewn fireball. Frankly I saw more damage due to the actions of normal people in the form of smashed storefronts and broken windows than I did from explosives.

The Docks isn’t exactly what you’d call prime looting grounds, but I guess people take what they can get. It was probably telling about the city’s drug problem that I didn’t see a single pharmacy that hadn’t been broken into. Anyone who needed prescription refills in the north side of the city was going to have a hard time of it for a while. Somehow I doubted things were this bad Downtown. There was more spacing between the commercial and residential areas, the Boardwalk had its own security, and office buildings didn’t exactly have an abundance of light weight, easily liquidated items to grab.

That said, most of the ABB heists were centered Downtown or towards the Beaches, so I guess that evened things up. It would be interesting to see how the fallout from this night shapes itself. Given the number of cities affected this is probably going to end up with one of those cape specific monikers like the Boston Games.

As I rode the Celestial Forge made a connection to a small mote from the Time constellation. This one was called Don’t Need a Team. It made it so that I didn’t need a team.

Okay, there was more complexity to it than that. The power let me do the work of an entire team by myself. I wasn’t duplicating or using telekinesis or anything like that, it just worked as a combination of expanded knowledge and faster speed that allowed me to handle the tasks of an entire service crew by myself.

It was primarily aligned towards fighter jet maintenance, but could be applied to other fields easily enough, especially with my level of skill. It wouldn’t be any use on small projects where a second set of hands would get in the way, but for larger projects I could handle the work of up to ten people with no issue. It was actually just what I needed for expanding my workload and trying to leverage new technology.

I put that power aside and focused on the road. The city was still shockingly dark. You got so used to there always being some level of lighting that this kind of thing, the choking, inky darkness, became severely unnerving. Some buildings still had emergency lighting on, and flashlights and candles showed through the windows of some houses, but generally the land outside the reach of my headlights was a complete void.

I turned a corner and was greeted by an unexpected island of light on an otherwise pitch black street. My gym was bright and fully lit. Light streamed out of its windows and open doors across the people milling around outside. I slowed as I approached the old building. From the looks of what I could see inside the place was packed to capacity, probably with half the neighborhood present.

The attitude of the crowd was complicated. I would probably have described it as a high tension potluck. Some of the larger guys from the gym were out on the street, forming a kind of informal perimeter at the edge of the light. Assorted non-members were behind them. A few were smoking, some had paper coffee cups, and some were just pacing in clear agitation. What was clear was that a sense of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ had evolved around the gym and people were keeping aware of the boundary.

I pulled my bike into the crowded parking area and pulled off my helmet. At the sound of my approach an unspoken exchange was conducted between the gym regulars and two of them moved to intercept me, with the others shuffling around to even out the spacing. It wasn’t exactly a military perimeter, but it was probably the closest thing that could evolve naturally in a situation like this.

The two figures approached in a decidedly aggressive manner, but the lead figure’s mannerism’s changes as soon as he got close enough to see my face. The second figure picked up on it and mirrored his behavior.

“Joe?”

I recognized Vince’s voice and shifted slightly so I could see his face without the light completely at his back.

“Hey Vince.” I tried to keep the mental exhaustion out of my voice as I spoke, but I think he picked up on it. I glanced over the gym patrons and members of the public standing around. This close and without the engine noise I could hear the mummer of dozens of voices coming from inside the gym. “What’s going on here?”

He grinned. “A bunch of us were here when the power went out. Doug kind of took command of things, kept anyone from panicking.”

I returned his smile. “I can see that.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, heard streets were getting dangerous so we were set to wait things out. That’s when people started showing up. Like, more than just members.”

“Seriously?” The gym was a nice place to work out, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a community hub. Maybe a known factor on account of its Neolithic architecture, but not a place where people would gravitate.

“Seriously. Get this, there was this cape going around breaking up assaults,” Vince put a particular inflection on that word and something told me it was probably more serious that just muggings. “and sending people here.”

I blinked. “Why here?”

He just shrugged. “Maybe they knew the place would be open and we’d have a bunch of guys here in case anyone tried to start something? Anyway, Doug started organizing things to account for that. You’ve seen what it’s like out there?”

I nodded grimly.

“Right, the cops weren’t showing up for anything less than a murder in progress, so Doug set to get us dug in until things calmed down. He called in some favors, including someone who had an old generator.” He gestured behind him. “Once we got the lights on more people started showing up. Doug called in more people to keep things from getting out of hand, and well...”

Well indeed. I had no idea what cape would be sending people to our gym, but the situation had worked out better than anyone could have hoped given the circumstances.

“Oh, Joe this is Casey.” He gestured at the thirty-something tattooed boxer next to him. The man gave me a crooked grin and extended a hand like a ham hock.

“Nice to meet you.” He was clearly one of those people who turned every handshake into a cursing grip contest. I squeezed back as hard as I could manage and hoped my durability boost wouldn’t betray me.

“Likewise.” He turned to Vince while still shaking my hand. “So, this the rookie you couldn’t put down the other night? Mr. Laborn must have been mortified.”

I kept a straight face while Vince laughed it off. When Casey broke the grip I made a show of unnecessarily rubbing feeling back into my hand. That earned a scoff, but his own hand was trembling slightly.

“You should check inside, at least let Doug know you're safe. He’s been on the phone all night, but we haven’t been able to confirm everyone’s okay.” Yeah, I guess that’s what happens when you leave your civilian phone isolated in another dimension. ‘We are sorry. The number you have dialed no longer exists in this reality.’

Still, it was an odd sense of community I hadn’t really expected from this place. I couldn’t decide if it was endearing or intrusive. That said, I at least wanted to find out about this cape.

“You guys go ahead.” Said Casey. He looked over the street. “Things seem to be calming down anyway. I’ll keep an eye on things.” He glanced at my bike, then shared a look with Vince. There seemed to be something going on there, but I just gave him a nod and followed Vince inside.

Past the door things reminded me more of a church social than a disaster shelter. Someone had set up a bunch of folding tables with some of those giant coffee makers that produce truly terrible coffee on them. It was complimented by assorted foodstuffs that I suspected were mostly chosen based on what would go bad without constant refrigeration. What parts of the workout gear that could be cleared away was pushed to the side to make room for what looked like at least half the neighborhood. People were circulating, chatting, or collapsing into folding chairs, but generally seemed happy to be here. A little island of stability in the middle of a night of insanity.

Vince led me through the throng of people, around the ring, and eventually to the back of the gym near the office. I heard Doug’s booming voice well before I spotted the big man. He might be a terror to his students, but give him a disaster to coordinate and he was suddenly everyone’s best friend. Or at least the person you wanted on your side.

Honestly, I think it might be a bit similar to what I was dealing with at the storage facility. When things are going to hell it’s easier to focus on the job in front of you than try to take everything in. Doug didn’t seem the most contemplative person at the best of times and probably favored action over careful consideration. It was easy to see how he ended up pulling this together.

Also he got to yell at people. That always put him in a good mood.

Doug was talking with some of the other coaches and older members of the gym. Vince waved to get his attention and his face lit up when he saw me. The man may not have an ounce of tact in his body but he was probably the most earnest person I’d ever met.

“Joe!” He waved off the crowd and made his way over to me and Vince. “Glad so see you’re safe. I swear, this fucking night.” He shook his head. “Couldn’t reach you, and with your new job...”

He left that hanging and there were some knowing looks from the men around him. Not judgmental, just knowing. In retrospect by talking about a job with ‘good pay’ and ‘terrible hours’ I should have realized it would come across as a euphemism for some kind of illegal activity. The entire gym seemed to be onboard with the idea that I had found some kind of legally gray side job.

I mean I had, but not nearly in the way they were thinking.

Wait, that’s probably what the thing was between Casey and Vince about my bike. Well, looks like they assumed I was riding around on the proceeds from a criminal venture. I’d be offended if they weren’t exactly correct.

“No, I got a call from some... friends. They were in a bad spot because of this and needed some help.”

Doug nodded. “Things work out?”

“Yeah.” I fell back on my ‘nearly lying’ tactic of staying as close to the truth as possible. “They had some close calls and are probably pretty shaken up, but they’ll be fine.”

“Lucky they had someone to rely on.” I didn’t answer, but joined the chorus of nods around the group.

“Vince mentioned something about a new cape?” The gym’s champ grinned at Doug but let him launch into the explanation.

“Oh yeah, it’s the damnedest thing. City hadn’t been dark for half an hour when this girl shows up, skittish as hell. Said a new cape showed up when she was in trouble, then pointed her our way.” He shook his head. “Had no idea what to make of it at first, then the next one shows up. Cindy over there.” He pointed at a college age girl with auburn hair sitting by the wall. She was wearing a beautiful jacket over a torn t-shirt and had a split lip that had seen some hasty medical treatment.

Looking around I could see more cases like her. Injuries and damaged clothing, and mostly women. Some were clearly still badly shaken and curled in on themselves in quiet or isolated areas. Others were working to support each other, or even mingling with some of the gym members and people from the neighborhood. I could spot what must have been a dozen, and there were probably more.

“And it was a new cape? No one had seen them before.”

Doug grinned. “See, that’s what I thought. Then someone found said they’d heard of her. Even had a video.” He grabbed a smart phone from a nearby folding table, unlocked it after two tries, tried to navigate a website, accidentally went to the home screen, entered the list of apps, and then inadvertently hit the image gallery icon next to the internet browser.

Huh, apparently Doug liked to go kayaking.

“I’ve got it.” The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Alchemy constellation as Vince stepped in. He pulled it up with his own phone before Doug decided to start swearing at his or smash it against the wall.

I was expecting some kind of guerrilla style street video of the cape in action. Probably with a homemade costume and the takedown of a couple of muggers or something similar. I wasn’t expecting the very familiar sight of a set of curtains framing a red dress with a floating set of opera length white gloves.

I worked very hard to keep my face straight as the video played out, complete with assembly of jacket and finishing with the all too familiar incredibly slow typing. Doug and Vince shared a grin at my expense, so I’m guessing they took my carefully controlled reaction for shock.

“Her name’s Garment. Has powers like that fashion girl from down by the college, only people think she’s one of those Case whatever folks.”

“Case 53s.” Vince corrected. “She’s not actually invisible, it’s just the clothing. There’s nothing there to hurt.”

The prospect of how someone would figure that out made my stomach lurch, but I nodded along. I hadn’t told Garment to stay in the apartment. I’d told her to stay safe. She wasn’t obligated to listen to me, but even if she had been this was within the bounds of what I’d said.

But I didn’t understand why she’d left the apartment. She’d never shown interest in hero work before, and while there was certainly a need for it this night I didn’t know why she decided to start.

I took a moment to think about how Garment saw the world. I didn’t have a perfect picture, but from the couple of times I’d worn the gloves I’d been able to get inklings of her senses, the information she received and how she processed it. The way she interacted with the environment around her and the sensation that created. Then I looked over the people she’d been rescuing and sending here. Suddenly something fell into place.

Torn clothing.

There were a variety of levels of injury present, but every one of them had some damage to what they were wearing. I tried to remember what I’d experienced about how Garment perceived things around her, the almost tactile relationship she had with fashion and items of clothing. Then I imagined what would happen during one of these ‘assaults’, how they would come across to Garment senses.

With that thought I could understand why she left the apartment. I was just grateful she was only dealing with normal humans. I didn’t know how well Garment could handle herself in a fight, but apparently it was well enough to break up a street level conflict. Against cape opponents I wouldn’t be as confident, so I was glad that things seemed to have been limited on the front.

I made a show of contemplating the video as Vince and Doug watched my reaction. “That’s really impressive and all, but how was she fighting with that kind of power?”

Vince beamed as he scrambled to pull something up on his phone. “Oh, this is great.” Doug was grinning as he leaned over to look at the screen. Finally he found what he was looking for and turned the phone around.

The screen showed a twitter post of a photo of a skinhead. The lack of tattoos meant it was probably not Empire, just someone who shared the style of that movement. He had what looked like paper cuts across his face, but that wasn’t what drew the eye. No, the clear focus of the image was the inch wide pink silk ribbon that had been used to truss him up.

With my knowledge of fabrics and clothing I could easily tell the ribbon has been sewn into his clothing as well as wrapped in a way that effectively immobilized him. With the tensile strength of silk, especially silk of that thickness, there was no way he was getting free unless someone cut him out, and he’d still have the material sewn into his jacket and jeans. The man was clearly furious and red-faced, which clashed horribly with the pink of the ribbon.

Weirdly, except for the shade of his face the entire arrangement looked pretty striking. The pink contrasted nicely with the black jeans and dark grey jacket. It was wrapped in a way that created a kind of banding pattern across his body. I mean, it was clearly intended for restraint, but I could see something in that style ending up on the runway of a fashion show at some point.

Though likely with a more attractive and cooperative model.

“She’s been leaving goons trussed up like that all over the area. Sent a few guys out to check on them. They aren’t going anywhere until the cops can collect them.” Doug looked over at the group of people Garment had sent him. “Had a couple Protectorate capes drop by to follow up on things. Shadow Stalker and that new girl. Said the police will be by to take statements once they can move through the city without getting blown to hell.”

“But she can’t talk, right? How did she send people here?”

Vince broke in. “She had a laptop with her. Typed stuff out.” He saw my expression. “With auto-complete. Still pretty limited, but she got the point across.”

“Most of the time.” Doug said with a smile.

“What do you mean?”

He turned to carefully lift something off the table behind him. “Apparently had some trouble getting the point across a few times. When she couldn’t get through with the laptop she made this.”

He lifted a small banner of fabric and held it up. I did not know what to make of it. I knew Garment could work quickly, but I did not expect this.

“She sent it down with the last person to arrive. It was petering out for a while, so theory is she’s done for the night.” Vince grinned. “We’re thinking of hanging it over the ring.”

I could see where Vince was coming from, but it was still a shock to see. The item in question was a five foot banner of embroidered cloth, about two feet thick. It looked like wool embroidered onto linen. Actually, it was definitely wool embroidered onto linen because that was what the original was made of. It’s just the original Bayeux Tapestry didn’t depict any men in boxing shorts.

Garment had decided to get around her communication issues by making a twelfth century tapestry depiction of an empty red dress and gloves intervening to save a maiden from bandits, then directing the maiden along a path to where a group of boxers were standing surrounding a very nice depiction of the gym. After that it showed the boxers defending the maiden from figures in the surrounding darkness. All of this was lovingly sewn in the exact style of the finest medieval tapestry work.

I could only stare at it while Vince and Doug enjoyed my reaction. I shook my head and took in the size of the crowd. The shift in the mood inside the gym compared to the feeling pervading the rest of the city was stark. “This is incredible. I can’t believe you pulled all this together on such short notice.”

Doug just shrugged. “Some cape thinks we’re a good enough place to look after people who were... assaulted. If they have that kind of faith in us I’m not going to let them down. I just took some steps to make sure they’d be alright. Things kind of snowballed from there.”

Doug glanced across the room at a tiny elderly woman who looked thin enough for a stiff breeze to knock her flat. She was surrounded by a group composed of gym patrons and members of the public and was commanding the group with the grace of a career general. There seemed to be glimmers of actual fear even in the older heavyweight boxers as they scurried around moving chairs and bringing out food and blankets. She looked over at Doug and the big man immediately averted his eyes.

“Uh, I’ll just go see if Mrs. Gartenberg needs help with anything.” Vince gave us a quick nod before darting off.

“Mrs. Gartenberg?”

Doug took a breath. “She’s... active in the community. A good chunk of this is on her.” I suddenly noticed that there was something of a division across the gym, kind of a tone shift separating the realm of Doug’s authority from that of the old woman. I considered what it would take to get Doug to secede part of his domain and decided that I definitely did not want to get on that woman’s bad side.

At that thought the lights cut off for a second. They came back almost immediately, but there was a concerning flicker to them. Mrs. Gartenberg shot Doug a glare and the big man swore under his breath.

“Hey Joe, you know engineering and that kind of stuff, right?”

I did my very best to keep a straight face as I nodded in reply.

“You know Grant Phillips?” He continued before I could reply. “Used to coach here. Had a generator from when he worked up at the market. The thing’s ancient, but we were able to get it working, sort of. Been flickering all night. If it gives out and I don’t know how this will go.”

It made sense. With the city in darkness this tiny dot of light made things seem normal and in control. Even if you were able to switch to lanterns it would still have a very different and less friendly tone.

Which is how I ended up in the back room of the gym looking at a chugging diesel generator that was a good deal older than I was. Doug had picked up on my nervousness and was taking a soft touch as I examined the machine.

I was nervous, but probably not for the reasons Doug assumed. I could fix the thing. Of course I could fix the thing. There was no question about that. The question, and what I was really concerned about, was could I fix this without announcing my cape status to the world?

I knew I could get everything running perfectly in seconds. That wasn’t the problem. What I was worried about was the effects of all my secondary powers. As such I was dragging out my examination while trying to figure out how not to accidentally turn this thing into something that was simultaneously a leap forward in power generation and a work of art worthy of the reverence of generations. I mean, this was compression ignition internal combustion, some of the most primitive of human technology. The challenge was keeping things on that level.

Damn it, that’s another quarter for the jar.

Doug picked up on my reaction. “Think you can give us a hand?” Doug was probably the only man in the world who can use his normal speaking voice next to an active generator and still come across perfectly clearly.

I nodded, apprehension clear in all my movements. At the moment I was examining every component to try to make sure I kept things at a comparable technical level.

“So,” I said, trying to distract myself. Unlike Doug I needed to put in some effort to drown out the roar of the diesel engine. “Did everyone make it in safe tonight?” I checked the fuel lines and tank. Plenty in stock, and I should be able to do this without increasing the efficiency too much. You know this would be so much easier to just build a diesel powered fuel cell and bypass the mechanical side of… NO! Need to work with the terrible caveman tech.

Doug shook his head. “Few guys I couldn’t check in on. Plenty more that stayed home rather than make the trip.” He looked grim. “And got some bad news about Laborn.”

I looked up sharply. “What happened?”

“Was out at dinner when the bombings started. Avoided that, but he got caught in some mess on the way home.”

I winced. “He was alone?”

“Yeah. His son was supposed to go instead, but had to cancel.”

Huh. I had no idea why a father and son would switch out going to a restaurant alone. Must be one of those weird things you only get in single-child families.

“He alright?”

Doug nodded. “Someone got him to the hospital. He’s a bit beat up, but he’ll pull through. The man’s a tough old bird.” Doug seemed to be considering something. “You really made an impression on him last week.”

“Seriously?”

“When Laborn breaks out a session like that it’s about seeing when some’ll tap out. No one expected you to tough your way through it.” He looked distant for a moment. “Laborn, well he’s not the best with people, with knowing their limits. Some of the training he did with his boy...” He dropped off, then shook away whatever he was considering. “Point is he has high expectations and is used to people disappointing him. You didn’t, and that means a lot.”

I nodded politely, but wasn’t sure what to make of it. That overly aggressive training had come out of nowhere and I still didn’t have a clue what triggered it. It had left me nervous about coming back to the gym all week, but I guess it was good to know something good had come from it.

“Any idea when he’ll be out?”

“Monitoring for a concussion, but they’ll have him released in no time. The man will see to that.” Doug spoke with a slight grin. “So, can you help with this clunker?”

I nodded slowly. “Just give me a few minutes. I think I see the problem.”

Doug retreated back to the gym as I dug into the modest tool box they had on hand for maintenance issues. I think I could handle this. Most of my involuntary powers triggered on construction, not repair. There was no risk of ending up with four more generators or involuntary over designing the aesthetics of them. But that didn’t mean there were no issues at all.

I was pretty much able to instantly fix the generator with no problems or disruption to operation. Even without the support powers my mechanical skill was insanely good. As it stood the only issue I couldn’t contain was the effect of Stylish Mechanic. That power made anything I fixed clean and pleasant to look at. The generator wasn’t in complete showroom condition, but probably looked better than it had in years.

I smeared some grease and threw some dust onto the casing, but it was a token effort. I really hoped nothing came of this, but just to be sure I decided to wait out the clock in the back room, serenaded by now much more rhythmic but still extremely loud engine. Can’t let people think I worked too fast.

And there went the Vehicles constellation with no connection.

I leaned against the wall and collected my thoughts. Even with the shocking news about Garment this had been nice. It was normal people dealing with a horrible situation the best they could and coming out better for it. I kind of hoped similar things were happening across the city, but it didn’t seem likely. Brockton was very much a ‘cape town’. People followed the lead of parahumans, and without someone like Garment coordinating things they just wouldn’t happen.

Garment. That was still a crazy thought. This is probably on me for not checking in after that first call. She had apparently kept her laptop with her, and the copy of Survey. I could have reached them, but the mess with the Undersiders and Bakuda had been so consuming I hadn’t had time to think about anything else.

I hoped she was alright. I mean, physically there wasn’t much that could happen to her. She was an animating spirit. The number of parahumans who could even interact with something like that was minuscule. Attacks would just damage her clothes and while she might lament them like a passed loved one that wouldn’t actually hurt her.

I was worried about what she mentally dealt with tonight. I’d seen some ugly things at the murder arena, but there was a base level of cruelty that happened on the streets that had a horror all its own. I was undoubtedly proud of her for stepping in, but that didn’t change the fact of what she’d been dealing with. 

Vince said it looked like she’d called it for the night. I needed to get home and check the apartment. If she wasn’t there I could scan for the laptop or start a search pattern. Even if it meant churning out stealth drones and infiltrating surveillance networks I would be able to track her down.

Also, I probably needed to address what Survey considered priority information. Social media posts mentioning a new fabric controlling cape should not have been folded into the summary ‘minor capes and heroes’. It was a petty gripe considering the comparatively short time the A.I. had been optimizing, but something I needed to address nonetheless.

Despite my decision to leave as soon as possible that proved to be something of an ordeal. Once it got out that I was the one responsible for the lights no longer flickering there was a focus of attention that I could not break away from, particularly given who was directing it. It seemed that all the skills I’d developed fighting tinkers, countering capes, bypassing murder arenas, and taking on a veritable army of conscripts were completely useless in the face of an elderly Jewish woman.

In her own stern but well-meaning manner Mrs. Gartenberg retrieved me from Doug, thanked me personally in front of her crowd of acolytes and proceeded to march me through the various food and refreshment stations she had coordinated. The crowd regarded the tiny woman with a level of fear and respect Bakuda could only dream of attaining.

It was probably a mistake to mention I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. That comment saw me loaded down with three sandwiches, a cup of soup, a cup full of terrible coffee, and one of those tiny packets of cream cookies. It also saw me seated in one of the few free chairs while I ate. It struck me that my life had reached a level of insanity where I could start the night riding a motorcycle through an explosion to confront a super villain and finish it with soup and sandwiches at an impromptu community potluck.

Also, while I didn’t want to pry too much, I was seated close enough to some of the people Garment had rescued to learn some interesting details from basic eavesdropping.

“...right on the spot. Not even a word about it. Well, you know, but...”

“Yes, yes. It’s beautiful work. She made it right in front of you?”

The girl nodded and slipped off the jacket, which on second viewing was much better quality than the rest of her clothing, and showed it to the older woman sitting across from her.

“She had the materials in her laptop bag. After she dealt with, you know, they just floated up and she made it on the spot. Barely looked at it, she did it while she was typing stuff out.”

“The seams are beautiful. Haven’t seen hand sewing like this in years. It’s practically a lost art.” The woman shook her head. “Most people are lucky to get an autograph when they meet a cape. This is something else.”

I looked around. Not all, but most of the people who had been saved by Garment had some item of clothing that stood out from the rest of their outfit. Sometimes just a scarf, sometimes a whole jacket. I was glad she had kept her material summoning under wraps, and found a smart way of doing it. Knowing Garment she probably would have given whoever she came across entire new wardrobes if she could get away with it, so it was probably good she was restraining herself.

She had also given the people here something to focus on that wasn’t their city falling apart around them. I didn’t know how much of this had made it online, but her PHO thread was probably blowing up over it. I was proud enough to nearly override my concern as I powered through the last of my food.

“Sure you can’t stick around?” Vince asked as he walked me out.

I shook my head. “Need to get back and check on things.” I looked back from the parking area at the island of light and the muffled din of voices. “This is great, but I think you have things covered.”

“We’re managing. Thanks for your help with the generator. That’s probably dropped Doug’s blood pressure by a good chunk.”

I smiled. “I’m sure Mrs. Gartenberg will find a way to bring it back up.”

“Well, they say you don’t reach old age in this city without being tough enough to handle it.”

“You think the city can handle Mrs. Gartenberg?”

He chuckled in response. “Wouldn’t go that far. Look after yourself out there.”

“Thanks, you too.”

I took off from the gym into the darkened streets. The rest of the neighborhood seemed eerily quiet after the hectic environment of the gym. At least in the pitch darkness I didn’t have any trouble finding a concealed location to access my workshop and store my bike.

I sealed it and moved through the murky blackness of the power outage to the exterior steps leading to my apartment. It was the first place I needed to check. If Garment wasn’t here I could start fanning out. A broad enough search and analysis profile would find her, assuming I couldn’t just track her by Survey’s laptop.

I unlocked the front door and entered the tiny, lopsided apartment. “Garmen...”

Before I could finish speaking a shadowy shape shot through the apartment and engulfed me. It took a second to figure out what was happening and collect myself.

“Yes, it’s good to see you too.” I returned the hug, then moved to close and lock the door. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

It was hard to make out Garment’s reactions in the dark, but I got the distinct impression she felt that statement was both ignorant and inconsiderate.

“Oh, I’m fine.”

Once again, it was hard to make out her response, but she seemed to have some doubts about the integrity of that statement. I couldn’t keep this conversation going without actually being able to see what was happening. I moved deeper into the apartment, past the open laptop sitting on the desk. At my approach it blinked to life and printed a message on the screen.

‘Greetings. Welcome back.’

It was a basic chat-bot level communication, but still a big step forward. Acting as an assistant for Garment had really helped this branch of Survey develop language skills.

“Uh, hello Survey.” The screen flickered in response. Speech recognition, or whatever was being processed there, was even more impressive. I really needed to get into my neural interface and check on the development of both A.I.s.

While I moved to use the closet door to access my workshop Garment began frantically entering commands to the laptop. By which I mean mouse commands, not keyboard, since they were coming at a rapid fire pace rather than at five to ten second intervals.

The closet door opened to reveal my entry hall. The normally dimly lit room illuminated my apartment like the noonday sun. Suddenly I could make out every detail that had been lost in the blackout, but that was secondary to the picture on the laptop Garment was shoving in my face.

“Ah.” Garment made an expression that suggested more explanation was due. The screen showed confirmation that Uber and Leet had indeed been streaming the events of the storage facility. The specific frame on the screen showed the immediate aftermath of Uber’s spatial Street Fighter attack. Specifically, me on the ground covered in bloody injuries. Just looking at it brought back unpleasant memories.

I really needed to track down that stream and find out how much had been shared and what the reaction was to it. God damn but I had a lot of projects piling up. I thought I was down to the wire preparing for this attack, but that was nothing compared to the work that came afterwards.

“Look, it wasn’t that bad.” I had to duck as my costume floated out of the workshop entryway like a specter. With the light behind it every rip and tear was highlighted. Garment held it suspended next to me and crossed her arms.

To be honest she seemed about equally upset about my injuries and the damage to the clothing. I had already committed to improving my defenses. I just didn’t expect to be called to task for not addressing that ahead of time. As I struggled for a way to defend myself I felt the Celestial Forge make a significant connection to the Time constellation.

The power was called Most Holy Order of the Socket Wrench. It was basically the last word in mechanics, at least as far as vehicles are concerned. With it I could improve any vehicle to an insane degree. Full on beyond the impossible level improvements, some of which made no sense but would work anyway. Beyond just improving my skills it opened up new options that shouldn’t work, but in my hands suddenly would.

There was also a time component. Much like with my last power this let me do the work of many people. The phrase ‘one-man chop shop’ came to mind. Unlike my previous ability this wasn’t limited to the speed boost from extra hands, it also accelerated any mechanical task to a blazing degree. It was simultaneously the ability to do impossible work, and the ability to complete it in an impossible timeframe.

Actually, this power stacked with Don't Need A Team. With both of them I could function as a one-man chop shop... where each person in it could do the work of an entire team unto themselves. The sheer scale of the projects I could build with this...

And Garment wouldn’t care about any of it. She was still standing there, both offended and concerned over the injuries I’d suffered.

“Look, I know.” She made a flippant gesture. “I do. This night didn’t go as planned. I had to rush in, I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t know what to expect. I did what I could, but I’ll do better next time.”

Slowly Garment seemed to come around. She made an accepting gesture and lowered the laptop. With that, in the light of my workshop, I could suddenly see her clearly. And it struck me what a massive, massive hypocrite she was.

“Garment.” She froze at my tone, then slowly turned towards me. “Garment, what happened?”

She seemed to consider things, then took a step forward closer to the light with absolutely no hint of shame. What I could barely make out earlier became crystal clear.

Garment’s dress was a mess. Not a dirty mess. It was a nearly shredded mess. She had bullet holes in it. She had a long tear that would have hit the kidney on a normal person. The neckline was pulled and torn and probably only keeping its shape thanks to her power. In short it looked like she had gone through hell and was proud of it.

I took in the damage and sighed. “I stopped by the gym on my way home. I heard what you did.” She made an intrigued gesture. “They’re doing fine. Really well, actually. Better than most of the city.” She looked particularly satisfied at that.

“Why did you decide to send people there?” She made a nebulous gesture towards me. I suppose it was a known factor that she was sure would have people at that time of night. If you had to send them somewhere it was as good a choice as was available.

“I’m proud of what you did, what you accomplished.” She perked up. “Even with the...” I gestured towards her dress. “Actually, why haven’t you fixed that?” I knew she could have, and easily. So why leave it?

Garment went over to the laptop, which automatically pulled up a text editor as she approached. More significant developments from Survey. Slowly Garment began typing, getting three letters in before Survey managed to hit the right auto-fill.

E...V...I...DENCE

“They need it for evidence?” She gestured assent. That did make a sort of sense. This wasn’t some supervilian dust up. There would have to be criminal charges, and that dress was clear evidence of multiple attempts at lethal force. It also showed that she was taking a serious approach to this, rather than just going out and hoping to beat people up.

That actually put her a good deal above my first attempt at hero work. I never even considered prosecution requirements when I went out for my first patrol.

“I saw a twitter photo of one of the people you caught.” Garment gestured excitedly and switched to a web browser with her twitter feed.

It was significantly more active than last time. Also the picture I saw was not nearly the only one in circulation. She began to scroll through the tweets on the #GarmentGloves hashtag.

There were multiple pictures of the people she had caught. In fact, in an act of insanity that would only happen in a cape city, some of the recent pictures seemed to be people taking selfies with the bound criminals. The BBPD twitter account was quick to reply to these, recommending that people avoid the crime scene and that officers would arrive shortly to take the suspects into custody.

Oh, she coordinated the color of the restraints to contrast nicely with the person’s outfit. That was a very Garment touch.

The selfies seemed to have petered out, so I’m guessing they had rushed the pickup before something unfortunate could happen. Those kinds of assaults don’t happen in safe places and you didn’t need more people getting in trouble trying to chase a short lived twitter fad.

Further down her feed there were people reposting her introduction video. Others were tweeting photographs of her on the street, though the darkened city made it hard to see details. Likewise with a single short video that allegedly showed Garment saving someone. She was very proud of it, but in the gloom it was basically a flurry of ribbon in the dark with a lot of whip-crack like sounds and then a zoom in on another captured thug, tied up and sewn into silk ribbons.

I spotted another tweet with a single graphic on it. That was a neat detail. Garment had a label. Two raised gloves, crossed at the wrists. Apparently she had sewn it into the clothing that she’d given out and someone from the Gym had posted a picture of it to Twitter. As a logo it worked for her, simple but identifiable.

There were also a few public recruitment offers that had come in from some of the larger corporate teams, though these were being pretty thoroughly mocked by the public for trying. That seemed to be something of an meme that sprung up around this mess. I could see that anyone who tried something that would distract from the response or was perceived as taking advantage of the disaster while it was still happening was being raked over the coals. I mean, it was internet mob behavior, but that didn’t mean it was wrong.

Twitter actually was really active. With people limited to cell phone service it seemed to be the main community forum for all the insanity of the night. I checked the global hashtags, with #CapeBlackout being a leading one. Surprisingly #Apeiron was also trending strongly. That made me both proud and embarrassed at the same time. Much further down was #ItsSpelledApeiron, which I’m guessing was probably an online joke around the name having to be pulled from Uber and Leet’s stream.

That was probably the cause of that #Khepeiron hashtag. I get Apeiron is an obscure word, but I didn’t expect people to mangle the spelling that badly.

I pulled back from twitter and looked towards the workshop. I still hadn’t even taken a look at the expansions that had been added. Additionally I had to check the development of both my A.I. and expand their parameters. I’d been using my powers as triggers and had gotten more than enough for a series of upgrades.

Upgrading the A.I. would have to go hand in hand with improving my computer technology. I was getting to the point where transistors were not going to cut it. Until I could get a sample of cybertonium transmuted and start working with extradimensional processors then optical and isolinear computing was my best bet, even with the difficulty adapting to human technology.

And that reminded me. I got up and headed for the kitchen. One by one two dollars worth of quarters were dropped into the jar, the full accounting for all of this insanity. Given how bad tonight went I think keeping it that low is a decent accomplishment. I don’t think I ever fully explained the jar to Garment, but she was acting vaguely concerned as she watched me.

I headed back and stood by the workshop door. “Okay, You know about the expansions and all the new powers I got?” She made an excited gesture. “Right, well I have a lot of work to do. I need to catalog everything that showed up, and could use your help for that. Then I need to update systems and build some defenses so that...” I gestured to the costume that was still hanging in mid-air. “...doesn’t happen again.”

She made an affirmative gesture and I smiled in response.

“So before I get started, is there anything else from tonight you want to show me?”

Garment excitedly raised a finger, then rushed over to the desk and fished a piece of paper from behind the laptop. She hurried back and presented it to me. I looked down at the short message, somewhat stunned.

“Garment, how on Earth did you get Flechette’s phone number?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Don't Need A Team (Ace Combat) 100:  
> Fighter planes are pretty complicated machines, and more often than not you need a whole crew to maintain them so that they don’t break down in the middle of a fight and doom the pilot. You know your plane well enough to circumvent this issue. You've got just the right idea on what needs tuning up and what needs fixing, along with having the speed to be able to fix a plane up by yourself without the need for a crew in a fraction of the time. Performance issues are a thing of the past for you.
> 
> Most Holy Order of the Socket Wrench (Fast and Furious) 400:  
> You are a master mechanic. Repair and upkeep is nice, but you can go beyond the impossible and improve any vehicle. Take a van and make it beat a supercar? Put NOS injectors on a bicycle (and make it work)? How bout something challenging? And anything you can build up you can tear down, too. You're a one-man chop shop and wiring a car to explode takes but a few moments and some chicken wire.


	29. 23 Renovation - Addendum Taylor

It took a while to get the story out of Garment, or at least as much as could be conveyed through a series of gestures and the occasional auto-complete assisted typing session. Apparently it played out like your typical cape encounter. Flechette had been on patrol along with Shadow Stalker and they’d run into Garment when she’d been doing her rescues. I couldn’t exactly get a play by play, but there was the sense that things went better with Flechette than with Shadow Stalker.

My passenger’s reaction to Flechette was interesting. She was important, that much was clear, and also very seriously powerful. Like with Taylor I couldn’t really see where that sense of overwhelming power was coming from, but that just seemed to amuse my passenger. Of course, he still seemed to feel that Tattletale was a massively significant thinker and she hadn’t exactly impressed with more than pulling obscure details out of the air.

It was similar to what he felt about Panacea, only there was no ticking clock or other serious concern. Amy Dallon had issues, I understood that now more than ever. There was a real sense that if they weren’t dealt with there would be dire consequences. With Flechette there was significance, but not the dread and worry. She would apparently be a major player, but not one I needed to panic over.

As Garment explained she pulled up some tweets concerning the new Ward. There were a few rare shots of her in action from tonight and a few more from her announcement presentation with Weld this afternoon. The odd piece of Flechette themed media from New York had started cropping up and circulating, including a somewhat hilarious energy drink commercial. However the top trending image for her was taken from a cell phone and was actually quite sweet.

Someone caught a picture of Flechette and Clockblocker from before she had left on her patrol. You couldn’t tell much from Clockblocker’s full face mask, but from his concerned stance and the reassuring look from Flechette as she put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes it came across as a very candid and tender moment. Twitter certainly seemed to think so, judging by the mass of comments and retweets. Apparently the public would latch onto anything they could when it came to cape relationships. God, I hope I never have to deal with that kind of nonsense.

The phone number she had given Garment had been some kind of contact offer or invitation to check in later. Apparently either she or Shadow Stalker had been the one to suggest that Garment’s dress would be useful as evidence. That was probably also why Doug mentioned them dropping by the gym to check on things. It was effectively an invitation into the city's cape community, even though it would almost certainly come with an invitation to join the protectorate.

“Garment, do you actually want to join the Protectorate? Keep doing hero work?” She made a dismissive gesture. I was more relieved than I should have been. And maybe I was a little envious over the fact that her debut had gone so much more smoothly than mine had.

“They’re going to want that dress. You’ll have to contact them to set it up. I can help you with that, or Survey can...” She made a gesture towards me and the laptop flickered slightly. Ok then.

“Right, well I guess you’ll need something from the storage locker, or a new dress...” I hadn’t finished the sentence before Garment eagerly presented me with a design sketch. All I could say was if she was trying to impress the city’s heroes this would certainly do the trick. Actually, with that level of design work on it... “Do you want me to help with this?”

There it was. Somehow Garment knew about the design perks I had picked up, like she knew about all my perks, and had accounted for that in the planning of her proposed dress. This was one of those gowns that would have eaten years of life from a team of seamstresses and driven them half blind in the process. With us working together we could knock it out in less than fifteen minutes.

“Of course.” There was an excited little hop from Garment. “But later? There’s a lot I need to do right now.” She made a placating gesture and indicated towards the workshop.

Right, time to get started. Before I dove into the expansions that I’d received I took a moment to try to make some order in the entryway. That primarily involved packing away the scattered equipment I had dug through is my rush to make it to the storage facility or just dumped here when I stripped off my costume. I slipped my omni-tool back on and pulled up the interface. First thing, I set an update between my computer core and the copy of Survey running on Garment’s laptop. After that I focused on packing away reagent pouches and the scattered gear from my Class: Engineer power.

Before I left on the rescue mission that stuff was a moderately useful pile of curiosities as well as the only ready-to-use gear I had on hand. Now it was my ticket to an entire universe of power. Workaholic would let me multiply any resource, no matter how rare or exotic. There was a pittance of element zero in this gear, but all that mattered was it was actually there. A single deconstruction and rebuild would give me the basis for all kinds of technologies that utilized the mass effect field that could be generated by that material. A huge array of options I had completely dismissed are suddenly open to me.

That’s definitely going to be one of the priority projects. Workaholic’s multiplications functioned exponentially, so once I isolate a sample it won’t take long to get a large enough amount for major technology, maybe even something as complicated as an FTL core. The idea of building a device that complicated on my own is a staggering prospect, not to mention the potential Endbringer problems it could bring down on my head. So while with a lot of work I might be capable of it, there would be no space travel until that particular looming problem had been dealt with.

I had missed it when I dropped off my cape gear, but there was a new locker added to the entryway. I checked inside and found a stamp. The personalized stamp that came with Fingers of the North Star to let me mark my work. Stamp was a bit of an understatement. It was a device of adjustable size that could permanently mark any creation with a symbol unique to me.

The symbol on the stamp... well it was like a tiny spiral galaxy with the arms looped far out and back on themselves to create a kind of incomplete infinity symbol. So kind of like someone took the center of a sideways s and twisted it into a swirl.

I have no idea how it was chosen, but I guess it kind of worked as a personal emblem. It had a cosmic feel to it while embracing the ‘unlimited’ meaning of my cape name. I hadn’t really thought about having an emblem as a cape, but I hadn’t really thought about my cape identity much beyond settling on a name, and that had been to avoid the PRT slapping something stupid or derogatory on me. Even my costume had been all thanks to Garment taking iterative design steps with what I’d pulled together from thrift stores.

Hey, Garment and I both had cape logos now. Okay, hers was more of a fashion label and no one had seen mine yet, but they still existed. That was something, and actually felt pretty significant. I don’t think most capes were able to nail down a simple symbol to represent them, so it gave a sense that I was on top of this thing rather than making it up as I went along.

Which I basically had been. Boy, that was a harrowing thought.

After that was taken care of only the tinker tech I’d salvaged from Uber and Leet and Bakuda’s bombs was left. I needed to get that stuff into the Laboratorium for analysis, but first I had to figure out exactly what had happened to my workshop. I took a breath and pulled open the door on the left side of the entryway.

When I first got my workshop this opened to a rather utilitarian metal shop that would have been a poor showing even for a high school industrial arts program. After I got my Alchemist's Laboratory it changed to a brief hallway linking the entryway to the two facilities. At this moment the view before me was almost unrecognizable.

I would have been completely shocked at the size of the place if not for having the built-like-a-cathedral Laboratorium as a reference. I had thought that the Alchemist's Laboratory was a big increase in workspace, but it had nothing on this.

This workshop upgrade was linked to my Grease Monkey power in the same way a few of my other powers were connected. Like Master Builder and Science! it shared technical aspects. Specifically it allowed me to build or repair anything that was possible with Grease Monkey. Until looking at it I hadn’t realized just how significant that was.

Grease Monkey may have been more than slightly overshadowed by the addition of the knowledge of a civilization of alien robots, but that didn’t change the fact that it could easily be described as ‘all the cyberpunk’. It might not be the most advanced work I was capable of, but it was still incredibly comprehensive. Every field of industry was represented, and at every stage of the supply and production chain.

Can you even imagine the equipment necessary to construct everything a civilization could produce? I didn’t have to, seeing as I now had an extra dimensional complex that had been stuffed to the gills with it. It was staggering and even Garment seemed taken aback, though that might have been due to the other element of this upgrade.

It was a complete fucking mess.

I mean, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but previously the workshop had been filled with immaculately designed pieces and carefully arranged for maximum efficiency. I may have been upgraded to what could be described as a multi-level industrial campus, but any sense of order or elegance had been completely lost. I could only get a vague idea of what was out there since even the vertical design was a mess. Some floors were solid, but with openings for large pieces of machinery, some were mezzanine levels, some were collections of catwalks, and some were a combination. My guess was it was at least five stories tall, and oversized stories at that. The best I could say about the layout was that there was some vague clustering by industry type.

It was just there were a LOT of industries represented. My power had apparently decided to just throw the facilities for microprocessor fabrication, petrochemical refinement, ballistics engineering, pharmaceutical manufacturing, automotive assembly, and dozens of other options to me at the same time. The place was stretched over multiple floors strictly out of necessity for the scale of some of the manufacturing. There was even a hanger sized area that could even manage anything from airliners to orbital shuttles to attack satellites.

Not that I had any idea how I was going to get that kind of stuff out through a five meter wide entryway.

Everything had a certain style to its design. I wouldn’t exactly call it retro futuristic, but there was a ‘classic cyberpunk’ feel to things. That meant it looked like what 1985 thought 2035 would look like. So I had been granted a neo-industrial ‘workshop’ that was so comprehensive it was hard to fully contemplate. 

There was so much stuff here that it was honestly difficult to navigate. I seriously needed one of those mall-maps with the ‘you are here’ sticker on them. Out of desperation I fell back on my Built to Last power and started directing myself by the feel of what I had built previously.

I found my nanite containment tank and fabricator, now nestled in a nano machinery lab. The kinds of nanomachines that Grease Monkey specialized in were varied. Some had mundane industrial applications, some were medical, though less advanced than my own nanites, and some were straight up war crimes. ‘Not gray goo’ was about the best thing I could say about that stuff, though I doubt anyone caught in a combat application would be grateful.

One interesting thing was how my metal shop had integrated into the rest of the equipment. Like before, the workshop supported its own power and water needs, but this upgrade had no crafting materials available. With some hunting I was able to find the comparatively basic equipment of the metal shop and some of the machines I had upgraded scattered through more appropriate sections. The regenerating stores of metal were still present, though compared to the scale of the place it was a pittance. The really fascinating aspect was what had happened to the fiat backing.

Things I made only self-repaired if they were constructed in my metal workshop. That was a special aspect of the power. It was rather unusual, but as the metal shop had been integrated into the surrounding upgrade the area of fiat backing went with it, but not completely. I could tell if something would be in a space to receive that power. It was really incredible. In the face of all the powers I couldn’t turn off it was my workshop restoration effect that I could properly manage. There were a few situations where self-repair would be a disadvantage, so it was good to at least have the option to remove that feature.

None of this was my top level technology, but there was a huge difference between being able to produce space opera level equipment in theory and being able to churn out decently advanced items immediately. I would still want to upgrade key components before I got too deep into a project, but just having this infrastructure was a huge blessing.

Just then I felt the Celestial forge make a connection to the Size constellation. The power was called They're Like Legoes, Right?, but at this point I was well past concern for what the Celestial Forge decided to name its abilities. If it wanted to specifically reference an interconnected block toy line then more power to it.

As a reference to the properties of the power ‘Lego’ was rather appropriate. This power gave the ability to create beyond perfect modular technology. Perfect modular technology would have parts with no compatibility issues, able to switch out and replace on a whim with no loss in functionality or even able to create combinations for new applications on the fly. But even perfect modular technology would still have the inherent problem where the item in question would be weaker than something constructed as a solid piece.

This power addressed that completely. With the ability at work a support beam assembled out of linked two foot sections could be just as strong as one cast in a solid piece. Ironically, the main issue the expanded workshop had addressed was the construction of larger items, and that was irrelevant with this new power. I could build a battleship in chunks small enough to carry and end up with a result as effective as if it had been laid down at a shipyard.

The power took a bit of work to apply, but nothing beyond my abilities. Its base application was mostly focused on aerospace technology, probably because of its link to my Aerospace Engineering Makes Things Go Fast power. The principles it gave me could be applied to any other field of technology easily enough, and opened a huge number of possibilities.

As I considered what I could do with my new power I finally found where my Alchemist's Laboratory had been relocated. It had really just been a matter of following the pipes. That was because the chemical engineering facilities that had been added to the Laboratory by my Grease Monkey power were now linked with every industrial chemical facility in the workshop. A network of conduits snaked out from the more advanced machinery that was nestled in the alchemy lab adjacent to dried herbs and arcane circles.

The Alchemist's Laboratory hadn’t changed as much as the rest of the workshop, but there were still some significant additions. The lab upgraded itself based on my level of alchemy knowledge and thus had added extensions to account for my Natural Alchemy power. There was a small collection of plants and herbs growing under artificial lighting to provide basic components for natural energy infused alchemy. A recessed area contained samples of mushrooms and other fungus and a few tanks had aquatic plants. The facilities had shifted slightly to account for that particular branch of potion making and the principles it incorporated.

I had assumed that would be the only change, but I was greeted with another surprising addition. Unnatural Skill:Smith covered more than just forging of weapons. It included some very advanced principles of metallurgy, including the production of some actual magical metals. Said production was as difficult as it sounded since I didn’t exactly have an active volcano or water from the River Lethe handy. I might be able to work around requirements or transmute equivalent reagents, but it was unlikely I’d be getting celestial bronze any time soon.

Currently the only magical metal I could reliably create would be bone steel, and that wasn’t exactly a pleasant manufacturing process. At least the components could be obtained in the real world rather than needing to be formed through thaumaturgy. There was a huge amount of potential in that power and if I wanted to take advantage of it I needed material to work with. It might be theoretically possible to build size changing items, inherently magical weapons, or self-powered automatons without magic metals, but I did not have nearly the skill or experience for a task like that. Compared to what would be necessary to produce cybertonium, making bone steel would be a cake walk.

Cybertonium was actually a good deal more attainable than it used to be. With the expanded metallurgical knowledge and upgraded alchemy lab I had a real chance of pulling it off with a few days of trial and error. Once I figured out the process there would still be two or three dozen steps in the production, but that was a big improvement from before. I might actually get a chance to start using the technology that Master Builder provided, rather than the theoretical principles.

On the subject of applying those theoretical principles, I needed to find my neural interface and check on my A.I.s development. Garment was wandering around the lab, apparently a little miffed at how the reorder had messed up the flow of her dyeing equipment. I let her take some time to shuffle things and used the opportunity to start another potion brewing.

My duplication potion was probably the most useful weapon in my arsenal. It had monumental applications both in combat and my own production work. On top of the advantages in battle and logistics the duplication of reagents for producing call beads effectively granted an infinite power source. Actually having to deal with the copies was a bit weird, but I could manage for the benefits it provided. The brewing process would take about an hour, but with the quality of the facilities in the lab I could set things up and leave them to run their course.

It turned out potion brewing was another thing that triggered Workaholic. I had the choice of five potions or a potion with twenty five times the volume. The higher volume potion was something of a weird outlier. It didn’t have a stronger effect, it just had a lot more liquid to drink. That kind of effect would be seriously useful in most kinds of alchemical production, but not when dealing with potions that had discrete effects. I set it for five copies and left it to brew.

Masterwork Crafter was also triggering with this production. That far reaching power applied whenever I made a ‘thing’, and potions counted. This was a substantial increase in quality, but I wasn’t sure how much that would impact the duration. I was already producing excellent potions and there was a hard limit to how long the effect could sustain itself. I’d have to see how well the results manifested, but I was probably close to some kind of practical maximum.

With that taken care of I finally pried Garment away from her dyeing station and went looking for my neural interface. The imposing chair of steel and wires was in the software development section, because of course I had one of those as well. It wouldn’t be ‘everything in cyberpunk’ without a computer warfare division. Alright, it could be used for developing civilian software as well, but there was a definite militaristic bent to all this equipment.

It was also the only portion of the expanded workshop with a decent computer system. I hadn’t exactly had the previous workshop perfectly networked, but there was absolutely no interconnection between the facilities that had been added. Everything had to be operated locally, independently monitored, and had no automation or reporting systems. I didn’t even get an inventory of what was out there, and hadn’t been able to look over more than half of it. This place needed a dedicated computer system, and checking on my A.I.s was a big part of that.

I nodded to Garment and sank into the interface chair. As the system powered up I felt the workshop fall away being replaced by my awareness spreading through the computer system. It was a unique experience. Hybridizing the neural interface and the computer core effectively let the person using it function as if the computer was part of their own mind and body. The sensation should have been discordant to the extreme, but I had never had a problem with it. Thinking with logic gates rather than neurons just seemed normal. I hadn’t picked up on it before, but the reason for the ease of use was readily apparent to me now.

Since the last time I had interfaced with the system I had picked up two additional powers in support of Master Builder. That expanded the inhuman mentality of Master Builder to a level of innate understanding. The mechanical thought patterns from the personal experience with the robot civilization occasionally crept through in my day to day life. There they felt jarring. Here they felt natural.

I was the computer, and I knew perfectly well how to function in this state. My mind had all the experience necessary to function as an electronic consciousness divorced from the limitations of a human form. When I was here all those dysphoric thought patterns I struggled to deal with were suddenly normal. No, more than normal. They were helpful. They let me function better than I could have possibly otherwise. When connected to this system I was able to operate on the same level as an artificial intelligence without needing the development time.

That was frightening in its own right, particularly with the insight it gave to the functions of my own mind. The optimization programs I’d been using for Survey and Fleet seemed clear and enticing. They could very well be applied to myself. Normally that would be a daunting prospect, but my insight into memory principles would allow it to work smoothly. It would be so very easy to make a few small changes, just enough to think better, stay on task, remove doubts.

...but that wouldn’t be the end of it. That was the nightmare of the potential tinker powers from my trigger, only applied via electronics rather than neurochemistry. Change your mind. I shuddered through my electronic consciousness. No thanks. I wasn’t going to risk that. Development moved forward and built on what came before, both the good and the bad. Start tearing down your past and there’s no telling where you’d want to stop. If you’d even want to stop.

With significant effort I put that thought out of my mind and focused on the partition where Fleet and Survey’s optimization was running. As expected, they had fully expanded to the boundaries set for them. Currently both programs were improving code efficiency, removing bloat, and practicing refinement. This was being done in parallel with an in depth analysis of the night’s events.

The difference between their processes was fascinating to see. Fleet had been optimizing longer, but initially got caught in a feedback loop and had to be broken out of it. It had been my first attempt at developing a program and as such was compiled with the best computer knowledge a cyberpunk society could offer. Since then upgrades and refinements had been made to the process based on new understanding of programming, but it was a fundamentally different starting point than Survey, who had been conceived upon the basis of Master Builder’s frankly insane knowledge of computer science.

The result was a distinct divergence in approach and mentality between the A.I.s beyond even what their distinct function would account for. I watched a recreation of the storage facility provided from the A.I.s’ records and could clearly see how each program was approaching the situation.

Survey was focused almost entirely on the details of the environment, the factors in play, number of weapons, relative threat of the participants, and even some rudimentary analysis of the mentality of the key players. That was a new factor, owing almost exclusively to the integration of experience from working with Garment. There was some difficulty integrating the truncated copy into an A.I. already running at full parameters, but the effort was being made and it was yielding results. I could even see some results being presented in short sentences rather than as masses of data.

By contrast Fleet was entirely focused on action within the situation. Data was only important insofar as it influenced the next move. As Survey constructed theoretical arrangements of forces based on potential actions of the players involved Fleet would run through them like a gauntlet. There was a reliance on Survey for data on how some proposed actions would resolve themselves, but when it came down to it Fleet was a driving A.I. and wanted to drive. It came across as more single minded, but also more focused and determined than Survey.

I extended greetings to both A.I.s and received their acknowledgement in reply. Fleet sent a standard receipt for the message while Survey made an attempt at English. ‘Greetings. Good for to be here.’

I returned the sentiment and then turned my attention to the optimization partition. I had decided to follow my usual system to avoid alerting precogs by tying the A.I. advancements to my Celestial Forge powers. I tallied the significant number of abilities I’d received since the last update and scheduled a staggered reduction of limits based on that count. Sending them all at once could encourage inefficient development and a key portion of the stratagem was the incremental increase based on what I dearly hoped were undetectable triggers.

Interestingly, I was able to see the benefit of my Don't Need A Team power on this task, effectively attending to multiple aspects of the code simultaneously. The task was too abstract and removed from mechanics for Most Holy Order of the Socket Wrench to provide a stacking benefit, but being able to code like ten people at once on top of the advantages of a direct neural connection was still significant.

The first expansion in parameters settled in and I was able to watch the code of each A.I. slowly begin to expand to its new processing and memory boundaries. The rest of the expansions would trigger at regular intervals until I performed the next checkup. The A.I.s weren’t at anywhere near a human level of cognition, but there was a sense of potential to be explored that could be looked at as excitement. I was proud of that. This was something I had committed to doing right, and it was reassuring to see the programs developing stably.

Just as I finished confirming the parameters the Celestial Forge missed a connection with the knowledge constellation. Fleet and Survey were developing at a good pace and I had an important task for Survey to undertake. Specifically I badly needed Survey to survey the workshop.

I emerged to the physical world to find Garment vanished. Luckily she had decided to counter the labyrinthine nature of the new workshop by doing the Theseus-Ariadne thing. There was a trail of red thread leading from the neural interface to a portion of the workshop we hadn’t explored yet. I followed it past equipment and machinery to find what had grabbed Garment’s attention.

The thing about comprehensive manufacturing is if it covers everything a society can produce then ultimately it’s going to surprise you. For instance, given the cyberpunk nature of most of the workshop with its materials labs, cloning vats, and computer bays it hadn’t occurred to me that textile manufacture is still a pretty significant thing.

Garment had found the wing of the workshop that held every piece of equipment relating to cloth or clothing production. From the way she was behaving when I found her it was clear I had effectively lost ownership over this section of the workshop and it wouldn’t be worth the effort to contest the claim. Garment was fawning over a collection of industrial assembly machines worthy of a textile factory. Given how quickly she could work I’m not sure how much of a step up this actually was, but she was certainly excited about it and eager to show me all of her new treasures.

With a closer inspection there was clearly some advantage to be had here. As far as I could tell Garment’s manufacture worked to peak human ability. Most industrial sewing and weaving had been a step down in quality to allow the kind of mass production that took clothing from being a major part of a family’s household budget to the current level where ninety percent of clothing items could be considered basically disposable. Because of that Garment’s hand work was significantly better than modern equivalents.

That is modern equivalents made with modern technology. That didn’t apply when you were talking about the series of micro fabricators, custom textiles, and nanomaterials that the upgraded workshop gave her access to. Incredibly this was the kind of equipment that could actually let Garment take her clothing design to the next level.

“That’s great Garment.” She made a frantic series of gestures and caresses a nano-extruder apparatue. “Uh, I’ve got more work to do, so are you...” She made a dismissive gesture and turned back to an assembly for designing custom synthetic polymers. Normally there would be a lack of feedstock, but Garment’s ability to summon supplies seemed to have completely sidestepped that problem. It seemed like she’d be alright here for a while. In fact, from the way she was acting I doubted I’d be able to get her out anytime soon.

I pulled up my omni-tool and summoned another swarm of drones before calling up Survey’s interface. A set of words appeared on the screen.

‘Greetings. Request?’

The plain language responses still took some getting used to, but I appreciated both the effort it required and the development it signified. I entered a series of commands to map the expanded workshop and inventory the new equipment. There was a flicker and a response appeared on the screen. ‘Acknowledged’.

I can’t believe I had to deploy A.I. guided drones to figure out the contents of my own workshop. I know powers can work on a ridiculous scale, but this is just insane. I had two rooms before I left and now the place is at a point where just covering the distance is a chore. I need some of those moving sidewalks they have on airports, or at least a few escalators. It was too late in the evening to have to deal with a crafting expansion the size of a large mall.

But no matter how late it is, there’s still work to do. I had a pile of tinker tech that needs analysis, and that drove me to trudge back through my cavernous workshop towards my mystifyingly less cavernous Laboratorium.

On three separate occasions I had triggered freak outs by bringing the wrong thing into my analysis lab. Even with the small amount of insight I got through my Armourer database the workings of the cyberskulls was something of a mystery. As such I was prepared for the worst when I walked into the cathedral like space carrying Uber’s forcefield, Leet’s katana, the camera drone, and a case of Bakuda’s cranial bombs.

Once again my Laboratorium proved it could completely surprise me. You know the reaction you get from a bunch of little kids when they cram them all into a room and then someone walks in with a sack of toys dressed as Santa? That was what I experienced when I entered the technology analysis lab with my spoils from the night’s combat. Every single skull in the place popped up with a gleam in their optics and a sense of childish excitement in the thrashing of their cables.

There was a chorus of electronic trills and happy little bobbing skulls. Preliminary scans of the tech I was carrying started playing themselves across displays as I was guided reverently towards the command throne. Incenses sticks were replaced and offerings of oils and small machine parts were placed in front of various icons. As I handed over the items for analysis the excitement reached a crescendo.

Then the music started.

It was more a hymn than any kind of typical music, but apparently this bounty was deemed deserving of songs of thanks. I wasn’t as good with the spoken form of the Laboratorium’s weird gothic language as I was with its written equivalent, but I was able to catch the odd phrase about thanks, glory, and appreciation for bounty, gratitude for blessing, and painful fiery death to heretics.

I really hope that last one was a mistranslation.

I moved through the massive room towards the command throne flanked by happily working skulls coordinating their analysis work to the sound of the hymns playing in the background. It was like being on an exceptionally morbid version of the Small World ride at DisneyLand, only somehow slightly less creepy. As I was guided into the seat complete with the traditional failed connection to spinal data jacks the first of the analysis steps completed, sending a chorus of “AVE IMPERATOR!” echoing through the room.

I flinched under the volume of the cry, then checked the results provided by the system. One of the cranial bombs had its explosive yield identified. The device worked by a kind of hyper compressed fluid that would vaporize into a high temperature cloud when triggered. The ensuing vapor was designed to hold heat frighteningly well and would probably set anything it touched on fire if not for the fact that it completely displaced oxygen. Essentially it cooked whatever it touched, probably leaving behind a blackened mess.

It was a disturbing reminder of what I was dealing with and what I still needed to counter. There wasn’t enough information to recreate the device, much less apply the principles to other technology. It would need further analysis and probably some measure of personal study before...

“AVE IMPERATOR!”

The cry went out again as another basic component of a cranial bomb was deciphered, this time the anti-tamper device that I had bypassed. I barely had time to start reviewing the readout before a third “AVE IMPERATOR!” echoed around the room, briefly drowning out the hymn and its verse about the reassuring comfort of golden radiance that scours the flesh from vile witches.

I think I just stumbled across the Laboratorium’s version of the Windows alert sound. I would have looked into finding some way of changing it, but every time the cry went out the skulls did this little hop of joy. A lot of them were swaying to the sound of the hymn and I had the sense this was the technological equivalent of a work song. Even after dozens of refrains and the clear evidence that the hymn was playing on a loop I didn’t have the heart to interrupt them.

The cacophony may have helped the skull’s productivity and mood, but I couldn’t say the same for myself. Between how fast the data was building up and the constant refrains of “AVE IMPERATOR!” with every discovery it was taking everything I had to keep up with the reports. The skulls could handle the bulk of the analysis, but needed an occasional decision on prioritization or resources or approved methods. I was holding off on any destructive testing for now, which limited the information I could gather but preserved my very finite supply of technology.

In the midst of everything there was a significant development in the form of a connection to the Resources and Durability constellation of the Celestial Forge. The power was called Reliable Invention. It made my inventions reliable. Okay, I might be getting a bit glib about the names of the powers. Essentially it ensured that there would be no malfunctions with anything I built. The only way for one of my creations to break down was improper use or intentional damage. Regular use would never cause any wear or deterioration.

That was good enough on its own, but like Built to Last there was a hidden benefit to this power. Built to Last protected my creations from rust and time. That let me use materials that were ideal in every aspect except corrosion resistance. Similarly Reliable Invention removed the possibility of damage during normal use. I could design something out of parts that would normally wear out in minutes and the device would keep functioning for ages. It wouldn’t help against intentional damage or misuse, but it opened a significant amount of potential.

I was contemplating the possibilities while listening to the constant refrains of alerts when the doors opened and Garment marched in. She didn’t look upset, but there was a concerned pattern to her steps. She was also carrying her laptop which received greeting from various skulls as it passed, likely due to that wax seal and strip of parchment still attached from its last visit. There was a return flicker from the laptop in response, so apparently some kind of comradery had built up between the electronically inclined residents of my workshop.

The skulls seemed a little disappointed when I left the command throne to check on her, but another cry of “AVE IMPERATOR!” got them right back on task. Garment quickly indicated to the screen of her laptop, showing a now complete 3d map of the workshop.

“Garment, that’s great. Did Survey...”

She cut off my question and gestured to an area of the map that seemed like it looped around behind where the door would be. Actually, with the variable placement of the portal cardinal directions didn’t really work. It was really more left, right, in, and out. The workshop was ‘left’ and extended mostly ‘in’ while the Laboratorium was ‘right’. There were a couple of rooms that were towards the ‘out’ direction, and Garment clearly felt they needed attention.

I set the Laboratorium to autonomous analysis, pulled up my own copy of the map, and followed Garment. Survey had done a good job with the broad strokes of the mapping, but had encountered a significant issue. I had never seen an A.I. experience this level of frustration, but it seemed running into an effectively unsolvable problem could cause it. Survey was an information A.I. that didn’t know what it was looking at.

The physical structure of the workshop had been mapped. Actually, given its size referring to it as a ‘workshop’ felt like underselling it. What else could I call it? Manufactorium? Forge dimension? Crafting Mall? Anyway, the layout hadn’t been the cause of the problem, the contents had been.

Simply put Survey had no idea what most of the machinery in this place was, or what it did. The A.I.’s normal method of network research and analysis was a dry well considering this technology didn’t exist yet. There were a few attempts at identification, but when those repeatedly proved to be inaccurate the program had defaulted to listing detailed and somehow slightly sarcastic descriptions of the machinery instead. Yes, I suppose a polymer fixation integration chamber did look a bit like an elephant having a stroke, but that wasn’t a useful categorization method.

At some point Survey had also shifted from short sentences to attempting to convey reactions through images. I blame over exposure to Twitter for that particular development, though Survey seemed to have effectively found a bottomless well of ‘girl looking exasperated’ photos to help express frustration.

As I followed Garment I worked to correct and clarify as much data as I could. Just having proper names and data for classification seemed to make a huge difference in bringing the A.I. back to task. By the time we were approaching our destination the photos used for reactions had shifted to a more satisfied tone and an index was being compiled of equipment layouts.

It was lucky that I have taken care of that issue before we arrived because Garment had brought me into one of the more disturbing areas of my workshop. This was the cybernetics lab. That meant surgery beds, medical supplies, and for the first time actual prepared components.

It seemed the clinic from my Cyber-doctor Equipment had effectively merged with the relevant section of the workshop. There was a slight tone shift as the room transitioned from corporate polish to a decidedly grittier feel. Interestingly the grittier technology was actually more advanced. The rest of the workshop was sporting what I would call peak-cyberpunk, while this section was more post-cyberpunk. Nothing here was new or polished, but it was a lot more refined and durable. I was looking at the difference between innovative and mature technologies, kind of a fascinating contrast.

I was also looking at a complete cybernetics facility. This was one aspect of upgrading my equipment that I wasn’t sure about. On one hand I could easily use cybernetics to greatly increase my personal abilities. With my supporting powers and the repair feature of my workshop I would never need to worry about parts wearing out or being rendered inoperable.

On the other hand this was a major step, and had huge implications. My nanites wouldn’t be able to repair cybernetics like they could my normal body. The technology would be invasive in the extreme and while I might be able to manage the surgery, performing it on myself was another matter. It was possible, and had serious advantages, but I just wasn’t ready for something that drastic just yet.

I took a few seconds to check the rest of the contents of the cybernetic clinic. There were some drugs in stock, a few crudely bound text books, one of the few computers present outside the software development section, and a 3d fabricator at least as good as anything in the rest of my workshop.

There was also a gigantic spiked hammer with a rocket engine attached to it.

I knew I had a rocket hammer. I was aware of its addition as soon as my power granted it to me. I understood the concept and had the basic martial arts skill to use it.

I just didn’t expect it to be so awesome.

I mean, it should have been irrelevant. I had been using HF omni-blades and earthquake weapons tonight. I’d churned out technically superior weapons on a whim. It was just, this was a hammer with a rocket on it. It was difficult to use while being simultaneously worse than any other melee weapon I’d created, possibly only outshining the monomolecular pen knife I’d made as a prototype. Despite all that the idea of swinging around a rocket assisted spike of steel had a visceral appeal that I just couldn’t deny.

I wanted to use it. I mean, the amount of work necessary to turn it into something even approaching an effective weapon compared to my other options would be titanic, but my other options weren’t rocket hammers. Maybe this was all those smithing powers I’d gotten coming to the forefront. Despite all the work I’d done I hadn’t been able to properly forge anything. Maybe I had some kind of pent up hammering instinct. Or maybe there was just a base level appeal to a weapon this ridiculously entertaining.

Garment was tapping one shoe impatiently by the door, drawing me away from the weapon that was either stupidly awesome or awesomely stupid. I pushed through the last of the clinic and finally reached the rooms Garment wanted to show me.

It was my new apartment. Apartments. In the excitement I’d almost forgotten about this addition. Both the expanded workshop and cyber-clinic came with simple apartments included. The door from the cybernetics section led to a short hallway linking both single room dwellings.

The cyber-clinic apartment was the first along the hallway. It consisted of a cramped room stuffed with the bare necessities of a modest existence. The walls were rough plaster and most of the furnishings looked ancient and repurposed from other items. There was rust growing on all exposed metal, including the meager kitchen and metal basin of a sink. A small curtained off area held what passed for a bathroom. The rundown shelves were bare of any possessions, but a sad mattress sat on the floor with a thin blanket and chunk of foam for a pillow. The only other furnishings were a low table and a couple of mats for sitting or kneeling around it.

The only item in even reasonable condition was the heirloom weapon, a kind of bracer mounted side blade designed to extend parallel to the forearm when worn. It was a beautiful piece, and I could recognize how deadly it would be when combined with even basic maneuvers from the martial art that had been granted to me. It was still not nearly enough to dispel the desperate atmosphere of the room.

There were what passed for windows, but there were just a series of metal slates that allowed air flow and gave the vague impression of opening to a city at night. A cursory examination showed the effect to be completely artificial. Nothing could pass through them, and the airflow was unusually consistent. Clearly they were there to give the impression of not being completely contained rather than allowing any freedom. There was also an additional door directly linking the two apartments, separate from the hallway.

The second apartment was a step up and was clearly linked to the workshop expansion. While the first had been a desolate hovel filled with salvaged scrap items the second one at least looked like it had been intended to house a human, if not particularly comfortably. It was still fairly run-down, but nothing like the level of persistent decay the previous room had shown.

It was a proper single-room studio apartment. There was a dedicated area for sleeping and something that could pass for an actual bed. There was a sitting area that held a table, moderately comfortable chairs, and a small desk. An actual kitchen was present with a stove, small oven, microwave, and full refrigerator. The appliances had seen better days, but were all functional, even the tiny washer-dryer combo in the bathroom.

It was a proper bathroom, not the sad curtained off section the other room had had. It was pretty cramped, but perfectly serviceable with a sink and standing shower. Both the apartment and bathroom had a frosted glass window creating the impression of looking out over an indistinct city, but most certainly an aesthetic feature like the window in the previous room.

I was a little embarrassed by the fact that this place compared pretty favorably to my own apartment. I could say that my lopsided studio was a step above the salvaged scrap room, but that wasn’t saying much. My power gave me an apartment specifically designed to be basic and run down and it still counted as a lifestyle improvement.

My tour of the rooms had been facilitated by Garment, who painstakingly pointed out every feature and aspect included in them. I was guessing she had seen the completed map from Survey while I was busy with technology analysis and already investigated. She wasn’t exactly showing off the rooms, more making an angry demonstration of the various features that she felt were clearly substandard.

“Ok Garment, I get it.” There was a huffing movement that indicated she didn’t believe her point had been properly made.

“Seriously, it’s not a big deal. I’m fine with this.” She actually recoiled at my statement. “I’m serious. This means I’ll be able to get my stuff out of the entryway and not have to sleep there anymore. It’s a big improvement.”

She looked a bit ill at that statement. “I know it’s not that nice.” From Garment’s reaction she clearly felt I had understated things by a colossal magnitude. “But it’s living space, that’s all that matters, right?”

Garment clearly was of the opinion that that no, that was not all that mattered. “Look, it’s just for sleeping. I don’t even need all this space. Do you want one of these rooms?” She clearly did not. “You can have the nicer one if you want? I can stay in the first one.”

I’d never seen Garment move so quickly as she scrambled for a stack of papers held beneath her laptop. She rushed to hand them to me, then moved to completely block my access to the more run-down apartment. I shuffled through the sketches as Garment watched me like a hawk.

When I finished I let out a sigh. “Garment, these are very nice.” She preened. “But...” She stopped moving. I pressed on. “But I don’t have time for renovations right now. There’s important work to do and I need to prioritize things.”

She tapped the drawing showing the revised layout of the workshop apartment and then the one that converted the clinic apartment into an office/sitting room. “Yes, that’s wonderful, but I don’t have time to do it now. I promise I’ll get to it, but not right now. I’ve just barely caught up with what’s already been added to the workshop.”

There was a sudden rumbling through the floor as the entire workshop shook around us. I would have been terrified if I wasn’t privy to the exact cause of the disruption.

The Celestial Forge had just made a new connection to the Toolkits constellation. The item was called the Skyforge, and it added a magical eagle themed forge to my workshop. This was the first time I had received an item like this while actually being inside the workshop and apparently it created a significant disruption for the occupants.

My omni-tool pinged and Survey displayed a twitter picture of a woman grabbing her hair with both hands, then began deleting and redrawing a section of the 3d map. From what was being filled in it looked like an interesting addition.

“Garment, we can come back to this later. I need to see what just happened.” Her reaction implied agreement, but assured me the issue was far from settled.

There had been another minor power connected with the Skyforge. It was called Standing Stone:The Lover. The name might have been odd even by the standards of the Celestial Forge, but apparently it was the manifest power of astrology. I had been imbued with the blessing of a fictional constellation that provided a very slight but also completely universal increase to my learning speed. Not exactly overwhelming, but still welcome.

The final factor was not even classified as a power. It was more a change in the metaphysical mechanics, similar to when Innate Talent: Alchemist had opened up the possibility of learning spells under the ranked/tier magic system. Just having access to the power gave me a small pool of energy, or magicka. Potentially I could develop it and learn to cast spells, but like with the tier system I would have to research things from square one, meaning an intense amount of study and experimentation.

I did have another potential use for this ability. Unlike with the ranked system I already had my magicka pool available, rather than having to develop spellcasting to get access to it. Since that was a source of magic I should be able to power magitek devices from it. With the ability to produce infinite call beads I wasn’t exactly short on magical power sources, but it raised the possibility of building technology powered by my own internal magic rather than relying on other fuel sources. That had a certain fundamental appeal.

Garment and I crossed the length of the workshop to reach the new addition. It was nestled between the Alchemist's Laboratory and the materials and metallurgical crafting equipment. I was expecting it to kind of be crammed into the available space. I was not expecting a cobblestone archway with a flight of steps leading upwards out of the workshop.

As I climbed the stairs the air got progressively colder. It would have been uncomfortable, but I had been dealing with a warm mid-April night where all the city's air conditioning had been knocked out. The gym had been even more of a sweatbox than usual and even the open air of the city had a heavy feel to it. By contrast the breeze blowing down the stairs had a clean sharp feeling to it, like something open and untamed.

The reason became clear as I emerged from the stairs to be greeted by a massive eagle statue lit from below by a glowing pool of lava. Its eyes glowed with heat and smoke trailed from its beak into the night air. The open night air.

The Skyforge was sitting open to the elements surrounded by distant mountain ranges. I could feel a cold winter wind blow across the open starlit landscape. It was chilling and breathtaking for reasons that had nothing to do with the temperature.

Some careful examination confirmed the same properties as the apartment windows. There was an invisible perimeter around the mountaintop forge that was impossible to move past. It wasn’t a force field or invisible wall, just a disorienting kind of stretching sensation as you stopped making progress despite still moving. More fiat controlled aesthetics for workshop attachments.

As Garment admired the starry night sky and expansive view I took a closer look at the forge itself. This was a proper forge, and a magical one at that. I could feel the power within this place. The way it pulsed with energy was almost like a living thing. Any metal item I made here would be significantly harder and tougher than would be otherwise possible. Furthermore, this was an excellent quality forge. I could do true smith work here, rather than trying to approximate it with heat sources in my workshop. Making bone steel would be so much easier thanks to this place.

But that was just so much more work to do. I checked my omni-tool and realized that my potion had finished brewing. If I was going to get anything accomplished I would need serious help. I hurried out with Garment following me the short distance to the Alchemist's Laboratory. There the heat had automatically shut off, leaving the steaming beaker of bright blue liquid. I carefully decanted it into a set of five vials and picked the first of them up.

Okay, I had my omni-tool, so that was key in duplication. I collected my meteorite and dry ice samples for call bead creation. That was enough for the moment, and I had four more potions in reserve in case I needed anything else.

Garment watched as I downed the vial in two swallows. Like before, each gulp created a shifting around my limbs as a duplicate image was superimposed over me. One by one my copies stepped out into the Laboratory.

They looked exhausted. Not physically exhausted, but there was a weariness with every movement, a kind of slow burden behind every expression. It was like I was looking at the impact of the night on myself, and I didn’t like what I saw.

Still, there was work to do. I cleared my throat and stood straighter. “Okay, there’s a lot to do. We need to upgrade the manufacturing facilities, start multiplying resources, build and improve cape gear, analyze Bakuda’s technology, get some workshop defenses in place, and monitor the city for updates.”

I felt tired just saying it, and it didn’t seem to go over any better with my copies. They shared a single glance before replying.

“No.”

I stared blankly at them. I didn’t expect this. I had approached using the duplication potion with extreme caution, but I thought this had been previously resolved. I didn’t expect dissent, or even think there could be dissent from perfect copies of myself.

“Excuse me?”

The first copy shook his head wearily. “Yeah, no to everything you just said. None of that, not tonight. You need sleep, food and stress relief, in that order.”

“I’m going to exist for less than ten minutes and the idea of any of that exhausts me. This has gone on long enough. Get some fucking sleep, for our sake.” The second chimed in.

It didn’t help that Garment seemed to be fully onboard with this plan. I was feeling betrayed and outnumbered as I tried to make my case. “Look, with everything that happened tonight...”

“Yes, it was a mess. We screwed up. Everyone here feels horrible about it. Except for Garment, of course.” The second duplicate smiled at Garment, and she playfully waved him off.

“Do you think a late night sleep deprived crafting binge is going to make this evening any better? It’s happened, we’ll learn from it. Needlessly punishing yourself isn’t going to help, especially when you’re reducing your effectiveness by doing so.”

I glared at my first copy. “It’s different. We can get so much done, all those new powers, new equipment...”

“Will still be here in the morning. The last time we had anything approaching proper sleep was what, Thursday?” The second duplicate nodded at him and I had to deal with a very displeased reaction from Garment. “That’s not healthy. You know without the nanites we’d be dead on our feet right now. We saw what that kind of thing did to the Undersiders. Do you want us making technical decisions in that kind of state?”

“Oh, and if you’re thinking about just making new copies, do you think they’ll be any more inclined than we are?” I glared at the second duplicate, but kept silent.

“Here.” The first took out his reagents and offered them to me with the second following suit. “Take these and churn out some call beads. We’ll deal with whatever we can get to in the meantime, but after that you need some sleep.

I looked at the components in my hand, then at the forces arrayed against me, and finally admitted defeat. The duplicates sighed in relief and turned towards the door. “Right, I’ll start with...”

He stopped talking as both of them shifted to a distant and contemplative expression. I knew the precise reason for that. The Celestial Forge had made another connection.

It was to the Alchemy constellation, to a fairly minor mote, but one part of a larger cluster. The cluster had two of the smallest motes, one mid-sized, and one that dwarfed most of the largest motes from most other constellations. The mote was called Simplified Formulae and it gave access to an entirely new style of alchemy.

This wasn’t traditional ‘chemical by another name’ alchemy or ‘magic potions’ alchemy or even ‘magic spells with material components’ alchemy. It was completely distinct from every style of alchemy I had encountered through the Forge or ever heard of outside it. It was the near magical restructuring of matter through the use of circles and technical knowledge.

Near magical, because it was definitely not magic, at least compared to my other magic powers. It was possibly powered by the channeling of tectonic forces, or potentially some obscure esoteric energy source. My knowledge of the higher level details were fairly sparse. I had the core level concepts. Understand composition of material, draw circle, disassemble material, recombine in desired form. There was a lot more potential, but those aspects weren’t covered by this power.

What was covered was an insane level of efficiency in deployment. Normally it would be impossible to affect anything outside the transmutation circle, but with the insight granted by this power I would be able to circulate the energy of the transmutation with a much smaller array. A symbol small enough to fit in the palm of the hand could manage the effect of a ten or twenty foot wide circle.

There were certain immutable laws regarding this practice of Alchemy, specifically the concept of equivalent exchange. The most basic property of this was The Law of Conservation of Mass, or the input mass had to equal the output mass. That was a core and immutable aspect of this system of alchemy that my powers just balled up and threw into the trash.

I could tell right away that Workaholic applied to alchemical transmutation. The total destruction and reconstruction was more than enough to count as creation of a new item. That meant every transmutation would, upon the recombining of materials, either make five copies or increase in mass by twenty five times. That was a serious blessing because with my current skill level the speed of my alchemy would have been glacial. This perk would take it to the point where the transmutations would occur in a reasonable time scale, but it was a far cry from being combat applicable.

The second law was one I couldn’t disregard so casually. The Law of Natural Providence meant that objects had to be transmuted into objects of similar makeup and properties. Not just the same elements, but the intrinsic properties of the object. That could be stretched, but only with serious difficulty and my skill level wasn’t conducive to pushing the boundaries of the craft.

That skill cap was fairly limiting. I could manage broad changes and large scale works, but I wouldn’t be transmuting complex electronics any time soon. Nanostructures were not even a possibility. Alchemy was incredibly useful, but it wouldn’t be the answer to all my crafting needs.

Standing across from my duplicates I had the unique experience of watching them finish contemplating the nature of the new ability at the same time I did. It was this distant, detached look and the full implications of the power were considered. It was also really obvious. Is this what I’d been doing in front of everyone? Either they were exceptionally polite or just figured I was prone to zoning out at random moments. I should probably watch out for that before someone gets suspicious.

There was another rumbling and one of the duplicates suddenly spun off across the room. For once I got a chance to be here in person as the Alchemist’s Laboratory was upgraded for new alchemical knowledge. The room expanded and an entirely new section with circles, reagents, and diagrams was added. Just like that I had a dedicated space for my new form of Alchemy.

“Wow, that was really something.” The (second?) duplicate called from across the room.

“Uh, yeah. Really significant.” The first yawned. “Doesn’t change anything. You start with the call beads, we’ll deal with what we can in the workshop, then sleep. I have a limited amount of existence and I don’t want to spend it this exhausted.” The second nodded as he followed the first out, with Garment trailing after them.

Is it weird that I don’t trust copies of myself with Garment? The idea of not having to deal with the consequences of your actions combined with Garment’s usual behavior...

You know what, it’ll be fine. I mean, I didn’t really believe that, but there wasn’t much I could do about it at this point.

I picked up the first two copied reagents and activated the Call Up formula. Like before the mixtures glowed brightly and rose into the air as the connection was formed. Unlike before I felt one of my powers activate.

Call Up created call beads. Since I was making something that meant Workaholic activated. With a second’s time to make the decision I chose copies rather than size and the bead split into five identical crystals before dropping into my hand.

Apparently I had even more unlimited magical fuel than I had anticipated. With this level of production just one use of a duplication potion would cover me for the foreseeable future. Sixty beads per potion, five potions per production, so effectively three hundred with a single hour’s work. Most of that was unattended work, so maybe five minutes of actual crafting time.

And those were the copies of normal sized beads. There had been the option for a larger bead. Unlike with the larger potion there was actually an effect to a larger bead. The bead was a stabilized portal to the passenger realm. The amount of energy that the portal could transfer as well as the rate it could be provided was massively dependent on the size of the aperture. Even a slight increase could have a huge effect. It could create an item of immense power.

I considered for a moment, then drew another set of reagents. This time I chose to multiply the size rather than number. The reagents glowed and floated into the air. Then they glowed some more. Then they expanded. Then the glow got brighter. Then the mixture got bigger. Then brighter. Then bigger.

The light was so intense I had to squeeze my eyes shut and could still feel the heat on my skin. Without my reinforcement I would probably have ended up with a sunburn from the power radiating off the mixture. I heard a crackling sound as the brightness slowly started to diminish. I was able to crack open my eyelids just in time to see a blue crystal the size of a tangerine drop into my hand.

The glow from inside the crystal was intense, but that wasn’t the disturbing part. Its light had the same distant look of normal call beads, but there was a flickering aspect to it. A normal call bead flickered, but it flickered like a Christmas light. It didn’t flicker like something was moving across the source of its glow, temporarily occluding the light from the other side.

It was also powerful. I could feel the energy emanating from it. Maybe it was my new magicka pool that did it, or maybe it was just so strong that it would be apparent to anyone, but this was a colossal amount of power. It was the magical equivalent of a nuclear device and sat right in the palm of my hand.

It didn’t even feel right to refer to something like this as a call bead. It was in an entirely different league. What should its name be? Call Stone? Call Gem?

I was considering the question when one of the duplicates burst into the lab with an active omni-tool. He took one look at the item in my hand before speaking.

“The hell?”

“Oh,” I held up the glowing sphere. “Workaholic affects the call up formula. Multiple beads, or larger beads. Larger beads are a lot more powerful.”

“Yes. I know.” He held up the omni-tool and I saw the other duplicate and Garment displayed on it. “Situation’s stable-ish. He did a stupid thing with alchemy.”

“Stupid?” I tried to protest, but the duplicate shushed me.

“We felt that at the other side of the workshop, so yes, stupid. I’m calling 3am thinking and putting my foot down about the sleep thing.”

“But it’s only...”

“I think we can agree that this night counts as over time. It’s been 3am for several hours now. Are you going to go along with this, or do I need to get Garment and the other guy to back me up?”

I know I have a tendency to be hard on myself, but this is ridiculous. I ended up staying there, supervised by myself, as I used the rest of the reagents to make normal call beads, then spent a bit of time discussing the potential of alchemy.

“We already tried that. Holograms don’t work. The array needs to be physical, or attached to a physical object. You need to flash fabricate something to channel the energy. Easy enough to recycle afterwards, but it’s not like you can just flash cycle through arrays at a whim.” The duplicate spoke as he set another potion to brew. If I was being sent to bed like a child at least I would have some potions waiting for me when I work up.

“What about programmable materials,” I asked. “Memory metal, or some kind of nano component?” I adjusted the heat and timer for my own portion of the lab. I was making an attempt at some Natural Alchemy potions, which were actually a lot more varied and nuanced than I expected.

“Good idea. Probably enough nanites saved up in the containment unit for some activated nano-ink. Combine with nanite control and it could be any array we’d need.” His omni-tool pinged, with me kept out of the communication. “Other guy is done. Time for the handoff and sleep. Just in time, we’re getting close to eight minutes.”

“You don’t have to do this. I can make it myself.”

“You can also make magical WMDs while sleep deprived. I don’t trust myself in this state, so I’m not trusting you.”

I grumbled about it, but frankly it was a bit endearing. He led me out of the lab and towards the apartments. We were met half way by Garment and the other duplicate, who took the handoff and marched me between them like a death row inmate.

“So how did your work go?”

“Great.” The duplicate smiled at Garment. “Managed a full set of critical upgrades, developed and field tested a bunch of transmutation arrays. Actually, here.” My omni-tool pinged at the transfer.

“Great.” I drew out the word. “Anything else?”

“Basic housekeeping. Also added our symbol as a profile picture on PHO.”

I nodded. It was something I planned to do, and apparently something I did do. “Anything on there that I should know about.”

“Nothing that can’t wait until morning.” His answer was a little stiff, but I decided to trust myself on that front. I wouldn’t put sleep before an active disaster. “Hey, past the previous record.” He called out as the timer ran past the duration of my last attempt at this potion.

It was a little weird walking next to someone who could vanish at any moment, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. The final duration turned out to be nine minutes, fifty eight point five seconds, a nearly perfect potion. When he vanished Garment took the lead and opened the door to the more run down of the apartments.

I froze when I saw it, and the words of my duplicate echoed through my head. “Critical upgrades?”

Garment looked insufferably pleased with herself. The entire room had been transformed. It was legitimately unrecognizable compared to the dilapidated hole it had been before. Instead it was a modern, comfortable and well-appointed office.

The plaster walls had been overlaid, or possibly transmuted, into immaculate paneling with subtle designs etched into them. There was professional lighting, both overhead and wall mounted, banishing the dank gloom that had previously permeated the room before. The Floor was now hardwood with a rich carpet that Garment seemed very proud of. Even the slated windows had been redesigned with an immaculate frame and tasteful window dressings.

The salvaged furniture was gone. It was replaced by hardwood items, a professional desk, a side table, cabinets and bookshelves, and a small seating area. The heirloom weapon sat proudly on a prominent stand at the edge of the room. The water connections had even been taken advantage of to add a small wet bar.

I was guided through the next door to the second revised apartment. This wasn’t the complete night and day transformation the previous one had been, but was still stunning. The seating area had been removed to make more room for the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. Everything was neat, clean, immaculately designed and perfectly arranged.

The bathroom wasn’t the cramped mess from before, it actually had a bathtub and shower. I don’t think I’d had access to a tub since I left home, much less one I could actually fit in. There was subtle design work in every surface that created a soothing and cohesive feel to the room. The kitchen was massively improved, the appliances upgraded, and most of my food from the outside apartment had been transferred here, as had my toiletries.

I recognized the sheets from Garment’s work on my previous bed. The mattress looked larger and was on a custom designed bed frame. I had a feeling alchemy had played a big part in this. There were wardrobes with all of my (Garment designed) clothing hanging in them as well as a fresh set of pajamas.

The whole thing was beautiful, and a wonderful gesture, even if most of it had come from myself. It was incredible to see the effect of all those design powers from the outside. I had kind of lost touch with how impactful that kind of thing could be. “Thank you Garment.” She made a pleased gesture, then pointed at the bed. “Yes, I’ll get some sleep.” She pointed at my watch. Right, running alarm. Well, best to not even have the option. I pulled it off and handed it over, not even acknowledging a missed connection to the Magitech constellation.

With the prospect of sleep before me I was able to accept how bone tired I actually was. I may have fought against this, but considering the pittance of time it took and the benefits I could easily live with it. My projects would be waiting for me in the morning. For now I needed some decent and honestly well-earned sleep.

(Author’s Note: To cover more of what’s happening in the setting I’m planning to start including addendums to chapters going forward. Some of these will be short interludes that couldn’t fill a chapter on their own. Some might be PHO threads, or other in-universe media. It will provide a chance to look outside the main character's perspective and see the changes to the setting as butterflies start building up. Interludes will still be part of the story, but this will allow shorter looks into the lives of other characters.)

Addendum Taylor

Taylor squinted as Brian pulled the car to a stop. Her head was still swimming from the after effects of Bakuda’s bomb and there was an unsettling kind of reverberating feeling coming from her swarm. She looked out the window with dread. She didn’t want to do this, but this was well past the point where she had a choice.

“Are you ready for this?” Lisa put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. It wasn’t as necessary as it had been right after she woke up, but still appreciated.

“Not really, but it’s not like that matters now.” She gave the girl a gloomy smile and let Brian help her out of the car.

She took slow and careful steps on the accustomed path, supported by Lisa on the other side. Her eyes were still half closed and focusing was hard, but with her swarm that hardly mattered. They weren’t half way across the lawn when she heard the front door slam open and felt the familiar figure rush out of the house.

“Taylor? My God, are you alright? Can I help?”

“It's fine Mr. Hebert, we should just get her inside. I’m Lisa, we spoke on the phone?”

“Yes, of course. I’ve gotten everything ready for you, set things up downstairs in case she couldn’t handle the climb.

“I’m fine.” Taylor tried to wave him off, but stumbled slightly and had to be supported by Brian.

“Maybe downstairs first, until she finds her feet?”

“Of course, Brian right? Thank you for this.”

“Trust me, we feel awful about it.” He replied as they entered the house. Even with her eyes half closed the sounds, smells, just the texture of home calmed her down in a way she didn’t realize she needed. “We nearly lost track of her in that first blast, then with the way the city was...”

“Of course.” She felt herself settled onto the sofa bed, made up with fresh dryer-warm blankets. There was the smell of baking in the air and a kettle was beginning to whistle. “I was kind of at a loss after you called, so I tried to get everything ready. Would you like to sit in the kitchen? Without the sofa there’s not much space here.”

“Thank you Mr. Hebert.”

“Please, call me Danny, after everything you’ve done...”

“I’ll be with you in a moment, I’m just going to help Taylor get settled.” Taylor cracked her eyes a bit further open as Lisa sat next to her and Brian disappeared into the kitchen with her Dad. She heard them begin to talk, the prepared story about Taylor being caught in an early blast, treated for a concussion, and it only being safe to return now.

“It’s fine. He doesn’t suspect anything.” Lisa whispered.

“I don’t like lying to my Dad.” Her voice was bitter as she returned the whisper.

“I know, but this was the best choice we had.”

Taylor grit her teeth, but knew the girl was right. With the after effects of the bomb she was the only Undersider Joe hadn’t been able to magically heal. Lisa had explained it as being related to the part of her brain that controlled her powers. It meant Joe actually had some limits, even if that limit seemed to be incredibly obscure.

She hadn’t been stable enough to walk on her own, and trying to follow that motorcycle repair hadn’t done her limited stability any favors. She really hoped that was the brain injury acting up and his hands hadn’t actually been in three places at once while reaching through solid metal. She needed help to get home and explain things away, and that meant entwining her cape identity with her normal life.

That entwinement walked back through the door, with one of them holding a pot of tea and the other with a plate of cookies. With the level of surly she was feeling both were welcome additions. It led to her and Lisa sitting on the edge of the sofa bed holding cups of tea with the plate of cookies between them and Brian and her father hovering nearby.

“Your friend filled me in on what happened, I mean more than what Lisa told me over the phone.”

Brian nodded. “After the blast we were focused on staying safe. Taylor was the only one badly hurt, and we were just trying to get some help in the chaos.”

“Brian and I were away from the group when it happened. Taylor was closest, but Rachel was a bit scratched up. Alec wasn’t seriously injured, but he’s the kind to make a huge deal of everything.”

That got a weak smile from her father. “What about your other friend, Joe?”

They hadn’t prepared for this, but Lisa ran with it. “He showed up later, was a big help. With Joe we were able to get Taylor to my papa’s clinic and he ran some scans. That’s how we found out about the concussion.”

It wasn’t a concussion. Apparently Joe could fix a concussion as easy as breathing, but the symptoms were close enough and there wasn’t a convenient medical term for overworked corona poll-whatever.

It was still weird hearing Lisa use a word like ‘papa’.

“What do I owe you? For the tests?”

Lisa shook her head. “My papa would never let you pay. Not for a friend, not tonight.”

“I… thank you, really.”

There had been a doctor, though one in the employ of the Undersiders’ boss who had experience with treating parahumans. That had been an interesting examination. Healthiest people to ever walk out of a war zone, or something like that. She hadn’t been paying too much attention. Even now her focus was shifting as Lisa told her dad about her pain medication and dosage instructions.

“Joe managed alright?”

“He had to run off after we were safe, but he’s doing fine.”

“Taylor mentioned he was involved with some girl that was a bit of trouble?”

“Oh?” Taylor could practically hear the smile in Lisa’s voice as she replied. “Oh yeah, HER. She’s definitely bad news, but you know when someone just can’t keep away.” The girl leaned into Taylor’s side. “Tragic really.”

Taylor cringed in on herself, which triggered another round of concern from her dad despite her attempts to brush it off.

“I can help her upstairs. She’ll probably feel better if she gets changed.”

Her dad nodded. “I’ll leave things set up here in case you want to rest downstairs tomorrow, maybe watch some TV?”

“Thanks Dad.” She gave him a grateful smile and let the blonde girl help her up to her room.

When they arrived Lisa hid the backpack containing her costume and weapons in her closet without being asked, then helped her shift into her pajamas. After the events of the night she could probably use a shower, but didn’t trust herself to stay stable for the duration of it.

“It’s getting better?” From the thinker it was as much a statement as a question. Taylor nodded and the girl continued. “There’s not a lot of basis for this kind of thing, but with Joe’s healing…”

Taylor had to give him that. If not for the issues with her balance and focus she would have been in the best state of her life. She wasn’t really tired, or hungry, and even lacked that burn she had grown accustomed to after hard workouts. Even the tension and soreness that she entered the situation with had completely vanished. The most trying night of her life might as well have been a spa day.

Lisa had explained the last minute revelation about over-healing everyone and what it had done to their mental state. Thinking back she could maybe pick up on a few signs of what it was talking about, but it seemed like he was just trying to take responsibility for other people’s mistakes. That thought was particularly bitter when she thought about the Undersiders.

The prospect that she would ever be able to get out of this situation seemed more and more far fetched every day. You couldn’t exactly make a clean cut when the leader of your villain group was at the very moment eating chocolate chip cookies with your father. And at this point any hope of keeping Joe from getting caught up in this mess was a completely lost cause.

She knew damn well he hadn’t charged into a bomb riddled warzone for the prospect of a medical bill he had to know the Undersiders would never be able to afford.

“So what happens now?”

“Now? Now you rest up, get doted on by your father, use that doctor’s note to avoid as much school as you want and take the time to get back on your feet.”

She scowled. “You know what I mean. What happens now? What happens with Joe?”

Tattletale let out a sigh. “I’ll call him tomorrow, get him that information he wanted. We’ll have to meet with him about the medical stuff at some point, but he’s not going to push for it until you’re better.”

She picked up the intent from Lisa’s tone. “You want me to stretch this out? Fake it?”

“Not exactly, just take the time you need to recover, physically and emotionally. Take enough that you’re completely recuperated, but not enough that he gets worried and decides to do something about it.”

That was a more frightening thought than it should have been. Joe had a tendency to pull completely unexpected technology out of thin air. If he thought she had something seriously wrong with her she couldn’t dismiss the possibility of him just showing up with a tinker tech surgery center or some kind of prototype miracle cure tonic.

“He is getting stronger, isn’t he? We didn’t misread things this badly at the start, right?”

Lisa looked down with a sigh and then nodded. “Don’t know how it works, but his powers are something else. He couldn’t have done this when we met him. Whatever it is, it’s building fast.”

Taylor had suspected from the moment he arrived at the facility, but this was full confirmation of what she’d been dreading. She hadn’t just derailed the potential heroism of a promising tinker. She derailed the potential heroism of the next Dauntless. He had casually thrown away all concerns and hopes of respectability, all for the sake of whatever his thinker power had told him about her.

It was flattering and infuriating at the same time. For the first time in her life, or at least the first time in more than two years, she had someone with absolute faith in her. Who would support her no matter what. Who made her tinker tech that, if the PHO threads were to be believed, had an estimated price in the low eight figures. Who would ride through an explosion to challenge a supervillain, all for her sake. And what had she done with that level of faith?

Got him entangled with supervillains all for an undercover operation that was looking more and more futile. According to the internet she was Lady Khepri, terror of Brockton Bay. What did she think would happen if she threw up her hands and said ‘Sorry, just a misunderstanding. Actually a good guy.”

She let out a slow breath. “How do we deal with that?”

Lisa shook her head. “We’ll manage. He doesn’t want cash for tonight, that I could tell. Probably be paying it off with jobs or favors. As for the group...” She trailed off and it was easy to understand why.

Bitch had been incensed when she found out how much they could end up owing for tonight. Regent was still on everyone’s shit list and had pretty much sealed himself in his room as soon as the money was recovered. Lisa hinted there was something serious going on there, but no one was up to dealing with it tonight. Brian had something off about him following the fight, something different than what the rest of them had been dealing with. Lisa was the one determined to see things through, but there was a real chance the Undersiders might not survive this as a cohesive team.

Wouldn’t that be ironic? She joins a supervillain team to try to bring them down, only for them to fall apart before she gets the chance.

Lisa climbed off the bed and moved towards the door. “You should get some rest. Brian and I will make sure things are smoothed over with your father. Keep your phone and I’ll check in when I know what’s happening.”

Taylor nodded, but before the thinker could leave she pushed for one last question. One she’d been avoiding. “Lisa?” The girl turned around. “No one’s talking about it, but I wanted to ask. When Joe’s bike-robot thing crashed, and there was the big explosion, did... did you see anything?”

The girl went dead still, not even breathing. Her eyes were unfocused and Taylor could see a drop of sweat on her temple. She remembered what she been told about Alec bringing it up with Joe, his joke, and the tinker’s response.

‘It’s not exactly hell.’

“I’m not sure what I saw.” She took a breath. “Whatever it is, my power can’t handle it. Just grinds to a stop when I think about it.” She shook her head. “He’s the only person who could clarify that, and you’re probably the best one to get it out of him. I’m… I’m not sure what good it will do, but you could try.”

Taylor nodded and bid Lisa a good night. She lay there in the dark with a throbbing headache and the room slowly spinning around her. Despite her best effort her mind drifted back to that brief moment between when the robot had crashed and Bakuda’s bomb had landed on her. The image of fractal clouds of glowing blood-red crystals stretching through insane and inconsistent dimensions of empty black space.

And that mad perspective of sitting in the middle of a web of flesh and crystal, strands streaming into the darkness and tearing through space, so much information, so wrong. The sight, or more like the feeling, of others. Other things in the dark, waiting, eager, and totally alien.

Nobody wanted to talk about what they had seen, but it had affected every cape there. It was a harrowing message. Joe wasn’t just a another tinker, not another Armsmaster or Dragon. Probably not even another Hero. He was working with something much stronger, much more fundamental. It was a terrifying idea, even if he was on their side.

She thought back to that first meeting, running off for the promise of bringing an arms dealer to justice. The assumptions they made at the time, the idea that they had a handle on things, it was just laughable. The image of that sword glowing with power and tearing a screaming arc into the night seemed completely at odds with the college boy who had shared pizza and made cracks about the timeframe of their rush orders. Despite Tattletales assurances at the time they had no idea what they were getting into. And thinking about the miracles he’d pulled out of nowhere, they clearly still didn’t.

Taylor drifted off to an uneasy sleep as the city settled into at least a temporary peace. She could only hope it would last, but Apeiron was taking a stand against the ABB. WIth that kind of conflict in the works peace didn’t seem very likely for anyone in Brockton Bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> They're Like Legoes, Right? (Kerbal Space Program) 200:  
> There's robust engineering, and then there's modularity. Pick one. Except for you - you seem to have the gift of designing methods that allow for seamless mixing and matching of modular technology that lack none of the parts incompatibility and fragility you'd except from such a design paradigm. While this seems focused on Kerbin technology in specific, a little work should have you applying such a paradigm to all sorts of technologies...
> 
> Reliable Invention (Kim Possible) 200:  
> Anything you construct is only broken when used improperly or purposefully targeted with attacks. The items you create do not malfunction and are completely resistant to damage caused by regular usage.
> 
> Skyforge (The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim) 200:  
> An ancient, mysterious, eagle themed forge added to your warehouse. Any metal items crafted at the forge will be significantly harder and stronger for it. Something about the fires.
> 
> Standing Stone: The Lover (The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim) Free:  
> Those under the sign of the Lover learn all skills slightly faster than they otherwise would.
> 
> Simplified Formulae (Fullmetal Alchemist) 100:  
> You understand the connections between parts. You can make large alchemy circles far more easily and far less complex than others. You can combine this with Advanced Formulae for multipurpose combat alchemy.


	30. 24 Tech Work - Addendum Alec

It turns out I really needed sleep. There was very little time between the point where I climbed into my incredible new bed and the point where I was completely dead to the world. A big part of that was probably the light level. The entryway had this kind of vague murky dimness. It was dark enough to be able to sleep, but not really ideal. Still, a massive step above my apartment, so I tolerated it with additional lighting when I needed to work and not quite dark enough when I needed to sleep.

With this room I could get that deep pitch blackness that just swallowed you up. There wasn’t even the odd electric LED disturbed it. When combined with a wonderful bed, comfortable sheets, and just the right temperature, I was out like a coma patient.

That night was basically a tour of every kind of sleep I had missed out on during my frenzied work blitz. There was the ‘there is something seriously wrong’ sleep where you basically shut down and barely move. You sort of wake up hours later with your sheets solidified around you. There's the conventional sleep where you lie in bed for a brief period and have a few thoughts before you slip in and out of consciousness complete with unremembered dreams. Then there’s the ‘I don’t really need to sleep but I’m comfortable so fuck it’ period where you’re basically lounging in bed until you brain or body manage to form a convincing enough argument to get you up.

I made it to the crack of noon before a combination of biological needs and the crushing obligation of my upcoming technical projects finally punched through the blissful embrace of sleep and saw me throw myself upright. There was the brief moment of wondering where the hell I was before my brain caught up and I pulled myself away from the blankets.

The apartment had really been wonderfully arranged so that even with the limited space everything was both convenient and aesthetically appealing. I really had to give my duplicates credit. Wait, was this just a backwards way of complimenting myself? This was seriously confusing.

I went through my morning routine in a bathroom that was actually designed for human habitation rather than designed to ensure you met the legal definition for the purposes of rental listings. There were a few technical modifications that had been added by my copies to improve the livability, ensure continuous hot water, and even prevent the mirror from fogging.

The water pressure was better than I was used to in my apartment, but not quite the power sprayers they had at the gym. I’m pretty sure those had been installed long before water conservation was a concept in the public consciousness. As such, post gym showers hit with enough force to scrub the sweat off you just by the strength of the water flow. I suspect the limiting factor was whatever water input/drainage system my workshop was facilitating for this place.

After my shower I got dressed and headed over to the small kitchen. It was actually comprehensive enough to not be referred to as a kitchenette. My duplicates had managed to move over most of my food, with a focus on the better quality items purchased with the advance I received from the Undersiders. Most of the ready-to-eat items had been devoured after my life fiber mishap, so I was going to have to actually cook something.

I needed breakfast before I dove into things. Well, technically it would be brunch at this time of day. I was now certain that my nanites were supplementing my nutritional needs, but I didn’t trust them to cover everything and there was still a mental aspect to things. Yes, I could probably get by sustained by my power forever, but I didn’t think getting more isolated and removed from the human experience was a good long term idea. I decided to go for a basic fried egg and see how I felt from there.

A few things were discovered in the time it took me to fry an egg. First of all, my pans had either been replaced or rebuilt by my duplicates. I really needed to look over the transmutation arrays that had been transferred because I couldn’t see this kind of work being completed in the timeline available without using that power. When looking for a pan I found a collection that would make a small restaurant envious, all built to the insane quality and aesthetic standards that came to my power by default.

The second thing I learned is that cooking counts as making something. That should have been obvious, but this was the first time I tried it since getting those permanent crafting enhancements. To avoid ending up with an egg the size of a pizza I had to select the five times duplication. Masterwork Crafter also made itself known and had me frying with a level of care and expertise I had no experience with. Oh, and Beauty in the Arts presented itself as I was plating the meal, creating an arrangement of five perfect fried eggs, delicately spiced and perfectly displayed.

It almost looked too good to eat. Fortunately it smelled so good that that wasn’t even a minor obstacle. I probably would have chewed through the Mona Lisa if it smelled like this. It felt needlessly self-congratulatory, but it was the best plate of eggs I’ve had in my life. It may have been the best meal I’ve ever experienced, and it consisted of just three minutes of cook time.

After I absolutely demolished that meal I took a moment to consider things. This situation was actually a bit jarring. I’d been focused on my tinker powers as high level abstract stuff, bending the laws of physics with magical enchantments and super technology. It was crazy, but it belonged in the crazy space of cape life. That was the world of larger than life personalities, heroes and villains, all the insanity that comes with being a parahuman.

This was breakfast. It was a parahuman breakfast. Tinker level breakfast. Breakfast made to superhuman levels of perfection. The concept was just so incongruous I could barely process it.

What it meant was that I no longer had a cape life and a normal life. The divide wasn’t there anymore. I still had a civilian identity, but there wouldn’t be a time when the costume and gadgets got put away and I went back to being a normal person. Not anymore.

That was a harrowing thought and would be more disturbing if I hadn’t just had possibly the greatest breakfast of my life. Really, I should have known this was coming. That was kind of what the jar was about. I just somehow didn’t give much thought to what would happen when my powers built to a point where they became an intrinsic part of my life.

The fact that I was now properly living in a pocket dimension, not just squatting in the entrance but fully moved in, should have been a sign of that. Was this home now? I certainly felt more of a connection to it than that apartment out in the real world or that abandoned room back at my parent’s house, and these rooms had been specifically prepared for me with great care and attention. Maybe not really home just yet, but things were certainly getting there.

I was considering the impact my power was having on me when the Celestial Forge seemingly decided to drive that point home. There was the familiar rumbling of facilities being added to my workshop following the connection to the Toolkits constellation. I did get a rough sense of what was added with certain powers, and this time it wasn’t a bunch of machinery, an apartment, or even a magic lava forge.

I had been considering whether the workshop counted as home and my power had decided to give me an entire house.

It was a fairly utilitarian house, but still an entire building worth of rooms suddenly stapled onto my workshop. With the fact that the construction area of my workshop now resembled a large mall or mid-sized airport that shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but there was an odd division of purpose that was associated with the facilities of this extra dimensional space. Crafting areas were for crafting. I could try to use them for something else, but the metal shop actually contracted when equipment was removed. Trying to cram in materials that were against the purpose of the location was a constant battle. It’s why I’d been sleeping in my entryway for weeks rather than the much roomier, open, and better lit workshop. The workshop was very much not a residence and almost fought attempts to use it as such.

The house, however, was most certainly a residence. An official, almost militaristic residence, but a residence nonetheless. I could sort of feel what had been added to my workshop, though not the precise details of it. That would require an investigation.

I left my plate on the table in my office and slipped out to examine the addition. The effect of this power was plain to see from the additional door in the hallway, and a quick glance confirmed its connection to my bedroom/kitchen as well. I cautiously moved to examine the new expansion.

As suspected this power had added an entire house worth of rooms to my workshop. Not anything like a mansion, but not a terribly small house either. It was a proper home with multiple bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room, and all the other little details. Checking upstairs showed there was one master bedroom and four rooms each holding a pair of twin beds. The pantry was attached to a sizable kitchen and packed with non-perishable food, enough to sustain nine people for at least a year.

There was a clear military bent to this place, with empty weapon racks and an abandoned small armory. That said, there was also an old timey feel to it, like something out of the thirties or forties. It wasn’t lacking in amenities, and was probably fairly nice by the standards of the time, but seemed positively ancient to a modern eye.

That got even worse when I found the real meat of this expansion. There was a ‘secret’ lab attached to the house. By secret I mean the entrance was concealed, but for what reason I could only guess. You had to access it through a rotating bookcase of the kind associated with bad mystery movies, complete with false book to trigger the entrance. It was horribly cliché, but also had a weird kind of charm. The ‘concealed’ part probably would have been a lot more effective if there had been any other books on the bookcase. I would probably need to do something about that.

The lab was a decent size, but the archaic nature of the design was even more prevalent there. This was definitely the technology of the Second World War. Or it would be if World War Two had run on magic power crystals.

Included with the outdated research technology and scattered notes, which I would have to make a point to examine in detail later, there was a box containing a large glowing crystal, a little under a foot tall. It was labeled as a piece of ragnite, and from what I could tell from a quick skim of notes and records was the blanket power source of this type of technology. I had no understanding of how the stuff worked, only that it could be used to power things and apparently needed to be refined to be truly effective. There were some notes to that effect, including a diagram of a figure surrounded by light. From the outline it looked like something about biological integration?

Ragnite also seemed to have some potential medical applications, possibly related to that biological integration note. Unfortunately I didn’t have anything close to the expertise needed to utilize that kind of thing. It would take a serious amount of experimentation of a very ‘wet tinkering’ variety to get any level of confirmation of the effects. That was not something I had the time or inclination to mess around with at the moment.

None of this helped with my current situation, even if the ragnite could end up used as an effective power source it would take time to understand it properly. There was also the problem of integrating it into my technology. I had no idea how long that would take. Magitek couldn’t draw directly from it and the high level tech from Master Builder needed an insanely pure energy source to work.

The ragnite had potential, but that would take longer to unlock than it was likely to be worth. Studying the notes and principles in this lab could be filed with long term projects with uncertain payoff, like the medical manuals waiting for me in the cybernetics clinic.

As I tried to work out where this place sat in relation to the entryway I noticed a door at the end of the laboratory. A large, gothic, over decorated door. I considered the hypothetical layout of the rooms, and then opened the new entrance to my Laboratorium.

The skulls perked up with excitement the moment I walked in. The hymn was still playing on a loop, but the “AVE IMPERATOR!” alerts had become much less frequent. There was only a single one as I crossed the huge room towards the main door, various results presenting themselves on displays as I went. The early portions of the analysis had been completed and more detailed scans were now being taken and examined.

It looked like my workshop had created a loop in room layout. The building facilities were on the left, the living areas towards the back, and the research labs on the right. Everything connected and linked to everything else, which saved me from having to use the entryway as a hub for the various areas.

I waved goodbye to the skulls and emerged from the Laboratorium to my entryway. It was largely as I had left it, though the last of the furniture had been removed along with my mattress. It had either been integrated into the apartments or returned to the outside... apartment. Now the entryway was just a repository of cape equipment, mostly in lockers, with the notable exception being my costume.

My badly damaged costume.

I needed to fix that. Another work session with Garment would be required, though this time I’d have to be careful of the effects of my Workaholic power. Actually, extra costumes wouldn’t be a terrible thing to have on hand. I’d also need to help Garment with her new dress. She had been staying in that red evening dress almost as a point of pride for her actions from the night, but if giving it to the police would help get convictions for some of those assault cases I know she would be willing to part with it. I just had to make sure she had a replacement ready that met her standards.

And that thought brought me back to my massive list of projects. I had a lot of work to do, and hopefully this time I would be able to get some more cooperative help since I was now properly fed and rested.

I was surprised to find Garment in the Alchemy lab rather than with the textile machinery she had been so attached to the night before. She was focused on the dyeing station and working an incredibly intricate and detailed design in a multitude of colors that somehow swam together without coming across as jumbled or messy in any way. When I walked in she waved me over to inspect her work.

The piece was beautiful, and she seemed to have reset the textile portion of the Alchemist’s Laboratory to her previous and preferred arrangement. I looked over the pattern and various other pieces she had worked on. Her laptop was set up nearby with an album of pictures from the integrated camera of the various patterns, likely with Survey’s help. It took me a moment to figure out her intentions.

“Oh, sure. You can post those. And any other sewing you want to show off. Uh, just be careful not to show the lab or workshop? Like these are fine, but this one you can see the distillation columns in the background. That could raise some difficult questions. Maybe set up a screen or something?”

She gestured enthusiastically and started fabricating a cloth backdrop for her pictures. I smiled and left her to it while I headed for my potion stocks. While working with my duplicate I was able to start the brewing of a significant number of potions. In addition to all of the potions from Kazooie Alchemy I had a set of bright red healing potions from Innate Talent: Alchemist and a few experimental potions from Natural Alchemy.

The potions from Kazooie Alchemy were the only ones that couldn’t be combined. Well, they could, but not without consequences so severe that I didn’t want to think about them. I liked being a roughly human shape with functional arms and legs, so I was very determined to let the previous potions run their course before taking a new one.

Still, I had two untested potions, and they were potions I wouldn’t be able to test as long as I had duplicates active. I decanted all of the completed potions into individual vials, picked up the green potion, and was about to down it when something occurred to me. Proper testing needed data and records, not just personal experience. I pulled up my omni-tool and fabricated a fresh flight of drones.

Drones linked to Survey with my computer core backing it was a different beast than drones running from a truncated A.I. operating on my omni-tool hardware. After fabrication the drones shifted into a specific formation as Survey’s inquiry was broadcast through my omni-tool.

“Greetings. How may I help?”

The synthesized voice was a little off, and a quick examination of the processes found it was essentially a chatbot with text to voice and speech recognition that had been integrated in the A.I.’s optimization. Still, it was a big step towards proper communication, so I decided to engage with it.

“Beginning experiment of concealment effect. Monitor with all available sensors to provide data on effectiveness.” I made a point of speaking slowly and clearly for the benefit of the speech recognition, and even then had to input a couple of corrections directly. The next time I used the neural interface I could help upgrade that program to a reliable level of recognition, but for an independent development it was pretty impressive.

The drones surrounded me as I lifted the vial and downed the green liquid. As I watched my body quickly faded out of existence. Invisibility was kind of a head trip since you were working on your sense of position in space rather than being able to check with your own eyes. Without the benefit of my micromanipulators I would probably have had serious problems interacting with objects or judging distances properly.

What followed was a truncated test of the limits of the invisibility. The potion hid me from visible light but not thermal vision. Well, it stopped direct infrared emission, but not other forms of heat transfer. That created a warm section of air that was still visible on infrared scans, even if it was not as pronounced as full body heat.

Invisibility remained when partially submerged in liquid, though I wasn’t willing to actually fully immerse myself by going for a swim in any of the workshop tanks. That suggested it was an active concealment effect, not just becoming transparent with the same refractive index as air. Moving through an area with mist, smoke, or dust created a disruption to the suspended particles, but no human shaped gap in them. Throwing powder or light material on my body didn’t expose it, but cloth or heavier material did. I think Garment had a good deal of fun experimenting with that, since it was essentially a game of tag using ribbons and sheets.

Finally, it was determined that a single solid hit dispelled the effect. It had to be meaningful, even if it wasn’t damaging. If it was blocked by my force field alchemy then it didn’t count, but my invincibility barrier didn’t stop the invisibility from being dispelled. I started testing that aspect when the timer passed the nine minute mark, since I’m fairly certain I’ll be seeing roughly the same duration as my duplication potion. I missed a connection to the Quality constellation as the testing concluded.

The dispeling of the invisibility upon impact provided a way to drop the potion’s effect, something I didn’t have access to with the yellow potion I tested next. This one created a sphere of energy around me that blocked damage. As predicted, repeated trials found nothing that could bypass the effect. It was, as far as I could tell, total invincibility for nearly ten minutes.

There was one significant drawback that stopped it from being a complete world changer. The sphere extended a good way outside my body. No attack could penetrate the sphere, but the sphere moved with me. Rather than crash against people and objects it became permeable when moving. If I closed the distance to someone they could just remain still and slip inside the barrier. When stationary I was invincible, when moving I was very vulnerable. It was less a force field than a magical perimeter that stopped attacks that crossed it. Still immensely useful, just not the perfect solution.

Like the other potions it lasted just under ten minutes, though this one had no way of being deactivated. Also, these potions could also not be combined, either with the other types or multiples of the same types. Not without risking very bad consequences. Invincibility was great, but it effectively locked me out of the other potions for the full duration. I’d have to use it carefully and tactically, and even with Evermore Alchemist being able to pull off the same trick with a shorter duration duplication and invisibility would probably be my go to combat potions.

On that note, with testing concluded I sent Survey to once again update the workshop floor plans and picked up one of the blue potions. With two gulps a pair of duplicates stepped out of my body into the Alchemist’s Laboratory.

The difference between the duplicates that stepped out today from the ones that were created last night was, well it was night and day. Horrible joke, but it was true. If these were accurate representations of me then that night of sleep had clearly done me a world of good. The duplicates were fresh, clean, and possibly even counted as chipper.

I cautiously glanced across them before speaking. “So, any other concerns, or are we good to actually get to work now?”

The first shrugged his shoulders, kind of rolling them at the same time as if noting a lack of tension. “I’ve got no complaints. How about you?”

The second nodded. “I’m good to get started.” He pulled up his copy of my omni-tool. I realized I’d forgotten to copy my call bead reagents, but considering the pile of beads from the night before including the massive one that had brought wrath down on me, it probably wasn’t a priority at the moment. I had more than I needed and duplication potions to spare.

“Hold up.” The second called out. “Have you seen this? Wait, I’m you. Of course you haven’t seen this. You need to see this.” There was a ping from his omni-tool and I received a message directing me to the file I received the night before.

Over two dozen alchemical transmutation arrays were stored in the data along with detailed notes on application and use. It neatly answered the question of how the apartments had been renovated so quickly. The arrays weren’t what you’d call advanced alchemy, instead dealing with simple recombination of basic materials or common material combinations. Normally that kind of alchemy would result in crude flakey objects but the combination of my crafting and design powers made that completely impossible.

It did seem like the design powers provided some assistance in the drafting of transmutation circles and arrays. Probably the effect of Tailor Made allowing high level of detail without extra time. Transmutation symbols benefited from complexity, and that power would allow instant application of as much detail as I could manage.

The duplicates point was clearly made, but the first chose to restate it. “You really should have reviewed this already.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Busy with scut work.” He cycled through a display of the transmutation arrays. “There’s no point in someone who’s going to vanish in ten minutes doing research like this.”

“What, you want me to slack off from work?”

“What I want is to not have to spend my limited existence reviewing something another duplicate already worked on. You should be doing the experimentation and training, not us.”

“Yeah. I mean, think of the duplicates after us.” The second one chimed in. “I don’t want them coming into existence under skilled because you wasted time.”

It made sense on some level, but I didn’t like dumping tedious tasks on copies of myself. Though apparently the copies of myself felt the same way about me, and they had a better case for it.

“You seriously want me to shirk all the work we need to do?”

The second duplicate shrugged. “Not shirk, just focus on stuff that will have a permanent benefit. Research, design work, alchemy practice, and combat training.”

“Oh, and life fiber training as well. We don’t want to get out muscled by Uber next time.” Garment poked around the screen at the mention of life fibers, then made an encouraging gesture. “See, Garment agrees with us.”

I looked between the two copies of myself and nodded. “Fine, but I’m at least working on the planning and initial systems of the workshop upgrade.”

“That’s fair. Don’t want future copies having a hard time finding their way around this place.”

I nodded to the first duplicate. “Great. Where do we start?”

“Computer?”

“Computer.”

That was fair. This place badly needed to be networked and some kind of oversight system would speed up all future projects. And there were going to be a lot of future projects. If I wanted to go for a full upgrade of my equipment I needed to start with an upgrade of my workshop.

As advanced as the new equipment was, it was still a far cry from being able to produce technology on the level of complexity seen from Class:Engineer or Master Builder. The omni-tool was fantastic, but the fabricator was still fairly limited. An omni-tool couldn’t make another omni-tool, or anything on a similar level of complexity. That required specialized equipment, and I would have to build the machinery to build the machinery to build that kind of equipment.

A good first step would be getting a decent computer system.

“We’re going optical, right?” I pulled up a design workspace on my omni-tool and the duplicates followed suit.

“Best we can manage without cybertonium. We need to get to work on that, but it’s not worth delaying the central computer.”

“Not that much of a loss if we build everything modular. Swap out means upgrades will be easy. Should still hybridize with neural interface, that’s way too useful to lose. If we can combine all the optical technology we have it should be enough to get a respectable system.”

I nodded to the second duplicate. It would mean we could finally move away from slightly upgraded human crap.

Suddenly all three of our heads shot up at once. A quick glance confirmed we’d basically all had the same thought.

“So...” The first duplicate started. “Does that count as three quarters, or just one?”

Diving into a design project with copies of yourself was an interesting experience. I had been seriously concerned how I would function alongside people who had all of my issues and insecurities. Maybe that would have been a problem if we were sitting around dealing with family or school related stuff, but I’d always been good at focusing when there was a clear task to be done, a trait my copies also shared.

I had experiences with group projects over the two years of my engineering program that I managed before things started to fall apart. Herding cats was a good metaphor for keeping engineering students on project. Between the slackers, the people chasing perfect grades, and the people who always wanted to take things in a completely different direction, it was a nightmare.

Those issues weren’t present here. The duplicates stayed on task, at least until their timer started getting close to the end. The last couple of minutes would usually involve some side project, or drafting notes on the odd idea they’d had while working, or wandering off to see if Garment needed anything. I thought it was an anomaly on the first potion, but after it happened a second time I came around to accepting it.

I’m not sure if that kind of behavior was an element of the potion or something about my own mentality being emulated. As it stood I wasn’t going to complain about an intelligent entity that decided to spend his last moments of existence transmuting a better access between workshop levels or running down to the textile section to help Garment with the polymer fabricators. It could easily have been an existential breakdown instead.

Ultimately I just adopted a version of Google’s 20% time policy and cut the duplicates loose at the eight minute mark. I got quick summaries of their activities, sometimes with the odd mildly derisive comment.

‘The motoroid was running on reserve power since last night. Replaced the call bead and drafted potential upgrade plans. Read them so the next copy doesn’t need to.’

‘Our alchemy is NOT at a level that can handle element zero. You need to get on that. Also I rebuilt the pistol. We have five of them now. Blueprints attached.”

‘Heads up for you and all future duplicates. The diamond nanorod aggregator is intended for weapon and equipment production. Do not let Garment convince you it is a good option for the creation of synthetic fabrics. Explanation and repair plans attached.’

‘For the record Metal element runes are possible and magnetic field generation is an easy and effective application of them. That said, they should not be used in the workshop sections indicated on the attached map and damage report.”

‘Motoroid wasn’t strong enough to move the industrial equipment so I did that overdue servo upgrade. Fleet is also developing well in manual dexterity. Should set an update to the core optimization soon. Plans attached. Condolences for missing that connection to the Magic constellation.’

It was like they were playing a game of ‘how many headaches can you trigger in two minutes?’. That might not sound like much, but my duplicates were me, with all of my powers. That meant they worked at least forty times faster on every mechanical task and could function like anything from a team of ten men to a group of over a hundred. They had all of my technical knowledge, crafting and resource powers, and alchemy abilities if they just wanted to activate an array for instant work. I was dealing with a barrage of unexpected insights, surprise technology, and mystery projects.

When I was doing this kind of thing to the Undersiders I thought it was an absolute riot. I would say this kind experience had made me reevaluate my position on that kind of behavior, but based on the duplicate’s continued action that point clearly wasn’t getting through to me. In fact, the more of it I had to deal with the worse it got. Honestly, if I had the option of doing this to them without consequences I would probably take it. I guess I am not quite a good enough person to ensure completely harmonious project work.

Their insistence on reviewing plans wasn’t as onerous as it sounded. My Engineer power let me hold an infinite number of blueprints in my head with perfect accuracy. In fact, external mediums were not really necessary at all. I had a feeling some design work was being conducted across the entire duration of the copies existence and the files were just transcriptions of what had already been developed and in some cases tested. It only took a quick read through and the plan was in my mind forever.

It was also why I had a perfect outline of the workshop and every machine, conduit, and storeroom in the Workshop. There would be no repeat of last night’s navigation though the sensing of equipment. It also provided a potential tactical application. Blueprint storage worked equally well on buildings as with machinery. With access to the city’s database I could have a perfect map scaled down to the accuracy of the surveying data and the layout of most of the buildings on tap whenever I wanted. It would be a huge advantage in cases where I couldn’t rely on Survey or Fleet for navigation.

The construction work had moved away from the alchemy area, particularly once enough duplication potions had been set to brew. I didn’t need to tap into the new batches, but if this was going to be my standard construction plan from now on I needed a stable supply. Once that was ensured work split out into the workshop at large.

Equipment from the materials lab, nano fabricators, optics manufacture, and software development needed to be used in the construction of the new computer core. The modularity was a godsend with this project, as components could be constructed independently and integrated later. It meant that Workaholic could be more easily managed. If the component needed more of a material it could be undersized. If it was being built based on size and detail work then the four extra copies produced could be combined for stronger effects.

One of the problems was the location for the computer. It was still combined with a neural interface, so I couldn’t just hide it in a closet. Wired connections were being made to various systems and pieces of machinery, both for monitoring and the potential of direct control potentially allowing my crafting powers to work through the equipment. That made the software development lab a less than ideal location. Ultimately Alchemy was used to fabricate a dedicated platform in the central overlook of the workshop.

There was a noticeable distinction between the structural portions of the facility that had come with the workshop and the parts that had been renovated or modified by myself or my duplicates. Reworking architecture wasn’t that difficult once the composition of the floors, ceilings, and walls was properly understood. It would be a while before the entire facility was as optimized as my previous workshop, but there were definite paths of higher level design, better quality materials, and more pleasing and convenient arrangements of paths and stairwells.

It was honestly an incredible sensation to circulate energy through a transmutation array and feel the world shaped to your will. The process was a lot more intense than it looked from the outside. You essentially had to constantly run analysis of the composition of the target material, decide how to break it down, and have an exact picture of how you planned to recombine the elements and properties in play. The ability to hold perfect plans in my mind was immensely helpful with the final step and allowed major workshop renovations with nothing but a bit of consideration and a symbol printed from an omni-tool.

It was also why the main entrance to the workshop opened to a sweeping staircase leading to an overlook containing the towering form of my new computer core. I looked down at the entrance, then back at the computer before turning to my duplicates.

“Do you think we went a little too far?”

“What?” He looked over the computer. “Is it the gold? I guess it could make it look a bit gaudy.”

The gold had been selected for optimal conductivity, and with alchemy combined with the resource multiplication of Workaholic meant I could produce as much of it as I could want.

“No, not the gold.” I answered.

“Is it the fact that it’s a fifteen foot tall diamond throne overlooking the workshop like the seat of a space emperor?” The second duplicate offered.

“Oh, yeah. I can see it now.” The first suddenly acted like he was seeing the towering mass of crystalized carbon processors for the first time.

This was a very good computer. It was the culmination of the optical computing technology of Grease Monkey, Machinist, Master Builder, Skills: Physics, Science! Engineering, Class: Engineer, and Engineering. It was further enhanced through various crafting powers and scientific knowledge. I had spent over an hour on this thing. That may not sound like much, but that was over an hour of work from three versions of myself, all doing technical work to an insane standard at a rate forty times faster than should have been possible and also each handling the task of at least ten people. That worked out to something in the ballpark of seven to eight months of high level tinker work going into a single item.

It would already have been incredibly advanced, but it was my Machinist power that took it over the top. That technology set had some of the most basic optical processing technology in my repertoire, but included one staggering innovation. The ability to integrate pure diamond into the system for an absolutely massive increased processing power. It was such that just shoving a diamond into the optical system would enhance it. Applying those principles when you had the capacity to manufacture, duplicate, and enlarge diamonds took its impact to a staggering level, at the cost of having your computer look like part of the Krypton set from the seventies Superman movie.

Components had been grown as crystals, duplicated or enlarged by Workaholic, then had imperfections introduced on the atomic level to create a three dimensional matrix of optical processing. I started with a tiny flake of diamond assembled in my nano forge from carbon dust. That flake was processed, resulting in a tiny crystal with twenty five times the volume. A few more basic alterations compounded the expansion effect until I had a chunk of diamond larger than any stone on earth. WIth the multiplication and growth effects of that power being applied to that gem I had an immense amount of pure, perfect diamond to work into a masterwork optical computer.

The result was a towering mass of diamond spires assembled into a seat for the neural interface. The structure glowed softly from the light of the magitek converter in the heart of the computer. This system had been too far removed from manufacturing equipment to be compatible with the workshop’s fiat based energy supply, causing the need to build a custom magitek core. It was translating magitek energy directly into electricity rather than directly running the system, but it let me tie the power supply into my effectively infinite amount of call beads.

Considering the computer core, I could look at it and see every individual component, knowing what they did and how they fit together. None of it was superfluous or wasted space. It was definitely beautiful, my power ensured that, but I didn’t think it was that excessive. My perspective might have been a bit compromised from being involved from the start of the project. I really needed an external perspective to tell if this was really over the top excessive design work.

A series of footsteps drew our attention to Garment climbing towards the computer core. She slowed as she approached, gestured reverently towards the elaborate mass of gold and diamond, then clasped her hands to her chest passionately, just radiating approval.

Okay, that confirmed it. This was definitely too much. Good thing no one else would ever need to see it.

Garment was dragging me up to the seat as the duplicates looked on in amusement. I’m not even sure she knew it was a neural interface/computer core. For all I knew she assumed I had just built an elaborate throne to oversee the workshop, and would probably approve of such an endeavor.

Okay, if she tries to make me a set of coronation robes I am definitely putting my foot down.

I settled into the interface seat and the throne started to glow with excess light from its optical processes. Garment clearly approved of this development and I saw her expressing appreciation to one of the duplicates as the interface finished calibrating and my awareness extended into the computer.

This was nothing like it had been before. There was a world of difference between thinking with electric current and thinking with photons. My mind was literally working at the speed of light. The entire crystal apparatus was an incredibly advanced computer, probably one of the most advanced computers on the planet, only possibly exceeded by specialist tinker’s mega projects. Unlike before I was able to maintain at least basic awareness of my body, though sensations from it were odd and drawn out.

I shifted my awareness through the limited network that had been assembled through the workshop. It was comprehensive enough to gain a basic status of the numerous pieces of machinery, but there weren’t sufficient automation or control systems in place to accomplish more.

Shifting focus to the software lab I felt the laughably primitive computer core holding the primary copies of Survey and Fleet. My consciousness extended into the system at a level where I was barely consciousness of the code and protocols at work. With the connection I checked on the A.I.’s development.

Both had had extensive interaction with my duplicates, an experience that was accepted without note by Fleet, but saw Survey devoting a considerable amount of time to documenting and analyzing the effect. At the awareness of my presence the A.I.s acknowledged me, including the first english communication I had seen from Fleet.

“Hello.”

“Greetings. Pleased to work on place information. Ongoing project documentation data and assistance.”

Survey’s response was more complicated than Fleet, if a little muddled. I examined their development, including the aspects that had been noted by my duplicates. From the perspective of my new extremely advanced processing system I had a better awareness of how their programs were unfolding and the nuances of their development. I assisted with some refinement, pointed out some improved optimization routines, and scheduled the next set of parameter expansions based on my latest set of powers, including an eventual transition to the new computer core.

There was what could almost be called excitement at that prospect. Not quite the emotion yet, but the basis for the emotion. The knowledge that things would be coming that would expand what was available to them, and a base level of preparation for that in their behavior. Future planning was a big step in development, and I was glad to see it.

I shifted my awareness back and exited the interface. Garment seemed put off for some reason, and there were odd looks from the duplicates.

“Something wrong?”

I gave the first a confused look. “No, worked like a charm. Checked all the connections, verified the functionality, and did a full series of optimization updates.” Both duplicates were giving me a surprised look. “What?”

“Uh, check your time stamp.”

I pulled up a recording of the interaction on my omni-tool, including the breakdown of each activity while connected to the computer core.

“Oh.”

The second duplicate grinned. “Yeah, ‘Oh’ is right.” He turned to the other copy. “I think we can call this a success. That kind of effect is well worth the aesthetics of the thing.”

From an outside perspective I had basically sat down and stood back up. There were maybe three seconds where I was connected to the system, and accomplished everything I intended and more.

The first duplicate grinned ear to ear. “Gentlemen, we have cognitive acceleration.”

A smile crept onto my face. “That’s one of the big ones.”

The second checked the report on his omni-tool. “It is a bit unstable. Probably best to keep the acceleration factor under twenty. There was some serious neural stress when you were in there.”

“Yeah, but even holding to that...”

“Right, massive increase in design time. Even more once we get the automation set up on the equipment. If powers work through them then the level of output we could pull off is legitimately insane.”

It really would be. With the time crunch I’d been operating under anything that boosted productivity would be a godsend. Of course, depending on how my powers interacted with the network I could actually come out ahead using the combination of Don't Need A Team and Most Holy Order of the Socket Wrench. The neural interface was incredibly immersive, but I’m not sure it was enough to properly channel my powers.

So that was the major project taken care of, and with an unexpected benefit as well. So the question was what did I do next? With most of the Master Builder technology locked behind material requirements my most powerful option was working with element zero. I’d already established that it could be duplicated with Workaholic, but that was a tiny quantity. That stuff was insanely difficult to manipulate properly and too complicated for me to be able to churn it out with alchemical transmutations.

I glanced at the duplicates as I felt the familiar sense of the Magic constellation move by. That constellation was almost as bad as Magitech in terms of missed connections, so I was understandably surprised when my power was able to connect to the smallest mote available.

There are times when my power gives me something so perfect that I wonder if it’s being actively guided. Of course, there are a lot more times when it gives something completely irrelevant to the current situation or worse, gives a key power right after it would have made a difference. This power was one of those perfect moments of serendipity.

It was called Advanced Materials and was specifically designed to facilitate working with exotic materials with vastly different properties and getting them to function together. It provided a massively expanded understanding of material properties and how they interacted with other substances. Its primary function was to facilitate exotic combinations and alloys, but as a side effect of that it gave a more comprehensive understanding of any advanced or exotic material.

Perhaps enough to allow alchemical transmutation on a piece of mass controlling neutron matter?

That’s how I found myself in the transmutation section of the Alchemist’s Laboratory with the mass effect coil of one of the spare pistols sitting in the center of a meticulously drawn alchemical circle. I could have compressed it into an array, but there was no call for that at this point. If this worked it would mean I had just unlocked the fast track to a universe of possibilities.

Both duplicates were hovering near me. Technically they were into their 20% time, but nobody wanted to miss this. If it worked it would be a complete game changer.

I placed both hands on the circle and focused on cycling energy through the paths laid out in the design. It was complicated even by my standards and had to be drawn with a fine tip pen. The effect when the transmutation activated was nearly blinding, but I could feel it working. The casing, connectors and circuitry peeled away. The tiny piece of element zero decomposed to its fundamental state, then with one last pulse of will it reassembled itself.

A tiny grain of bluish metallic material dropped into the center of the circle. It was barely a speck, but it was absolutely pure element zero with twenty five times the mass of what had been in the pistol. I could do it. I could shape and multiply eezo with nothing but alchemy. I didn’t need the complicated refinery technology or insane amounts of support equipment. One transmutation circle, backed up by a power from the Magic constellation, was enough to bring an entire universe within arm’s reach.

I sat back, basking in the success with my duplicates. How much had it taken to get here? How many powers were piled on top of each other, every one adding slightly to the last until I had achieved this? A tiny grain of exotic matter that held infinite possibilities.

This brought me the stars.

I pushed that thought aside. No faster than light travel until the Simurgh was dealt with. Right now I had bigger concerns.

“So what’s next?” I looked over at my duplicates. They were at the end of their duration, but were sticking with me rather than running off for some personal project. It was endearing, but considering I was consistently dealing with myself both the frustrations and moments of appreciation felt distinctly unusual.

Still, I smiled at them and tried to order my thoughts in the time they had left. “We need support technology that can handle element zero. Stuff that can shape the dark energy properly so we can actually use the mass effect field to their best effect. That means upgrading fabrication, all the way, as far as we can go. We also need to get a gravity forge set up, preferably near the Skyforge. Low gravity for evenly blended alloys, high gravity for hyper compressed materials.” Something else hit me. “Also, this last power means pretty much all our metallurgy will need to be updated. Potential combination, applications, new fabrication methods. It brings cybertonium a lot closer, plus all the magical metals. Also everything from the Armourer database.”

One of the duplicates smirked at me. “Well, sounds like a lot of work. Best of luck to the next guys.”

I glanced down to check the duration timer just to see it roll over, then back up to find both of them gone. For some reason I preferred it when they ran off at the end of their duration to chase some pet project. It was a lot more comforting than seeing them vanish in front of me.

I wonder if that was why they did it, or if it was just a lucky coincidence? Despite going through more than a dozen duplicates I still wasn’t sure how this actually worked. It all seemed to be going fine with no more trouble than the odd crafting experiment. Still, anything that went this smoothly made me suspicious. I guess I always expected to have the rug pulled out from under me, so just getting something as powerful as free duplication put me on edge for when it would turn bad.

So far the closest thing I’d gotten to actual rebellion, like not the little petty snipes from side projects but proper direct defiance, was last night when I tried to use duplicates while physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. So I guess I would be able to safely utilize this power to its full extent as long as I practiced reasonable self-care and maintained a healthy mental stats.

Well, I’m doomed. Might as well get what I can from this power before it blows up in my face.

I looked across the laboratory at the rows and rows of blue vials, utterly dwarfing the stockpiled quantities of invisibility and shielding potions. When I first got the power to make this potion it would have taken an hour of careful monitoring and I would have been lucky to get three minutes of duration. Now with expanded alchemical knowledge, crafting powers, and an incredibly advanced facility it took less than five minutes to set a beaker to brew.

Well, I had a lifetime’s work to do. Might as well get started. I downed a vial and watched the familiar sight of a pair of duplicates stepping out of my body.

“So, just to check, you’re both on board with this plan?”

The first one nodded. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

The second stepped forward and keyed something on his omni-tool. “Look, it’s important to get the techbase up and running, but that wasn’t the only cause of failure last night.”

My stomach dropped at the mention of my previous performance. I hadn’t checked on things in the city or the reaction to my fight largely out of concern over those mistakes. Bakuda had gotten away, basically gift wrapped for the ABB. I’d been flying by the seat of my pants all night and at the last minute got fooled by Uber and Leet of all people. I had tried to mop things up as well as I could, both with the Undersiders and the conscripts, but I was dreading the public reaction.

I mean, I would have been dreading it anyway. I did not do well with large groups and the idea of being a public figure terrified me. It would have been bad enough if I had managed to accomplish my goals rather than let a bunch of chemically imbalanced teenagers lead me in a clusterfuck of an assault plan.

“Training?” I hazarded, but considering these were my duplicates I already knew the answer.

They both nodded. “Cognitive acceleration in the new interface core means you can stay on top of things and coordinate work between duplicates. The rest of the time you can practice combat, work on alchemy, try to integrate those military skills better, and do some more life fiber training.”

That made sense. Even the brief bout of life fiber exposure had resulted in a permanent improvement in my physical condition. Thanks to my nanites it was a full body overhaul every time I used it. I had no idea exactly what the growth curve would look like, but I suspected it could take me beyond peak human levels. Additionally, if I ever wanted to use life fibers in combat I could need practice interfacing with them and with Garment. It wasn’t something I would prioritize over the machinery upgrades, but running it in parallel seemed like a solid plan.

“I’ll need Garment’s help to train with the life fibers.”

The second duplicate smirked and turned towards the entrance of the workshop where Garment strolled in following one of the Survey piloted drones.

“Hello Garment. Want to help Joe with some life fiber training?”

Garment froze at those words, then raised a finger and bolted out of the room.

“Uh,” I ventured. “Any idea what that was about?” Asking copies of myself should have been redundant, but something about their finite existence gave them a divergent perspective to my own.

“Don’t know. Last time she did that she came back with those Bond tuxedos.”

“Think she wants us to wear that in exchange for the training?”

I shrugged. Could be, and wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, though taking the time to change the duplicates clothes whenever the potion wore off would be a trial.

It didn’t take long for the sound of Garment’s footsteps to echo through the hallways signaling her return to the laboratory with her price for the training. It wasn’t a Bond Tuxedo. It was much, much worse.

“Oh my God. She actually made it.”

“I don’t believe it.”

I was right there with my duplicates, but had been rendered speechless by the outfit Garment was displaying before her. The best thing I could say about it was I wouldn’t need to repair my costume before the training. Garment, in her spare time, had constructed a backup. A backup designed off her inspiration following the last life fiber test.

“You know,” one of the duplicates said contemplatively. “Seeing it in person, it’s really not that bad.”

Garment beamed at him.

“I know what you mean.” The second continued. “It comes together really well. I think Barbarian Chic could be the next big thing.”

I glared daggers at my traitorous duplicates before turning to try to wrap my head around Garment’s Frank Frazetta inspired outfit. The armor plates were still there, though more decoratively attached. There was still a version of the mask and the visor, but no hood on the cowl. Outside of that... Well, it might be legal on certain beaches. In very open minded parts of Europe or South America.

“Garment.” I looked directly at her. “I am not wearing that.”

“Oh, you should totally wear it.”

“It’s only fair. She’ll be helping with your training.”

I cleared my throat. “You do realize that if I’m wearing that it will be duplicated when I take the potion and end up on my copies as well?”

“Yeah.” The first drawled. “But we’ll be gone by then. That’s those guy’s problem.”

Okay, apparently a limited existence could lead to me being a jerk to myself and my future alternate selves. I’m not sure if they were encouraging it because Garment wanted it or they knew it would make me uncomfortable, but whatever the reason there was no way I was dressing like someone off the cover art of a bad fantasy novel.

A short time later I was meditating on the strength of my character. Considering everything I’ve gone through I really thought I would be better about sticking to my convictions.

“Doesn’t that chafe?”

That was a question that never had a good connotation. I took some small satisfaction at the sheer offence Garment directed towards the duplicate who brought it up.

In fact, the outfit didn’t chafe. Everything was perfectly fitted, built for full range of motion, as expected given its brevity, and even the armor plates had been properly set and padded to prevent any abrasion. That said, with this much reinforcement I could probably have worn a steel wool bodysuit and still be perfectly comfortable.

I mean, I felt ridiculous, but thankfully since I was surrounded by copies of myself I only had to deal with my own judgment and derision. So just like normal, only with an external representation of that aspect of my mind.

Okay, I might be complaining a bit too much. Garment was passionate about all her work and I’m pretty sure the idea of putting someone in an unfashionable outfit as a joke or prank was completely antithetical to her nature. There were smirks and amusement from my duplicates, but that was mostly entertainment at the situation, including Garment’s genuine enthusiasm for the outfit. If I had to wear this in public I would probably die of shame, but this was at least a moderately trustworthy space.

My smirking duplicates had just returned heaving under the weight of the other half of Garment’s price for her assistance. I don’t know if she actually understood the relationship between my nanite assisted training and expanded food needs, but she was clearly not taking any chances. They were both carrying trays of food that had been immaculately prepared and excessively duplicated using Workaholic. It was the first time I had seen a twenty five egg omelet, remarkable considering it had been made with a single egg. I honestly did not expect it to look so appetizing.

I was having a quick pre-training snack from the plethora of food when I felt the rumble of a modification being added to the workshop. Another connection to the Toolkit constellation, one simply called Garage.

It had brought some serious revisions to the layout of my workshop and I kind of wished it had shown up before I agreed to wear Garment’s fashion forward offering. I had come to accept this outfit when I was set to dive straight into training. Running around trying to get a handle on the latest offering of my power was making me very aware of the lack of coverage in various areas.

This addition was the first to significantly alter the entryway. The wall opposite the door had expanded into a kind of driveway that led straight to the Garage. The new addition was nestled adjacent to the furthest facilities in the crafting area, the ones designed for vehicle construction. There was a direct link to the cyberpunk automotive area, and it was directly adjacent to the large construction hanger.

The place was fairly impressive. This wasn’t a family garage for one or two cars. This was the kind of place that would support a professional team of mechanics. It could fit well over a dozen vehicles of just about any scale, up to and including large transport trucks. There were enough parts in stock to rebuild just about any car from scratch or perform any number of upgrades.

Like what happened with Master Builder this place shared the same feel with my Mechanic and Most Holy Order of the Socket Wrench powers. There was a kind of resonance between them, as well as a unique tone to the place. It had the feel of a neighborhood garage, only if everything was exaggerated for maximum impact. There was the office with the slow fans, customer computers, automotive magazines scattered around the place, and even some pinup calendars that Garment amused herself with by evaluating the fashionableness of the model’s clothing, or lack-there-of.

Just in case there was any doubt to the character and tone of this place there was also equipment for producing clean papers, new license plates, and changing VIN numbers. It had the trappings of a modestly sleazy mechanic’s garage spread over what was clearly a chop shop.

Then there was the car. The Garage had come with a free vehicle, if you could even refer to it as such. It was a pale yellow 1979 Ford Pinto sedan that showed every second of its thirty plus years of life. The odometer was close to 500,000 miles. Opening the hood showed the barely serviceable state of the engine. The interior was cheap plastic and worn fabric badly in need of cleaning. It was one of the ugliest cars I’d ever seen, and Garment strongly shared that sentiment.

I shared a glance with my duplicates and the first one said what we were all thinking.

“My God did we ever need this.”

I nodded along with the second while Garment made an expression that suggested we had either gone insane or were plotting treason.

The reasoning was simple. This car was everything my bike was supposed to be before that project had gotten away from me. Worn and out of date cars were practically part of the background scenery in Brockton Bay. The necessity of commutes meant they could be spotted even in the rich areas of the city. Driving a car like this provided actual effective transportation in my civilian identity and would probably be more effective at avoiding attention than one of Squealer’s invisibility systems.

Of course trying to explain this to Garment was a lost cause. She eventually seemed to decide it was some kind of situationally induced madness and departed before it could afflict her. My duplicates burned through the last of their duration picking through the parts and miscellaneous items of the Garage and helping me with an overhaul of the Pinto.

There was a serious focus on keeping the technology conventional. I could turn this into a supercar with little effort, but the point of this was to blend in. When someone popped the hood they would see nothing but a well maintained but antiquated engine.

However, there was no stopping Stylish Mechanic, so the car still came out decidedly clean and pleasant in appearance.

There was the question of getting it out of here. The straight corridor to the entryway would allow it to be driven out the main entrance, but perhaps the most valuable aspect of the Garage was the completely unprecedented feature it had added to the Workshop.

There was now a second entrance.

The garage opened to its own cavernous version of the entryway clearly intended for vehicles. Rather than a key there was a kind of adaptor designed for garage doors. Well, I said garage, but really any large door would work, up to and including aircraft hangar doors. It was unexpected but seriously welcome. Without something like this I would have needed to wait for size changing technology to get larger vehicles outside, or gone modular and transported them out piece by piece. Now I just needed a garage door, or anything similar, and I could deploy just about anything I could build.

The airliners might be a stretch, but I wasn’t exactly prioritizing that kind of project.

It took some time to get things squared away and evaluated. I called Fleet to bring the motoroid from the entryway to the Garage where it managed to look both more comfortable and seriously out of place. Survey had to update the Workshop layout again, though the pseudo-frustration at that task was mitigated by the addition actually containing identifiable equipment for once.

After I finished the manufacturing upgrades I needed to build some proper drones instead of relying on flash fabricated ones tied to my omni-tool. Those were great for combat, but there were much better possibilities for long term monitoring and support.

When I found Garment she was clearly upset, and I doubted anything short of crushing the Pinto into a cube and beginning construction of some kind of luxury car would completely make it up to her. Fortunately I found something that was almost as effective.

Garment needed a new dress. Garment had designed a new dress. Garment had been waiting for me to help her with a new dress. Apparently Garment had also slightly revised her design based on new workshop equipment and abilities.

Which is why we were in the textile division preparing to begin a session of what I could only describe as experimental seamstressing. My duplicates had been good enough to help Garment with the use and operation of the various complex pieces of machinery she had claimed, which resulted in the series of completely revolutionary fabrics that had been generated. For once Garment had something she couldn’t just conjure at cost because this kind of thing wasn’t for sale anywhere in the world.

These were experimental polymers or hyper advanced synthetics, all produced in incredible shades due to structural coloration rather than the use of pigments. It was an amazing production for such a short time, but Garment seemed to have an innate understanding of these things. I could only imagine what she would be capable of when I finished the upgrades of the facilities.

Once again, Garment raised her hands to mine and her gloves folded inside out to flow over my hands. There was that incredible sense of shared skill and perception that was both heady and intimidating. Her damaged red dress shifted carefully into a prepared hanger and covering, then with a flash the materials began to fly around me.

I knew what to do at a totally instinctive level. The skills Garment provided complimented my other abilities rather than overriding or overlapping with them. This was the culmination of my own incredible crafting and enhancement powers with Garment’s peak understanding and perfect fashion sense. Glimmering fabric flew together. Accents and attachment pieces were added at the perfect moment. Stitches of novel and immense complexity danced into seams that were either totally invisible or perfectly complemented the outfit.

Finally it was done. Garment slipped off my hands and mimed pulling on the stunning silver gown. Not merely a dress, but a full on magnificent gown. Once again I found myself looking away out of habit, though with that outfit it was a difficult prospect. This was absolutely immaculate in every way. The culmination of so many powers presented themselves through this one item of clothing. Bling of War, Decadence, The Flock's Fleece, Beauty in the Arts, and Masterwork Craftsman all combined to produce an item of almost unearthly beauty. The skill, care and planning that had gone into it was astounding. If Garment’s goal was to impress the Protectorate when she next met Flechette this would accomplish that goal beyond any possible metric.

And that reminded me of something else I’d been putting off. I pulled up my omni-tool’s fabrication and design space and started working. This was another of those challenging builds where the objective was to prevent my powers from getting away from me rather than push them to their limit. Garment peered over my shoulder as I worked, expressing delight at the finished product.

It was the most basic smartphone I could make. It was still obviously a custom design, but one that could be passed off as an enthusiast build rather than full tinker tech. Most of the aesthetic improvements were limited to the casing. The screen had been tricky, but I’d managed to leverage some of the other workshop equipment and build something conventional that Garment would be able to use with her gloved fingers. Finally I programmed in Flechette’s number and set up a truncated version of Survey’s chat assist that would be able to pass as one of the better autocomplete systems rather than a full A.I. assistant.

“You should probably reach out to Flechette, find out when to hand over the dress and anything else she wants.”

Garment made a gesture of assent, then turned to the phone screen. She was able to bring up the text message program and I had emulated a prepaid SIM card in the device that should be untraceable. Garment didn’t have any easier of a time with a smartphone keyboard than a full one, but considering this was an opening message and she had help it wasn’t that bad.

G-A-RMENT

The text was sent, leaving us nothing to do but wait and deal with the staggering amount of work I had committed to. I took a breath, retrieved a duplication potion and headed for the interface.

Garment definitely seemed to think this outfit was a good fit for the diamond throne theme of my neural interface chair. I made a point to avoid providing any opinion on the matter as I sank into the seat and felt my consciousness expand.

Regrettably I couldn’t just upgrade everything in a single sweep. There would have to be two or three passes on some equipment to get them close to the level of my best technology. Some of the more advanced gear from my Armourer power would require even more than that, but that got terrifyingly advanced at the highest levels.

Materials would have to be my first priority, since that’s what everything else would be based on. I didn’t need the best I would ever be able to produce, especially since refining ceramite to the highest grades was a nightmare in itself. Just getting to the point where I could build equipment that would let me properly utilize element zero would be enough.

The first step to that would be a gravity forge. Micro gravity to produce perfectly consistent alloys with no imperfections in casting, then hypergravity to ultra-compress the samples for strength. Building it at the Skyforge would let me take advantage of the magical enhancement of any metal forged there. Examining Survey’s records showed there was a kind of underforge beneath the main forge. Probably for storage, but it did present the ability to connect directly from the workshop to transfer supplies and power without using the stairway.

I drafted the plans, disconnected from the system and downed my duplication potion. The duplicates that stepped out looked down at their barbarian armor clothing, then over at Garment, who was still enjoying the scene.

“I hate those last guys so much.” The first duplicate said with frustration.

“Yeah, well this wasn’t my idea.” It wasn’t their idea either. I couldn’t blame future duplicates for the actions of past duplicates, meaning I was bringing into existence short lived intelligences with no accountability. I was damn lucky this was the worst to have come from it. “Are you good for the project?”

The second tapped his head with a micromanipulator sheathed finger. “Perfect memory for plans and blueprints. You go train or whatever, we’ll get started.”

They split off into the workshop and I started proceeding to the Laboratorium with Garment. On the way I felt a connection to a small mote from the Knowledge constellation. It was called Machines, They Just Speak To Me and on the surface it seemed to be just another mechanical skill enhancer. Boosting of ability to work or repair machinery without formal training. The major thing was that it gave the ability to repair ANY machinery.

It didn’t matter how advanced the technology was, with this power I could fix any problem that came up. Understanding of the principles or even structure of the components was unnecessary. Just based on basic observation and instinct I could tell what was wrong and correct it with at least a temporary patch. Given how reliable my technology was, that may not have seemed like a big advantage, but that wasn’t the case with other technology.

Like, for example, the three pieces of broken tinker tech I had stolen from Leet that were currently sequestered in my Laboratorium.

I could get those working again. I could get any tinker tech working again. No matter how complex, with this power I could manage it. It didn’t give me the ability to understand or replicate other tinker’s work, but I would be able to keep their technology working indefinitely.

It was a shame I was on bad terms with the PRT. They probably had warehouses full of tinkertech that had been critically damaged or failed from lack of maintenance. If I ever managed to patch up relations that would be a high priority.

I entered the Laboratorium to the greeting of the cyber skulls and the refrain of the hymn. As we made our way to the life fiber’s containment field I reviewed the displays of bomb and technology analysis. It was progressing well, but with the rate they were working passive scans would produce everything they could within a day. The next step would be destructive testing. I needed to check if items copied along with the duplicate potion could survive the process of disassembly. It seemed like they should, and that would give me free rein to tear apart vital technology to learn its secrets.

Like so many things that was a project for later. Technology analysis could be delegated to a duplicate, training could not. Once again I donned Garment’s gloves, feeling the expanded awareness and knowledge. The gown mimed being taken off, and was handed over to an unusually accommodating cyber skull who then suddenly realized that no other work would be possible while the gown was awkwardly being suspended.

I vaguely felt the extension of Garment’s power and lowered the stasis field around the glowing mass of red fibers. They stayed clustered around the spool for a moment, the shot towards me with whip like speed. Without the connection to Garment assuring me that they were under control I would have had an unpleasant flashback to that first nearly lethal experiment.

I watched as Garment carefully wove the red fiber around me. It was really incredible. The fibers were simultaneously both a creature and a material resource. I couldn’t tell how they could be integrated into clothing just yet, but the insight from my Advanced Materials power was providing all kinds of possibilities. Hardened life fiber weapons, fiber reinforced materials, even technology emulated entirely through life fiber use.

Not anything I wanted to mess with without the secondary power that provided understanding of the function of the life fibers. There was also the very concerning prospect of using a creature with emerging sapience as a construction material. Even if I had the time for this project I wasn’t going to touch it until I had a better handle on those elements.

Garment was holding the softly glowing thread just a hair above my skin. The response time and control was incredible. I could move through my entire range without so much as a second of accidental contact. If I was using them in the field I would need that control to hold off the effect when I wasn’t prepared to manage it.

I took a deep breath, the fibers crisscrossing my torso expanding along with my chest, then activated my nanites. Blue circuit-like lines spread across my entire body and with a signal to Garment the life fibers made contact.

The threads instantly shifted from dull red to a blinding crimson glow. The drafty nature of the Laboratorium was instantly forgotten as heat from the accumulated energy spread through my body. A mist of steam from boiling sweat began to accumulate around me in a way that would have left me desiccated if not for the restorative effect of the nanites. With a single pounce I launched myself in a low arc across the Laboratorium, reaching the main door in a single bound.

The skull’s reactions were mixed, with some excited, some upset at having their work destroyed, and some seemingly consulting the various icons for guidance on the escape of the horrible xeno creature.

It was hard to focus with the life fiber energy coursing through my body. Add the fact that I also had to maintain nanite activation and it was clear I wouldn’t be deploying drones, making field repairs, or mixing Alchemy formulas in this state. Those downsides were balanced by the fact that the distracting energy made me so insanely strong that I could probably wrestle one of Bitch’s fully enhanced dogs like it was a newborn puppy.

Wrestling would probably be a lot easier than fine movement. Opening a door properly without ripping the thing off its hinges was a delicate endeavor. I pushed through for the purposes of training, though I wondered if this was a common problem among brutes. After two delicately opened doors I was in my main workshop, or if you wanted to acknowledge the scale of it, my crafting mall.

At the moment it would probably have been more accurate to call it my playground. Combine multi-story leaping, the ability to ignore all falling damage, reflexes good enough to land on your feet in any situation, and a land speed that poses a serious risk of forming a mach cone and you end up with what was legitimately the best time I’ve had since I got my powers.

I was fast enough to WALK up walls. When running any flat surface sufficed, regardless of orientation. I was pretty sure my jumps could be strong enough to leave craters in weaker surfaces, though I wasn’t sure what my full strength leap could manage since a standing jump could carry me from the lowest level to the roof of my workshop. The eventual forced break due to hunger and duplicate duration was a bit of a letdown, but I managed.

Garment disconnected the life fibers from direct contact and I devoured a significant portion of the stored food. Following that I sank briefly into the neural interface, monitored progress and reports, set plans for the next set of duplicates, then disconnected and took another potion.

As suspected, and as should probably have been tested in more stable conditions, the life fibers were not copied with the duplicates. They were both wearing copies of Garment’s white gloves, but theirs were just cloth with none of her animating spirit. We quickly confirmed tasks, then they split off while I got back to training.

That was how the latter part of my afternoon progressed. I would train with life fibers for ten minutes, then gorge myself to try to feed the augmentations being inflicted on my body, review the progress of my duplicates, including any little side projects they decided would be fun last minute additions, then repeat.

The food requirements following intense life fiber exposure were extreme. I thought the heaving trays provided by my duplicates would be enough, but the rate I was burning through them proved otherwise. I had to address the issue with secondary cooking to trigger Workaholic again. Sticking a twenty five egg omelet between two slices of bread counts as making something new, that something being a cartoonishly large egg sandwich more than sufficient to sate even an alien parasite induce appetite. It was the exponential progression of my crafting resources applied to foodstuffs. The sheer quantity would have been a bit nauseating if not for the unbelievable quality of the final product. I was thanking God for my Masterwork Crafter power every time I took a bite of one of those giant sandwiches.

There would normally be a question of ‘where was I putting it?’ but that was easily answered by casual observation of my duplicates. Garment’s costume choice left almost nothing to the imagination, so the effects of life fiber training were very apparent, particularly when you were summoning updated duplicates of yourself at regular intervals. It was like looking at one of those workout progress pic montages, except instead of being spread across weeks and months it was a matter of hours.

The change was a gradual process, and it took five sets of duplicates before it was clear enough for me to notice. At that point I started including medical scans in the Laboratorium as well, but that just confirmed what my eyes were telling me. I got to watch abdominal muscles slowly become visible over the course of an hour, then increase in definition with the inevitability of a glacier until I was sporting a full proper six-pack. 

I should have been excited about it, but the change was happening so quickly that it was hard to accept. Each time I downed a duplication potion there was a longer moment of ‘who are those guys?’ before I recognized myself. I could see that my duplicates were going through that as well, and it wasn’t like I needed any other mental difficulties piled on top of everything else. That jar was filling up too quickly as it was.

Thankfully whatever augmentation effect the life fibers were creating had some kind of regulation on it. I wasn’t bulking up like a powerlifter or professional wrestler. After a certain point muscles stopped getting physically larger and just became more defined. The Laboratorium scans were able to confirm that increases in density and structural augmentations were occurring in place of just getting as swole as possible. I still had a reasonable body shape, but Garment would probably need to adjust my clothes if I didn’t want every outfit to be clinging like spandex.

I didn’t have a good handle on how strong I was becoming in my normal state since everything felt pathetically weak compared to the rush of life fiber energy. When you can manage a standing leap across the length of a football field there’s not really a level of ‘enhanced human’ that’s going to impress. I did notice my duplicates were shifting larger pieces of machinery by themselves that would normally have required help from lifting equipment or the Motoroid.

That sight made me realize a key factor I’d been overlooking. The scale of the motoroid had been carefully managed to be exactly within the bounds of what the duplication potion could affect. This is what happens when you get that ‘world of possibilities’ in front of you. It’s easy to overlook basic plans that should have been fundamental.

The next time I interfaced with the computer core I summoned Fleet and began working on a data management program. For an A.I. having multiple copies in operation at the same time was a minor issue, but that was conventionally copying. I needed to make sure Fleet would be able to manage the potion based duplication without any errors. I programmed a basic explanation and series of failsafes as the Celestial Forge missed a connection with the Resources and Durability constellation. Then I exited the system and boarded the motoroid.

For this to work I needed to drink the potion while the Motoriod was in armor form. Just sitting on the bike wouldn’t cut it. I didn’t have a handy reservoir in the armor, so I made a note to fix that later and entered the armor with the vial held in my mouth. With a little bit of work I was able to down the potion and a pair of identical suits of power armor stepped out of my own.

One opened to reveal a duplicate striding out while the other shifted into motorcycle form with the second riding it. Both were grinning widely.

“I cannot believe we forgot this.”

I nodded to the first duplicate. “Well, we’ve been busy.” I glanced across the slowly changing workshop. “Just remember to update the core program optimization before the duration expires.”

“Of course.” At a signal from the second duplicate the motoroid started to spin its rear tire. “Can’t let this go to waste.”

With that he peeled off towards the next project, treating the stairs like car ramps. I would be impressed, but I was almost certain that was all Fleet, as was the precise swoops taken by the first armor as it launched itself into the air before diving towards the fabrication facility.

That left me with the original motoroid. I wouldn’t exactly say I’d gotten tired of the workshop parkour or that it had gotten old. It was still an incredible rush, though half of that was probably due to the influence of life fiber energy. Still, this was supposed to be training, and more than just physical training. With my motoroid on hand it gave me an idea.

Which was why training shifted from running around the workshop like a crazy person to sparring practice in the Garage. It may have been an odd choice, but it was the most open area I had. Still, a hulking robot squaring off against a half-naked man covered in glowing thread in a location unrelated to either of them brought up a certain association.

Leet must have influenced me more than I thought if I was essentially recreating scenes from fighting games.

Fleet needed the close-combat training even more than I did. It was easy to assume skills in one area meant proficiency in another, but that just wasn’t the case. Fleet had optimized driving, flight, and even manual dexterity, but combat was still very basic. That was what we were working on.

The idea of fighting five hundred pounds of hyper alloy with recently enhanced strength servos would have normally been a terrifying prospect. Unfortunately with this much life fiber energy in my system I’m not sure I could even experience that emotion, and with the way I had to split my focus on nanite activation I didn’t have time for it anyway. It did definitively answer the question of how strong I was under life fiber exposure.

At least strong enough to throw around a robot suit like a rag doll.

Some of that was due to my added combat training. Military CQC and T’ai Chi Chuan were instinctively ingrained in me and thus still usable when focusing on nanites. In fact, the lack of conflicting thoughts probably made them come out stronger. It did result in the entertaining scene of me repeatedly windmilling a robot around me as it made gradually less clumsy swipes with its weapons.

The pattern of review and training shifted to be more combat focused and Fleet showed gradual improvements in both combat acuity and general technical skills. Despite the rate at which we could work, my duplicates were clearly enjoying having the extra muscle on hand, and I was starting to get recommendations for what to include in the next motoroid upgrade.

With the repeated cycles of food, training, and technical review it was easy to lose track of time, particularly with the way the upgraded neural interface accelerated perception. As such I was entirely taken aback when my omni-tool signaled an incoming call on my work phone.

It didn’t help that I was at the time in mid-fight with a motoroid showing significantly improved close combat skills. The distraction was enough for it to land a hit with one of the tremor tonfas, which further disoriented things as it sent me tumbling across the room while violently shaking. I pulled myself together, signaled Garment to disable the life fiber contact, and hastily answered the phone.

“YES!?!” My voice was not exactly the picture of calm while upside down on a garage floor and bleeding off life fiber energy.

“Uh, it’s Lisa. I have the information you wanted?”

I took a deep breath and steadied myself as well as I was able. “Oh, right. Thanks for calling.” I pulled myself to my feet with deliberate calm and checked the time. It was after five o’clock, my series of upgrades and training having basically eaten the entire day.

“I’ve gotten as much as I can pull together about that stuff, and I just wanted to check how I should get it to you.”

My God, she was worse than Brian. And what is it about the Undersiders calling during the aftermath of life fiber exposure? I quickly keyed up Survey and the familiar telecommunication connection that was still going unnoticed thanks to the blatant exploitability of human communication systems.

...right. Quarter, jar, deal with it later.

“Look, I have a secure line. …and now also encrypted. You can speak freely. What do you have?”

There was a brief pause where it sounded like she swallowed, then she continued. “Alright, I’ve got you as much as I can on the ABB. Both public records, Protectorate information, PRT data, and my own analysis. Also the locations of any confirmed or suspected front businesses and any properties I’ve been able to confirm as owned by gang members of their fronts.”

“That’s great.” I moved out of my Garage towards the workshop. “I’m sending you a link to a deniable single use storing site.” I keyed in the commands. “Single upload and download, then it will scramble the data. It’s obscure, so the chance of anyone even noticing the transfer is minimal, much less tracking it.”

“Right, I’ve got it. I’ll handle the transfer after the call.”

Which meant she had other stuff to review, which probably meant it wasn’t good. I had managed to accomplish a huge amount today, but at the cost of basically sticking my fingers in my ears and ignoring the fallout from the previous night. Also, exiting the Garage into the more open workshop combined with the lack of life fiber energy to distract was making me feel very exposed.

“What else do you have?”

I couldn’t keep that embarrassment out of my voice, and the worst part was I was sure Tattletale would be able to pick up on it.

“I have some updates on the official response and general stuff from the city. Did I call at a bad time?”

“I was in the middle of training.” I answered hastily.

“Right.” There was something between amusement and nervousness in her voice. Thankfully she pressed on without asking follow-up questions. “I have got some bad news about how things ended last night.”

“What’s wrong?” I had made some mistakes during the encounter, but I figured I wrapped things up as well as could be managed under the circumstances.

“It’s Chen.” The amusement was gone from her voice and I had the sense she’d been dreading this conversation.

“What's wrong? Is he in trouble for shooting that gang member?”

“Sort of, but that’s not the main problem.” I waited for her to elaborate. With a sigh she continued. “You remember those concerns the PRT had about your powers?”

I went over things. I seriously doubted this would be about the tinker verses shaker debate, which meant she was talking about...

“They think I mastered him? Forced him to do that?”

There was another sigh. “That’s the way things are leaning.”

“That’s insane. Even for a government organization that’s beyond stupid. You don’t need mind control to make you want to shoot someone who put a bomb in your head.”

“I know that, but there’s an inertia to this stuff in the PRT. The report they got was that you stood up and talked to the crowd, then someone shot the person who attacked you and the rest lined up for surgery.”

I took a deep breath and clenched my fist. “The only way that makes any sense is if you ignore every shred of context, both before and after.”

“Congratulations, you just hit upon the PRT’s analysis strategy during a local crisis.” Her voice sounded tired. “It would probably have blown over, but not with the stuff online.”

“What stuff online?” I asked.

There was a decided pause before she responded. “You haven’t checked the public reaction yet? Not at all?”

That note of dread worked itself into my stomach. “I’ve been busy. Was going to review the footage later tonight.

“You should get on that.” She answered quickly. “It’s mostly speculation, but the big thing was people you saved have been jumping on a lot of forms of media to defend you.”

Sadly I could see where this was going. “And the PRT thinks it must be that I mastered them, not because I pulled a psychopath’s bomb out of their heads.”

“This is really about PR.” I could hear the weariness in her voice. “You kind of showed up the local Protectorate last night. They’re trying not to let it seem like you’re the hero of the hour. There are no official statements, just a lot of words like ‘suspected’ and ‘alleged’ being thrown around. A lot of the people from the facility got pretty vocal about being dismissed like that. Some of them have been taken in for observation and questioning.”

I pictured one of those mahjong grandmothers being subjected to master stranger protocols. It wasn’t a pleasant image, but I doubted there was anything I could do without making things worse. It was frustrating to no end that the PRT had taken the one thing I felt good about from the previous night and managed to twist it into something horrible.

“How bad was it for the Protectorate? I saw the footage of the fight on the Rig and Lung’s escape, but not the full impact.”

“They aren’t looking good. The attack on the Rig was a mess. Armsmaster is at least out of critical condition, but is not going to be on his feet any time soon unless they can get Panacea back in the field. Velocity is not getting back on his feet period, not without some parahuman healing. Spiral fractures. Assault came out the best, but he’s still going to need weeks before he’s back in the field.”

I tried to process the scale of those losses, the sheer magnitude of it. Even if the ABB hadn’t upset things that would have drastically altered the power dynamic in the city.

“And Weld, the new ward from Boston? He was on the front lines of that fight. Apparently took a hit for Armsmaster and got knocked into the bay by Lung. He sank like a stone. Metal body, so he can handle the pressure and get by without air, but he hasn’t walked to shore and they still haven’t pulled together a rescue diver team. Could be days before they find him.”

That was a grim thought reinforced by my passenger. There wasn’t any reaction about Weld on the level of the Undersiders, but there was some level of affection there. In particular the idea of him stuck under water was bringing out this kind of sympathetic distress. I shook off the thought and pressed on.

“Any word about the new thinker?”

“There’s something, but I haven’t been able to nail it down. The Wards were attacked at the Forsberg Gallery by Oni Lee and another cape. Probably our thinker, but the PRT is keeping things tight lipped. With the disaster recovery I can’t get the kind of inside look I used to. From what I’ve been able to pull together they’re actually trying to confirm things before making a public announcement. Whoever it is they don’t want to blame everything on her, so probably some minor villain who either stepped up in a big way or stopped holding back.”

That wasn’t a pleasant thought. Well, nothing about this situation was pleasant, but the idea that some c-lister might have walked into Brockton Bay and laid the city bare was an embarrassment for everyone involved, including me.

“Anything else?”

“Well, New Wave is a mess. They were doing scattered response last night, and there’s rumors about the Pelham and Dallon families splitting up, except the Dallon side doesn’t have the firepower to function on their own and the Pelham side is just a strike team without Manpower tanking and Amy providing support. Might see integration into the Protectorate, or other teams might come snooping around, too early to say for sure.”

I felt terrible about that, but this was clearly a house of cards. I couldn’t hold it up, and there was no way to tell when would be a safe time to knock it down. That didn’t change the fact that the city had lost a well-coordinated super team right when they needed all the help they could get.

“How is your team holding up?”

Tattletale seemed to consider before answering. “We’re managing. Taylor was still unsteady last night. She’s going to rest for a few days, take some time to recover.” Good idea. I wish I had the same option. “The rest of us are alright. Brian’s been a bit off since last night, and Rachel and Alec are keeping to themselves, but they’ll come around.” That sounded more like an optimistic guess than a certainty.

“Good to hear it. We can reconnect after the team is back on their feet.” And figure out how we're going to manage that debt. “Is that everything?”

“Mostly. New cape showed up at the docks, nonstandard body and weird powers, but fairly low key. The Protectorate’s going to make a recruitment push soon, if just for the press.” I was careful to give no reaction to her words. “Empire and Merchants didn’t lose any territory, but some of the thefts were in areas the Empire claimed. They might push for a reprisal, or just use that to take point in whatever response ends up being planned.”

“The gangs plan those things? Like, together?”

“Sort of. If it’s something really disruptive they’ll have a meeting to come to terms, agree on actions. If the ABB goes quiet after this it might not come to that, but any hint of a repeat will force their hand.”

Great. “Thanks for the update. Keep me posted?”

“Sure. And check out that reaction stuff as soon as you get a chance.”

“Right.”

I closed the connection and took a breath. I did not want to check out that reaction stuff. I had put it off till now, I could put it off some more.

So what did I do now? My upgrades were at the point where I could start building decent technology, not just the means to construct decent technology. The idea of sealing my apartment and not leaving until I had everything I could possibly need had some appeal.

But that wouldn’t work. I needed to stay on top of the ABB. Outside of them, well I doubted I could say or do anything that would help the freed conscripts. The best thing would be establishing that I had no influence over them at all. If they were afraid of my healing I couldn’t help any of the injured heroes or civilians. New Wave was not a situation where I would be likely to have any positive impact, except in possibly letting them assault and arrest me. Even then it wouldn’t deal with the issues that tore them apart in the first place. So what could I do? Where could I help?

Weld. I could help Weld.

The city might not have rescue divers, but I had more than enough resources to mount a recovery effort and the technology base to handle aquatic environments with ease. I’d need search drones, an environmental suit, or at least breathing apparatus, some kind of aquatic propulsion, and improved scanner technology.

My passenger was convinced that being trapped underwater was not a good thing for Weld. Physically he might be fine, but there were a lot of things that could go wrong while a person was still physically fine. The sensations of horrible isolation I was sympathetically picking up from my passenger were both concerning and also familiar, which just made them more concerning.

There was also the possibility that Weld would actually be willing to interact with me. He was from outside the city and apparently had been sent because of my offhand comment about the Boston Protectorate. He had also been cut off, so wouldn’t be under any mandates that had gone out following that insanity about the ABB survivors. Also, I know if someone saved me after being stuck at the bottom of a harbor for more than 24 hours I’d be at least moderately well-disposed to them.

I had pushed through a day of unfocused training and general upgrades. Now I had a goal with a clear objective and attainable steps. I could do this, save a kid from a horrible situation, maybe get some decent relations with the city’s heroes, and get a chance to test my new technology in the field.

And I definitely wasn’t doing this to avoid looking at the public response to last night’s cape fight.

**********

Addendum Alec

Alec sat in his room in the Undersiders base. It wasn’t normally his preferred hangout location, usually that would be a prime spot on one of the couches within easy reach of the game consoles and a clear view of the TV. But now it was a refuge. He had entered as soon as they’d returned to base and only left for the occasional food or necessity run. One of those had him briefly cross paths with Rachel, but the girl had left with nothing but an angry look.

Alec was cool with that. She very clearly cared more about the fact that they were in a lifetime of debt than about the bomb tinker’s escape. From the way she stormed out Alec wondered if she’d ever be back. It was something he was used to considering, though more in an abstract sense than one that could determine his future.

He turned his attention down to the laptop, dozens of tabs open across his browser. Normally web surfing relaxed him. It was a way to get away from himself, even when digging through reactions to his team’s actions.

It wasn’t relaxing him now. Nothing was relaxing, not like it used to be. He didn’t know if it was that super-healing, the stress of the night, the conflict in the team, or what had happened in that locker. Whatever it was he was agitated.

He didn’t like being agitated. He had mastered the art of not being agitated. Cool wasn’t just a style choice, it was a survival mechanism. You could do whatever you wanted, but you did it cool, not hot.

At the moment he was not cool. He was about as far from cool as he’d been since before he got his powers. Back then you learned and learned fast. Emotions were weapons in his family. There were too many who could feel them, twist them, turn them against you. Stay cool and stay off the radar. Stay cool, don’t run hot.

Hot. The flames. The light reflected in lenses of a gasmask. The metallic laughter. That feeling, the point where he didn’t even feel the heat anymore, just the pain and the smell of charred...

He shoved his laptop away from him and struggled to breathe. This was wrong. Everything was wrong.

After a few labored breaths the pounding in his chest slowed and a cold sheen of sweat coated his forehead. He wondered again if this was that super healing. The effects of everything turned up to eleven, but instead of the crash that comes with a drug high you find a solid foundation beneath you.

If this was what people meant by getting high on life then they could go fuck themselves.

A knock on his door dragged him out of his contemplation. He took a second to collect himself before calling out.

“Come in.”

The door swung open to reveal Lisa, out of costume and looking that special kind of tired she got when the boss was pressing her for information. From her expression he could guess what this was about.

“So, the team finally came to a decision on me? Am I out on the street, or do they want some kind of penance? Pound of flesh? First born son?”

As usual she bore his humor without reaction. “No call there. Probably won’t be until we square things with Joe.”

Ah yes, their life debt to the mighty Apeiron. The pie run jokes hadn’t landed. Maybe he should shift to pretending to mishear it as ‘appear on’. That seemed to be popular online, and presented all kinds of set up opportunities.

The fact that they owed Joe an amount of money that would likely cripple any gang in the city was probably the only thing keeping the group together. As a team they could slowly pay things off with jobs, like they had started last night. Someone leaves, well, did they take their debt with them? Specifically theirs, or an equal portion of everyone’s?

That was the point getting under Rachel’s skin. Since Joe decided to creatively assign debt for dog healing she was the only one with a personal medical bill that was anything like affordable, meaning she was the only one who could make a case for paying out and leaving the team.

Of course, surviving on your own in the current climate was another matter.

“Just had an update call with Joe. Got him the data he wanted and filled him in on our timeframe.”

Alec grinned at that. “So what does he think of his new celebrity status?”

Lisa shook her head. “Hasn’t looked at it yet.” She paused. “I think he’s deliberately avoiding it.”

“Seriously?” Alec reached for his laptop. “You mean he’s missed gems like this?”

♦ Topic: Apeiron Equipment Thread

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay ► Capes

Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Posted On Apr 17th 2011:

Main Thread for Apeiron gear and inventions. Update with date and media confirmation.

Apeiron - Brockton Bay Cape, Unconfirmed Rogue, Suspected Villain

Personal Equipment:

Unknown Defensive Item (No visible damage from gunfire, kinetic impact, plasma exposure, or extreme heat. Overcome by 'concentrated spatial disruption')

Unknown Healing item (Possibly glove based, suspected responsible for full restoration of Undersiders, fully restored spatial damage in no more than 6 seconds)

Arm mounted holographic interface (Possible source of electrical and thermal discharge, unconfirmed, display and coordination device for drones)

Unknown mechanical system (mechanical gloves or sheathing visible when costume was damaged. Possible source of electrical and thermal discharge, unconfirmed)

Side Arm with integrated energy blade, name pending (advanced pistol, highly accurate, unknown ammunition, shock waves and major kinetic impact evident. Integrated blade capable of projective cuts at least 6 meters distance in normal mode. BFS mode appears to require assistance from pouch items. Use of "Final cut' may damage or disable sword, evaluation and name pending)

Pouch Items (Unidentified small technological items capable of exotic effects. Apparently single use. Apparent activation time. Confirmed effects include tracking thermal attacks, Lightning cloud manifestation, creation of attack insects (projection or construct), weapon enhancement (BFS) material creation (stone fist), and temporal suspension)

Support equipment:

Transforming motorcycle/robot/power armor (Tripredacus Guardian)

High speed and maneuverability in motorcycle form (Boardwalk Video)

Flight Capable in robot/armor mode

Confirmed armament: 2 geokinetic melee weapons, suspected C class minimum

Spherical Drones (Tripredacus Scout)

Either summoned or fabricated in the field

Flight capable

Suspected surveillance link to holographic interface

Deployment seems limited to 5 drones simultaneously

Confirmed armament: Short range electronic discharge

(Showing page 1 of 57)

►Quester

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Why is the durability listed as an item instead of a power?

►Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

This is not the place for that debate. Take the hereditary arguments to the cape's main page. Without convincing evidence to the contrary a tinkers durability will ALWAYS be attributed to equipment and not a secondary power.

►Quester

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

"Convincing Evidence"

Really?

-Durability that resist everything but spatial attacks

-Color choice of costume

-Apparent age lines up perfectly

-Well equipped, supplied, and trained on supposedly first appearance

-Broad tinker specialization and rapid assessment of new technology

What more do you want?

►Cobalt

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

"-Apparent age lines up perfectly"

Right, and when exactly was that nine month window of absence that would line up with that perfect timeline?

►Quester

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

You think they couldn't have built some kind of artificial womb or cloning vat? It's basic logic.

►Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

I'm serious, this is not the place for this. Take theories to their own thread of the main cape discussion before the mods get involved.

►Frayed One (Banned)

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

That's right, this thread is only for discussion of the equipment of Brockton's new pedophile tinker.

►Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Until evidence to the contrary is presented it is being assumed by this site that Apeiron and the Undersiders, including Lady Khepri, are minors and should be regarded as such.

And once again, not the place for that debate.

►Frayed One (Banned)

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Right, I forgot about all of those military trained sixteen year olds with clear combat experience.

►Cobalt

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Right, and I forgot about all of those little teenage girls who are built like supermodels, move like death, and can shred a Protectorate Ward without a second thought, so LADY Khepri is obviously 14 or 15 years old.

►Frayed One (Banned)

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Dude, have you ever even MET a teenage girl?

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 55, 56, 57

Lisa glanced over the thread and shook her head. “He’s never going to get away from that. Neither of them are.”

Alec smirked. “Wish I could be there when they find out about it. Not a single piece of media pops up without someone claiming it’s the greatest love story of the age, or some horrible act of child exploitation. More of the former than the latter, but it’s incredible how many people are jumping to defend Taylor’s honor when they were screaming for her blood two days ago.”

He watched Lisa’s discomfort at the idea. She had most likely been up to her eyeballs in this stuff and knew it better than he did. He could practically see the highlight reel playing behind her eyes. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to distract her from the purpose of her visit.

“We need to talk about what happened last night.”

The statement was detached and clinical. That was expected from Lisa. She knew he wouldn’t buy any sentimentality from her, so she was coming at this like a business obligation. At any other time he would have appreciated the professionalism. This wasn’t any other time.

He shrugged and turned back to the laptop. “What can we say that our adoring public hasn’t already discussed? I mean we’re nationally famous. You want to know something, you can just go to the replay.”

He clicked on a tab and turned to face Lisa as the video began playing. An all too familiar electronic voice emerged from the tinny laptop speakers.

“...it’s a gift really. Just like a rock star. You get to burn out instead of fading away.”

He watched the girl’s expression as the sounds of incendiaries played in the room. Last night they had sounded like the roar of a dragon. In the video they were diminished, harmless sounds. The crackling of a campfire. A barbeque with lighter fluid sprayed on it. That sound when a gas stove starts.

Then the screaming started. He was proud of how long he lasted. Maybe if he had shown more reaction from the start they wouldn’t have gone as far. Or maybe they would have seen it through to the end. He’d known people like that his entire life and sometimes there was no way to tell how things would fall until they played out.

The screaming didn’t stop, not for a long time. Lisa didn’t look away, but Alec could only guess what she was taking from this. It was hard to separate the girl from her power, if the line even existed.

He stopped the video there. He’d watched it more times than he could count. It didn’t get better. It didn’t desensitize him. It just made him angry, that hot, dangerous anger that led to stupid decisions.

“Wasn’t your fault.” He said flippantly. “I mean, your job is to specifically avoid situations like that, but of course you would run into the perfect anti-thinker who just stumps everyone. How long has she been in the city anyway? She there for the bank job when we ended up facing the entire Wards on our own? How about when you were so sure you had a handle on Joe? In fact, she must have started back when we were squaring against Oni Lee and Lung, right?”

This wasn’t accomplishing anything. Alec hated being like this, hated being out of control. Hot anger, the kind that lets people take advantage of you.

“What happened when you tried to hijack Bakuda?”

The directness of the question caught him off guard. He tried to summon a flippant response, but it died in his throat. Fuck it, she probably knew anyway. Might as well plough through.

“I... I think it was the dark.” She nodded slightly. Of course she already knew. “That super healing must have brought things back. I was... feeling stuff. Old stuff. It got overwhelming. Then I just kind of let go. Stayed focused on the connection to Bakuda, but everything else, it was like being disconnected from my own thoughts, from everything around me.” He shook his head. “Took the hell bike crashing to break me out.”

And hadn’t that been a treat. Black void with red crystals, and everywhere flesh. Flesh with lightning inside it, lumped, spread and budded. He could see them, the connections. He could recognize them. The network of Heartbreaker, leading to him and everyone else in that house. Eternal imprints, just waiting to bind them forever.

Eternity with your family. Joe may have said it wasn’t exactly hell, but that was close enough for Alec’s definition.

Lisa took a breath. “I should have seen it. The healing, I mean. It had nothing to do with the ABB thinker. I should have seen it, but I wasn’t looking in the right place.”

“Isn’t that your job? Find the right place to look.”

She shook her head. “Lately, I don’t know.” The admission clearly pained her, and Alec decided not to press further, at least for the moment. “Taylor will buy us two or three days to get our shit together. Can you handle that?”

“Sure.” He drew out the word. “I’ve only been tortured, chemically altered, and had what was probably a nervous breakdown or something. Five minutes of indirect therapy is more than enough to get me back on top.”

She gave him a long look and he let out a breath. “You want me to be okay, well I can’t guarantee that. You want me to act like I’m okay? Sure. I can do that. I’m good at that. I’ll even bring the latest memes for when we meet Joe again.”

Lisa nodded slowly. “This won’t be forever.”

“Lisa, if I thought this was forever I’d already be on a bus out of here.”

“No, I mean Joe, Apeiron? He's going to change things.”

“Well obviously.”

“Seriously, city wide at the minimum, probably further. I don’t know how he works, or what’s driving this, but he thinks he has a handle on it, and it’s going to be big. We just have to ride it out.”

“So what, ride the coattails of super tinker and reap the benefits of being friends with his one and only?” Lisa twitched slightly at that, which raised his spirits. “Sure, I can deal with that.”

“Alright. I’ll sort things out with Brian. Taylor should be okay after her rest. Rachel will need to come to terms with what’s going on.”

“Alright.” He shifted slightly. “We going to be seeing any more dramatic feats from super tinker any time soon?”

“I doubt it.” She said with confidence. “When I talked to him he seemed kind of embarrassed about how he spent the day, like I caught him goofing off. He’s probably taking it easy for a while. We should have a few days before we see any more surprises.”

That was a nice thought, but for some reason Alec doubted they would be that lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Hidden Hideaway / Laboratory (Valkyria Chronicles) 200:  
> You've come into possession of a small but out of the way safe-house, providing you with a place to rest and recuperate. This place has enough supplies for 9 people to live for a year or so. Those who have chosen the Scientist origin however, gain an upgrade to this building in the form of an underground laboratory. It is stocked with all the necessary tools and ingredients for a secret lab in the 1930's, along with a few scattered notes on what appears to be a figure surrounded in light.
> 
> Ragnite Container (Valkyria Chronicles) Free:  
> Ragnite is a valuable resource in Europa, and it is unlikely to appear in any other worlds. You receive a container that replenishes once per day. The free level gets you a box the size of a human head.
> 
> Advanced Materials (XCOM 2) 200:  
> As you experiment the physics and rules of a world ideas for new materials come to you. Elements and compounds from different universes often follow the same rules after all, so it should be theoretically possible to mix them. While you are developing new materials for your projects you will instinctively know whether or not materials will be compatible with each other and roughly how strong they will be. You will not know the exact ratio or procedure you will need to perform to fabricate these exotic materials, and it's not guaranteed that every material will be compatible with each other, but development will be made a lot easier.
> 
> Garage (Fast and Furious) 100:  
> You have a nice garage and parts supply. With a few days and some elbow grease, you could basically rebuild your car or cars from the bottom up; you probably have enough parts to keep someone else's ride running or give it an upgrade, too.
> 
> The Vehicle (Fast and Furious) Free:  
> This object barely deserves the title of car, at least in your opinion. A Volkswagen Beetle, a Pinto, or a Yugo, this car technically meets all the criteria and is very cheap, but it would take a master mechanic and a driving god to let it rival even the worst other racers can bring to the table.
> 
> Machines, They Just Speak To Me (Firefly) 200:  
> You have no formal schooling, but can fine-tune and repair engines with nothing but shoe polish. You don’t know what the parts are SUPPOSED to do, but you know how to make them work the way you want. You can diagnose a faulty part in the power core just by listening to the AC cycle, and can fix pretty much anything with naught but a wrench and some duct tape. It may not be pretty, and it may not last long, but it’ll work.


	31. 25 Search and Rescue - Addendum PHO

There was something refreshing about having a clear goal. The million possibilities and problems of how to manage Bakuda, the ABB, the city’s cape community, and all the aftermath of the previous night could be pushed aside in favor of a set of clear obstacles between me and my goal.

Weld was somewhere in the bay. I needed to be able to operate in the ocean. I needed to be able to locate him. I needed to be able to retrieve him. And I needed to be able to deal with any problems that had prevented him from making his way to shore.

The Celestial forge missed a connection to the Knowledge constellation as I considered the problems before me. Taking them one thing at a time the first problem was operating in water. I didn’t have any technology specifically intended for aquatic use. There were equipment and concepts that were easy enough to apply to the concept, and frankly I could probably have gotten by with nothing but the armor set that came with Class:Engineer. However, I had a much better option.

Actually I had a lot of options. My power had rapidly gone from incredibly limited to an abundance of possibilities. Still, there were areas of it where I hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface. A big reason for the focus on general upgrades was to let me start leveraging the full potential of my power.

I needed to get a start on this, and that meant design and planning. I slipped into my neural interface and felt my awareness spread and my thoughts accelerate. I took some time for a quick check on Fleet and Survey. I’d need their help on this mission, so I had to make sure their development was on track and progressing stably.

The copies of Fleet running in the duplicated motoroids had been used to assist with upgrades to the workshop. Not the most technical work, but there was a significant increase in spatial awareness and manual dexterity. Navigation of restricted environments would be a lot easier. The sudden appearance and disappearance of the copies was something the A.I. was having difficulty processing, but unlike Survey, Fleet seemed to be able to ignore details that were not relevant to current objectives. While that may indicate a more limited development it would actually provide a lot of resistance against the kind of logical paradoxes that could prove disastrous for electronic intelligences.

It might sound silly, but the ability to say ‘Fuck It’ and ignore conflicting information is a fairly advanced and very human mental trait, and one that Survey was not quite able to grasp.

Unlike Fleet’s irreverent acceptance of the situation, Survey was making every attempt to process and understand what was happening in the workshop. Every time something was encountered without an explanation that could be drawn from historical data or network research it was added to an ever mounting pile of computational issues that were waiting to be addressed. I did what I could to clarify any unknowns concerning technological principles, but that barely made a dent in the pile.

Pretty much all of the remainder either involved magic or fiat based effects. The magic at least had detectable effects and triggers that allowed some analysis. Trying to tie any physical mechanism to fiat supported aspects of my power was a lost cause. I worked to clarify what I could, but there were some issues with how my power worked that an information gathering A.I. would always have problems with.

I scheduled the next set of updates based on my more recent acquisitions from the Celestial Forge, then got to work. The workshop wasn’t fully networked yet, much less automated, so the main advantage of the neural connection was expanded technical awareness and accelerated thought. I could hold any blueprint perfectly in my mind, but this space made that design process both easier and faster.

While I worked I dispatched Survey to research Weld. The exact details of most cape’s powers and limitations weren’t generally publicly announced, but the Protectorate liked press releases and promotional material. Combined with him being pretty well known in my understanding and there should be enough information to figure out how to approach and retrieve him.

Within a few minutes of real-time I was done, once again benefiting from my powers allowing factor work and the assistance of an entire design team. As I disconnected from the system I was ready to dive into my preparations, but the consequences of coming straight from a session of life fiber training hit me in the gut and I found myself once again digging into a pile of oversized food with the gusto of a cartoon character.

It was the kind of binge that would have been excessive at a professional eating competition and I had been performing it several times an hour for most of the day. The food was delicious, perfectly prepared and thanks to my crafting powers would never spoil or go off in any way. I would say that made it tolerable to push through the quantity I needed, but serious life fiber exposure left me hungry enough that I would probably have dove into any food-like product that presented itself.

I wasn’t certain, but I think the hunger level from exposure was diminishing slightly. It would make sense that the most dramatic nutritional needs would be at the start of the exposure. Frankly, I was still just amazed that my body could physically contain this much food.

Once my feasting session was concluded and it no longer felt like a hole was being drilled in my stomach I made my way to the Alchemist Laboratory and downed another duplication potion. I waited while the pair of duplicates stepped out, once again not immediately recognizing my new body shape when seeing it from the outside. I wondered how long that would last. I remembered a similar reaction to myself when I started running, but that built up over months, not hours.

“Okay, everyone knows what they’re doing?”

The duplicates glanced between themselves, then down at the abbreviated costume they were still wearing. “Uh, yeah. But couldn’t you have waited until you finished the new costume before you used the potion?”

“What?” My voice was dripping with fake offence and surprise. “Why, that would waste precious time. I would never want to force versions of myself into an outfit they were uncomfortable with. What kind of person would do that?”

That got me some dark looks in response, but the duplicates split off to start work. I would probably pay for that later, likely in the same vein as what had been happening with all of the 20% time. There was probably some complicated psychological term for how my duplicates and I were treating each other. Not exactly self-abuse, but probably a gentler version of that idea. I was lucky that it seemed to be limited to unsanctioned experiments, inconvenient projects, and stylish additions.

Even as I made my way to the textile area I could see little flourishes in designs, new stairways added out of nowhere, arches and railings that were both striking and in theme with the rest of the workshop. I even had signposts, floor markings, and, though I have no idea which duplicate was cheeky enough to do it, one of those mall maps complete with the ‘You are Here’ marker.

All of this was a consequence of that new alchemy ability. Transmutation was incredible on its own, but with my skill level attempting this kind of work would have produced crude, flaky structures. Furthermore building up this much would have pulled matter out of the surrounding areas, leaving gulfs and craters scarring the workshop. With my powers supporting it a useful but limited ability was functioning at a masterful level with more matter generated than was taken and the end results being of impeccable construction at minimum. I doubted I would ever see that crude, flakey alchemical transmutation that the basic skill level produced.

All the result of combined powers adding up to more than their individual components. Which was also the reason I was on my way to produce a new costume. My old one would repair itself in two days, and I was easily capable of fixing it myself. But that would be a step back at this point. Since I had made that costume I had acquired new powers that would let me advance every aspect of its design.

Beauty in the Arts would let me produce more striking clothing than I possibly could before. Armourer, though specialized mostly in heavier armor, had numerous techniques for working highly durable and protective clothing. Masterwork Craftsman greatly improved the quality of all of my work. The Workshop upgrade gave me access to new materials and fabrication techniques. Tailor Made removed all time requirements from the design process, letting me produce impeccable quality almost instantly. Don’t Need a Team allowed me to make something that would require independent attention from multiple craftsmen on my own. With the help of They're Like Legoes, Right? the components of the costume could be assembled individually with no drawbacks in terms of appearance or durability. Finally, Advanced Materials meant multiple space age and experimental polymers could be combined to optimum effect.

It was the same principle that had been happening everywhere else in my workshop, the same principle my duplicates were using right this moment, and had been applying all afternoon. Upgrades and advancements beyond simple advanced technology, but using the supporting powers of the Celestial Forge to produce something beyond what I would be able to make with even the best materials and equipment otherwise.

That principle was on full display when I entered Garment’s claimed domain of textile machinery. Unlike our previous project I wasn’t working to produce a stunning item of clothing for the purposes of amazing everyone who looked at it. This was a combat uniform. It had unique and precise requirements. Material chosen to be permeable to life fiber energy, resistant to chemicals and damage, mobile enough to fight in without presenting the possibility of snagging or getting caught during a fight. Easy access to all of my equipment. Integrated placement of defensive items with, thanks to modular design, easy adjustment for the integration of new equipment and technology.

When I was done the costume looked sleek and dangerous while still being incredibly stylish. It made my previous effort look sophomorish, and that was just from a surface level assessment without understanding of the deeper changes. The material composition was nothing like what had been present before. Every piece, every seam, was a separate component, but blended completely into a smooth whole, so well integrated it may as well have been formed as a single object. The design was similar enough to be recognized as belonging to the same cape who had fought at the storage yard, but the improvement was clear.

With my immaculate costume I made my way to the Laboratorium once more. After Garment had returned the life fibers to the spool and the stasis field was activated the white gloves finally peeled themselves off my hands, flowing inside out until there were a pair of hands pressed against mine. They pulled back and took the waiting gown from the still awkwardly hanging cyber skull, who seemed not to have moved since taking the item hours ago. As Garment got dressed the skull seemed struck with indecision before remembering what it was actually supposed to be doing and joining in the work.

While Garment got dressed in her incredible gown I checked over the results from the Laboratorium. There was a huge amount of information from the tinker tech scans that I would have to dig through when I got back. Setting up a link to the neural interface would be a godsend there. Likewise I should probably scan those ragnite notes and medical books into the system. I wouldn’t be running out of storage any time soon and it just made more sense to process information at the best rate I could. I would need to set up destructive testing using duplicated equipment, then try repairing some of Leet’s gear, though I wanted a good picture of its starting state before I messed with it using one of my powers.

Finally I checked on the life fibers. Their mass had increased again, up 59.186% from the start of my training and 78.806% from their initial state. I wasn’t sure of the level of their development, though systems seemed to indicate a more measured response even independent of Garment’s control. I knew that mental complexity would start to emerge as the life fibers grew and developed. If I was going to be leaning on them for physical training that point would probably arrive fairly soon.

Yet another thing I’d need to be ready for.

After finishing my review and changing into my new costume I exited the Laboratorium to find the cost for my little snipe at my duplicates. Clearly they didn’t mind Garment’s barbarian chic costume that much if they were willing to immortalize it in murals across the workshop. The one in the textile lab was actually quite tasteful, a progression of all of my costume designs from salvaged thrift store gear to its current final form. I just wish it had excluded the barbarian costume. And the truncated outfit from the first life fiber test.

The frieze that had been added to the materials lab was less appreciated. Yes, I suppose the barbarian costume did put more focus on the armor components, which was the point of the material’s lab. That said the place really didn’t need a series of posing renditions centering each armor plate mid image for maximum emphasis, no matter how much Garment liked it.

When I summoned my next set of duplicates we came to an unspoken agreement not to mention any of the new art projects and instead focused on finishing our preparations for Weld’s retrieval. I say ‘our preparations’ but it was really the duplicates doing the work while I reviewed reports, amended designs, or kept up with the various projects. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the size constellation while I was looking over a summary of the post-blackout state of the area.

Well, post blackout might have been a generous term. While the further areas had power fully restored in a matter of hours the closer you got to Brockton Bay the greater the evident damage. Based on Survey’s reports the area surrounding New Hampshire had been dark for the entire night, in some cases stretching even longer. Whatever had been done to trigger the mass blackout had caused a massive amount of damage to the electrical grid.

Even nearly a full day later power was still off or inconsistent in parts of the city, with reports suggesting it would remain so for a few days at the very least. I could see that for myself as I exited my workshop after over an hour of preparation, entering into a dark apartment with nothing but fading daylight leaking through the windows.

You know, I was really lucky I had been granted an apartment and working refrigerator and that my duplicates last night had taken the time to move all my perishables. A good deal luckier that most people, from the look of the reports.

Actually, even without the reports I could see how lucky I was as soon as I stepped out onto the street. In the distance I could see the glow of streetlights, the fading corona that colored the rapidly darkening twilight sky. But they were definitely distant. No lights in the immediate area, and as far as I could see down the street. It had the benefit of making it dead easy to find a dark alley. Well, isolated alley. Every alley was dark at the moment. This time instead of using a random door I was able to try out one of my new additions.

The adaptors for the Garage entrance unfortunately had to be used with the workshop key in order to function. It prevented me from being able to open two entrances at once. That was an ability so exploitable that I had been severely disappointed to have it swatted down. Given the extra dimensional nature of the workshop that would have let me put entrances on opposite sides of the city and had them easily linked by my workshop. If that worked then why not opposite ends of the country? Or the planet? Or the solar system? Or the galaxy?

Yeah, it was easy to see why the Celestial Forge decided that that wasn’t going to be an application of my powers. The workshop was for crafting, not circumventing national or interstellar boundaries. I had to use the garage adaptors with the key in order for them to function. However, it did mean I could just point the adaptor at the sliding shutter of a disused loading dock and have it automatically open into my vehicle bay.

For the first time my motoroid was able to drive out cleanly without being awkwardly maneuvered through an entryway designed for pedestrian traffic. However, I wouldn’t be taking to the streets in civilian mode. It was time to actually push the limits of my technology.

After bidding Garment goodbye I sealed the workshop and settled onto the back of the bike. The motoroid folded up over my costumed form, taking on its new armored appearance. It wasn’t fully upgraded, but it was a massive improvement. New armor, systems, weapons, and technology had been introduced. With the armor around me I triggered one of the most mundane but useful of the added features.

A hand’s free straw extended towards my mouth and deposited a specific portion from the motoroid’s internal reservoirs. It was incredibly basic, but also meant no more nonsense of holding potion bottles in my mouth.

I swallowed the green liquid of the invisibility potion and watched both myself and the motoroid fade out of existence. After a quick confirmation of the potion’s effect I signaled Fleet, who activated the turbines and launched the armor into the fading night’s sky.

Flying was incredible. This was something I’d wanted since I’d first constructed the armor. My stomach dropped to my knees from the acceleration as the ground dropped away in a nearly vertical assent. Then, with the precision of carefully developed machine learning, Fleet vectored the thrust from the turbines and launched us towards the bay.

From altitude I could see the full breadth of the city spread before me. There was a stark contrast between the lit and darkened areas. For once it wasn’t exactly following the rich/poor divide, but there were definitely more dark patches in the Docks than Downtown. I had to wonder if any of that was due to damage from the previous night’s bombings and near riots rather than just the initial overload.

As I left the neighborhood I could see the familiar island of light that surrounded my boxing gym. I wasn’t surprised that the generator was holding up, but I was a bit disappointed it was still needed. Those people had a hard enough night previously, they didn’t need another one. I made a note to check in later if everything went well on this mission.

And hopefully for once I hadn’t just jinxed myself.

I reached the edge of the Docks and passed over the Boardwalk. Turbines weren’t exactly quiet, so I had picked up enough altitude to avoid attracting attention. That meant I had to use the new magnification features in the Motoroid’s sensors to get a closer look at the strip of light stretching across the length of the bay.

The Boardwalk was fully powered, though whether that was due to a stable reconnection to the grid or private generators I couldn’t say. There was evident damage from two bombs at different points along the structure. One was a large roped off crater in the middle of the walkway. It looked like it was probably part of the first wave of blasts that had been designed to seed chaos. The second was a good distance away and had taken out the back wall of one of the higher end luxury stores. I had no idea what they actually sold, just that they had expensive watches in the window and a door that you had to be buzzed through.

Given that the store was closed I would guess it had been part of the heist raids from the ABB. There were a few other closed stores, but mostly the Boardwalk was putting on a concerted effort to remain open and functional. I don’t know if that’s a statement about corporate greed or the resilient spirit of the city. At the very least, people who worked there were probably grateful to avoid a disruption in their paycheck.

I soared invisibly over the bay before picking a point a good distance from both the shore and the Rig. I had to imagine the Protectorate had some level of detection systems for the water around their base and I had no desire to trip them. I didn’t know how good they were, with the only safe bet being ‘not good enough to find Weld’.

The failure to recover Weld was not going to reflect well on the Protectorate ENE. Rescue diving in this kind of environment wasn’t an easy prospect at the best of times, and these definitely weren’t the best of times. Thursday’s storm had churned up the water, filling it with silt that still hadn’t settled. Visibility was terrible, and regrettably visibility would be the only way to identify Weld. The bay had been in use for a very long time. There was no way to distinguish a metal person from the rest of the industrial junk down there, and given how he involuntarily fused with any metal he touched, was also probably the reason he hadn’t been able to just walk out along the bottom.

With the region still recovering and the local protectorate over stressed there’s no telling when they’d be able to muster the resources to recover him. Divers might not even be enough. I can see them dredging the bay or needing to call in help from some hero with specialty powers that would bypass the issues at play.

Come to think of it, that was basically what was happening here, only the help was being volunteered instead of needing to be requested.

At my signal Fleet cut thrust and the motoroid dropped into the ocean. Altering the armor for aquatic functioning had been simple. None of the components that ran directly from magitek energy were in any way affected by immersion in water. The control system had been easily upgraded to my new standard of optical processing, and some minor precautions around the control system was all that was necessary for waterproofing. Environmentally sealing the armor had been incredibly simple, particularly with the new materials I was able to produce. Life support and air circulation systems had taken some minor work, but nothing serious.

The invisibility wore off as I took in the sights of the armor’s lights piercing through the cloudy water of the bay. The armor wouldn’t be exploring the ocean depths any time soon but it could more than handle the depth and pressure of the bay. I had built an emergency rebreather into my mask as well. It made the thing a bit bulky, but it would be enough for me to get to the surface if anything went wrong.

I was proud of both of these systems of underwater operation, but in truth they were nothing but fall back positions in the unlikely event that my primary option failed. I was going to try out one power that was perfect for this kind of mission, one with huge potential that I hadn’t even begun to explore.

With a signal to Fleet another potion was cued for consumption. I gulped down the brackish mixture and felt the effects take hold.

One of my alchemy upgrades had greatly expanded my potion making capability, though in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Natural Alchemy was not magic, it was a complicated science that used the somewhat abstract concept of natural energy to incredible effect. It wasn’t the structured binding of spells to chemical form that was facilitated by Innate Talent: Alchemist or the powerful but limited potion making of Kazooie Alchemy. This was a science, the application of new and awe inspiring principles to great effect.

The infusion of natural energy, and the nature of natural energy itself, was a fascinating and complicated concept. The best medium for binding natural energy was products of nature, plants and rarely animals. That was the reason for the small collection of planters added to my alchemy area. The applications of natural energy were something else entirely. Just the idea that there was this continuous source of power flowing through the natural world ready to be tapped was revolutionary. What you could do with it was an entirely other matter.

This potion was among the most basic I could produce. My powers made sure I had made it perfectly, but a basic item made with perfection was still basic. It took the natural energy of water and infused the body with it. The brewing process had been mostly about properly extracting essences of algae and kelp, but the result was both simple and incredibly useful.

The potion would let me breathe water.

With a single push I triggered my armor’s seals and pushed out into the cold water of the bay. Between my reinforcement and the thermal protection of my power infused clothing the temperature was nothing, but the real test was when I took in a breath of silty water and found it was as easy to breathe as clear air.

It was fantastic, revolutionary, and almost distracted me from the fact that I was sinking quickly. Infused with the power of the potion I could feel the water around me, not enough to give me better purchase, but enough to realize that the combination of my gear and wet clothes was completely taking my buoyancy. Fleet moved to arrest my descent, but I waved him off and reached for my next experimental item.

Natural Alchemy was related to Enchanting in the same way a number of my powers shared characteristics. I didn’t know if it would reach the same heights as Enchanting had from the support of other powers, but I did know that I was tired of being surprised by the effectiveness of enchanted weapons and ready to start using that power to its full advantage.

The item I drew from my belt resembled a curled nautilus shell with a pronounced grip. I squeezed the grip and triggered an insanely complex mechanical transformation. With smooth flowing movements the spiral unfurled itself, plates sliding over precise and intricate clockwork. Piece by piece the item assembled itself, folding out to its true form.

I would never have dreamed about attempting to build collapsible weapons before my modular technology power removed all of the downsides associated with them. The mechanical process of unfolding was actually more complex than it needed to be, but provided more compact storage and actually allowed me to use the full extent of all the powers that increased my mechanical knowledge. It was probably excessively showy to do the entire process in clockwork, but that had a certain stylish appeal to me.

Over the course of a handful of seconds an elaborate cutlass unfolded itself in my hand. The sword was amazing, some of my best work to date. Probably less dangerous overall than the omni-blade, but much more stylish. The water hummed around it from the effect of the HF capacitor, adding even more of a dramatic look to the flowing curve of the blade. But I hadn’t brought it because it was a masterfully built blade. I had brought it because of the elaborate rune work inscribed upon it.

Three things influenced the power of runes when applied to a weapon. The detail of the runes. The nature of the weapon. And the method of inscription. The detail of my rune work had reached heights I’d never dreamed of. I was producing incredible quality engravings unbelievably quickly to the point where I was constantly surprised by the power demonstrated. It was the other two areas I had yet to explore.

The more appropriate a weapon for the effect, the stronger the power of the effect. Initially I had thought that only referred to the scale of the weapon, but my expanded smithing knowledge had revealed how strongly the style and type of a weapon can influence its power. Unsurprisingly a cutlass was a weapon with affinity for water runes. It was also easier to wield and less cliché than building a water controlling trident. A cutlass would have strengthened water effects anyway, but the slight changes in the design, the excess smoothness, the flow in the texture of the metal, even the precise curve of the blade all amplified things. Even the transformation clockwork and other systems were fabricated to strengthen the affinity, rather than detract from it.

Incredibly, adding the mechanical transformation had actually sped up the crafting process rather than adding to it. A solid sword counted as a normal crafting, while adding mechanics to it allowed every power that influenced and accelerated mechanical construction to trigger. This included a new power received from the Time constellation just before departing the workshop, Savvy Sultan. Associated with Bling of War and Fingers of Silver, the power made my construction of any type of machine four times faster than it would otherwise be, stacking with every other acceleration power available to me. It also allowed me to operate hand tools with machine precision, which even further boosted the quality of my work.

Using modular technology I was even able to assemble the sword in pieces, benefiting from Workaholic’s duplication without having extra blades or out of scale components. It was a trick I’d used on Garment’s cell phone and my own computer core, and effectively negated the disadvantages of not being able to turn off my Workaholic power.

The design and detail combined would have made a powerful weapon, but there was a final aspect that could further enhance runes. I had been crafting by hand using engraving tools. Compared to trying to print or mechanically etch runes it provided decent power binding, but there were further heights possible, particularly with limitless resources. Runes carved with an engraving tool and highlighted in enamel or surface treatment were good. Runes carved with a pure diamond and traced with white gold is another matter entirely.

When the last segment fell into place the blade thrummed with power. A ripple extended through the water with a weight beyond what the senses could detect. This sword was focused entirely on elemental manipulation. It didn’t generate water, or have fluid strikes, or mess with blood flow. It moved water, and did it scarily well.

With the insight provided by Maliwan Intern I could stretch this effect from throwing around waves of liquid to what would pass for full hydrokinesis. The blade thrummed as I held it dead still, and the water around me froze in place. I don’t mean it turned into ice, I mean the liquid held position, silt particles locked in place and my descent to the bottom of the bay completely was halted.

With a slight movement I pulled a swell of water up from the depths, nearly launching both me and the motoroid through the surface of the water. A few more experimental swipes triggered currents and eddies, still a little difficult to control, but massively powerful. It was a heady feeling having that much influence over your environment. I elected to stop messing around and begin the search.

The first step was returning to the motoroid for another duplication potion. A pair of copies slid out of the armored robot, then opened to reveal my copies. The costume looked even more impressive than I thought, particularly with the coat flickering in the slight current passively generated by the copies of the cutlass. One of the duplicates took a light swipe with the blade, sending himself upwards in a tight spin.

“Holy crap this is cool.”

He could speak normally, but his voice was echoey and distant in the water.

“Uh, guys? Potion side effects.” The second gestured to his face, then to us. I swam closer and saw what he was talking about. Natural Alchemy specialized in transformations. While this wasn’t as extreme as some of what it was capable of, it seemed there was no level that wouldn’t have some physical effect. The duplicate’s eyes were a bright, faintly luminous blue instead of my normal brown. It wasn’t severe, but it was noticeable. It seemed like this branch of alchemy had traded any sense of subtlety for power and versatility.

“I think it looks good.” The first duplicate was hanging upside down in the water while using his cutlass to shift back and forth.

“Ok, this doesn’t matter. It’s temporary.” Or I hoped it was. And if it wasn’t I was confident I could come up with another potion to reverse the effect. “You ready to start the search?”

They each nodded and began drawing small crystal modules from their belts. One of the first things I did in preparation for this endeavor was both upgrade and thoroughly jailbreak my omni-tool. The admittedly decently advanced processors had been torn out and completely replaced with the best optical computing technology available to me. The interface, reserves, and powersource had all been overhauled. My weapon modification powers came into play in both improvements and customizations.

Rather than the basic arrangement of options I entered the storage facility with I had a full set of abilities from cryonic blasts to ammunition enhancement to construction of autonomous turrets. That said, there were still some items beyond the fabrication abilities of an omni-tool. That would be a problem for anyone without my modular technology powers. As such I could assemble the components I needed in my workshop and fabricate the rest in the field.

I watched as advanced drone bodies were fabricated around fist sized processing cores dispersed from the duplicates. Each core was able to run a truncated version of Survey with enough power to follow the search pattern and scan the ocean debris in detail. I was keeping my own cores in reserve so they’d be available for the next run of copies. We each pulled up our omni-tools and coordinated the search, each copy fanning out in a spiral while I acted as a mostly stationary command center.

The pattern also addressed the issue of communication under water. It would be possible to send signals through sonar, but not with the level of encryption or discretion I wanted. In the timeframe available I hadn’t been able to build a subspace transponder or quantum entanglement communicator. With the drones acting as relays I could overcome the pathetic signal range possible for EMF through salt water. With ten drones chained I could cover a circle with a 200 meter radius before hitting the limit of signal range and duration.

It was a sound and effective search pattern. It was also incredibly boring. I ended up slightly above the disgusting junk strewn floor of the bay as my copies lead their squads of drones in a search pattern, making sure to tell me how awesome it was to swim by the power of an enchanted sword. I had nothing to do but double check reports, confirm results, and occasional play around with the hydrokinetic power of my cutlass. That said, given the amount of silt even a slight swing could stir up I ended up holding off that particular endeavor.

The only exciting part involved swimming to the next search coordinate after the repeated unsuccessful searches. I had divided the bay into a set of minimally overlapping circles for my search grid, and after each failure to locate Weld I moved to the next coordinates. At this point I was at least able to try out all the tricks my duplicates had spent the previous search bragging about.

The cutlass had a basic mass field, assembled from trace amounts of ezzo and an internal power source. Using it I could either decrease the mass of the blade for faster strikes or increase it for heavier impact. I was working on a system that would automatically increase mass upon impact, but that was still a work in progress. I knew that weapon size influenced the effect of its runes. I didn’t realize that applied to mass as well.

The nature of the water control was highly dependent on the effective mass of the blade. A heavier blade has vastly more power, though less precision, creating great flows of liquid. Ramping down the mass gave lightning fast jets with incredible precision. Using it to move through the water essentially provided a slipstream. It was like riding a waterslide of your own design, and entertaining enough that I started to dread the arrival of the next grid point.

The search took longer than I thought it would and was starting to extend into the grid points further from the shore. Weld had clearly covered a lot of ground after he'd fallen from the Rig, but obviously hadn’t picked the right direction when he started walking. The bay was completely open on the east side and if Weld had wandered out into the Atlantic there was no telling how long it would take to find him.

The answer, as it turned out, was three hours and twenty eight minutes. Nineteen duplication potions and one refresh of my water breathing potion after I started getting short of breath. Also, one missed connection to the Size constellation of the Celestial Forge. After all that, a drone finally spotted Weld, just beyond the edge of the bay and fused with a mess of rusting marine equipment.

I dispatched the rest of the drones and set off for his location. I was a bit worried about giving away my duplicates, so I sent them off out of sight. It turned out to be completely unnecessary. Weld was not in the most observant state. In fact he was nearly catatonic.

From the look of things he had been through Hell. Various pieces of broken objects were peppering his body, everything from chains to wire to regular trash. I could even recognize some of the alloy of the Rig still not absorbed by his body. He was at the bottom of a slight slope on the ocean floor and appeared to have fallen and ended up stuck in an anchor, the remains of a shipping container, and for some reason an old bicycle.

There was no reaction when I approached him. His eyes twitched slightly in the light from my drone but nothing more. Calling out his name didn’t get much of a response either, maybe a slight shift of what passed for his facial muscles, but nothing else.

This was about as bad as I could have anticipated. It didn’t help that it was deep, murky, and pitch black outside the light of my drones. I’m not even sure Weld could speak in this kind of environment.

I looked down at my cutlass. I had an idea. I’m not sure if it was a good idea, or just an attempt to show off. The fact was it should at least make it so Weld could talk. If I tried to haul him out of here without making contact I didn’t know what could happen, both during the trip and upon arrival.

I lifted up my blade and activated the mass field to its highest power. I could immediately feel the strain in my muscles as the blade’s weight multiplied dramatically. With every ounce of power I could muster I pulled the sword in a spiral around me. Slowly the water began to rotate. It swirled faster and faster until it was overwhelming. The duplicated drones were carried away, leaving only my motoroid anchored to the sea floor. Finally, the effect I was straining for emerged.

A gap appeared in the water. Slowly a pocket of empty space appeared around the sword. It spread, a wall of rushing water dividing a tiny circle of calm at the bottom of the ocean. The maelstrom passed over Weld, reaching the limit of its power with just enough space to free the boy from the ocean. Finally I drove the cutlass into the sea floor. The oblong dome of rotating water continued to spin, creating a tiny pocket of clear space lit only by my motoroid.

There was a gasp as Weld filled what passed for his lungs. I knew he didn’t need to breathe, but apparently the sensation was important to him. I slowly approached as he sucked in long deep breaths.

“Weld? I’m here to help. Are you alright?”

I waited in the shadowy pocket of water listening to the deep breaths of the boy and the faint rushing of the water around us. Finally, Weld spoke a single word.

“Music.”

“Music?” I asked. “You want music? Seriously?”

“Helps.” The second word seemed to take the last of his energy and he fell back into deep breathing again.

I awkwardly held up my omni-tool. Given the immense amount of storage and processing power this thing had you’d think it would have an entire media library on it. I could probably hold the entire sum of human recorded audio as an afterthought in the buffer memory. Unfortunately I hadn’t. I’d been so focused on technical advantages, building weapons and equipment, that I hadn’t taken any time to even transfer the music stored on my terrible human laptop.

I committed a quarter for the jar as I dug through the data I did have in an effort to find something that would work. At this point I’d take a commercial jingle. Anything would do.

I immediately reevaluated my previous statement when I found the only recorded music on my omni-tool. Looking over at the mutilated and distressed boy I knew I had to help him. I was just seriously considering if my own tone deaf singing would be a better alternative to this.

Finally I grit my teeth, turned away, and activated the playback.

The underwater ambiance gave the Laboratorium work hymn an even more haunting quality. As an arbitrary documenting exercise Survey had pieced together the entire recording with all the ‘Ave Imperator’ parts edited out, along with a proposed translation that was even worse than my limited understanding of the spoken language.

It took me a while to work up the courage to see how Weld was reacting to it. To my surprise he seemed to be gradually coming back to himself. It started with an almost contemplative expression, then he started following the rhythm of the music with the one hand free of the twisted mess around him. His breathing steadied, then relaxed. Finally he spoke.

“That’s interesting.” He took some more time to listen to the song. “The melodies are almost like something from Thomas Tallis, but there were other elements to it I’ve never heard before. What language is that?”

I shrugged. “Not really sure.” I took a moment before continuing. “You know a lot about music?”

He nodded as much as his predicament would allow. “Don’t really sleep, so I use it to unwind, center, deal with stress.” He glanced around at his situation. “Uh, stress like this.”

“Right.” I tried to put some humor into my voice.

Weld took another deep breath. “So I’m guessing you’re that new tinker? Shaker?” He glanced at my motoroid. “Tinker.”

I nodded. “Name’s Apeiron. Look, do you want me to cut you out of that?”

He froze for a second, then nodded frantically. “Please. Uh, I absorb metal that touches me. Some of this, it’s close enough to count.”

“Don’t worry. I have a carbide blade. It can handle this without risking getting stuck in you.”

“Right.” His eyes darted across the wreckage. “Will that be enough...”

He fell silent as he saw the glowing orange blade extend from my pistol. One of my duplicates had resized the base form to prevent any more giant sword nonsense. With the HF capacitor engaged and combined with the wind runes and superheated blade the wreckage practically vanished before the edge of the sword.

Weld was right about the absorption. When metal contacted it slowly started integrating into his body. Not just into but part of. The metal that counted as Weld slowly spread out through whatever was touching him. It was similar to some nanite effects I was familiar with, but entirely driven by powers and atypical biology.

Between that knowledge and my Advanced Materials power I was able to map out the edges of the affected areas and shave them back. It was kind of the equivalent of a haircut or trimming fingernails. I was careful to clear away the debris as I sliced it back. Tossing it through the wall of rushing water to be swept out into the ocean.

As the more bulky portions were removed Weld started to regain some of his mobility. Slowly he was able to raise his arms, then to sit up, then finally climb to his feet. When all was done he seemed immensely relieved, though he still looked terrible.

Even with the excess material cut away he was still covered in half absorbed ocean trash. Worse there were sections of his body completely missing, probably separated to free himself from objects he couldn’t break or take with him. Even though he was finally mobile he seemed a long way from collecting himself.

“Hey, do you want to take a minute? Let things settle a bit?”

Weld stopped obsessively checking the status of his body, then slowly nodded. “Uh, yeah. Good idea.” His eyes drifted up to the spinning dome of water. “I mean, if we’re alright for a minute?”

“We’ll be fine.” I pulled up my omni-tool, triggering a significant reaction from the cape. The sword had enough power to sustain this effect for days. Heat buildup would render that impossible at some point, but it would take hours before the functionality of the mass field would be affected. “Got ages of time.”

“Right.” He kicked his foot awkwardly and paced slightly on the silty ocean floor.

“Look, let me get us some seats.” I started shifting through stored arrays in my omni-tool’s memory.

Weld glanced at my motoroid. “I have trouble with chairs, and with the metal thing...”

“Right, I’ve got it covered.” The omni-tool fabricated a transmutation array onto my hand and I brought it down to the ground. The silt was easy enough to deconstruct and reassemble into one of the more solid types of rock. The comparatively small amount of ground rose up, multiplied by my power, into a pair of heavy granite benches.

Since I was engaging in whims, I decided the space could use some more lighting than the headlights of my motoroid and began forming a set of stone pillars around the edge of the water wall. A triggered command from my omni-tool sent a full set of drones flying out to rest on top of them like lanterns. The orange glow from the drones shifted the space to a much warmer light than the harsh headlights. I signaled Fleet to power down the motoroid lights as Survey maximized the glow from the drones.

Weld took a few moments to gaze over the floating drones, the pillars, and benches, even running his hand across them slowly.

“You okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah, just trying to make sure I didn’t have some kind of psychotic break at the bottom of the ocean that’s making me imagine all of this.”

I snorted. “You could probably do better than this for a mental breakdown.”

He grinned. “Maybe. I’d probably have more music variety.”

I suddenly realized the hymn had been looping and quickly cut it off. I checked on his reaction, but he waved me off with good grace. He took a moment to stretch his deformed body, then took a slow walk around the edge of the vortex, this time enjoying the range of motion rather than awkwardly shuffling.

As Weld circled around, taking time to examine the engraved workmanship of the pillars or the design of the drones I felt a connection to the Size constellation manifest. This one was called Tinkerer, primarily a repair and modification power, but with a hugely significant aspect to it. Variable Weapon Crafting. The ability to combine, shift, and alter weapons smoothly and easily. Basically everything I’d tried to do with my sword, only deliberate rather than my muddling attempt. These were shifts that could be integrated into combat, not my slow unwinding of a compact form. It was another case of technology being obsolete as soon as it was finished, though at least a minor one.

There were a few additional items that came with this power. An advanced cell phone, a weapon, some refreshing samples of energetic material. Interesting enough on its own, but secondary to the significant advancement.

With this power, almost as an entirely unmentioned feature, I had an... well, a kind of an aura. I barely understood the concept. Some kind of field extending from my body, potentially defensive or enhancive? It reacted with the energetic material and could be quantified by the cell phone, but outside of that I didn’t know anything short of the fact that it was important and significant. Worn or carried items could be enhanced or reinforced by it, probably how Variable Weapons remained functional despite being complicated and delicate.

It was a huge advancement, a serious, major power unrelated to equipment in any way and also something I had to put aside completely as Weld was finally settling into a seat on the bench across from me.

“So, it’s that thing...” He gestured at the cutlass. “That’s doing all this?” He gestured at the dome.

I nodded. “Hydrokinetic weapon. Managed to pull the water away and clear a space for us.”

He nodded “How’d you get air down here?”

“I didn’t.” He raised an eyebrow. I waved a hand in response. “This is water vapor. Vacuum boiled and saturated the pocket.”

“Wait.” He lifted his hands. “No air at all?” I nodded. “How are you breathing?”

Because it still counts as water, so my natural energy potion doesn’t care. “Tinker stuff.”

He gave me a hard look, then lowered his hands. “Right.” He leaned back and sank a little further onto the bench. “Uh, what’s happening up there anyway? Did they send you to get me?” There was a serious edge of hope to his voice.

I shook my head regretfully. This wouldn’t be an easy topic, but I wasn’t about to lie to him. Lying was wrong, and I also was terrible at it.

“I haven’t had contact with the Protectorate or the PRT. Last I heard they weren’t that well-disposed to me, so I’m keeping my space.”

He nodded slowly. “Right, the thing with Panacea. I heard about that.”

Yeah, from an exact transcript of everything I said.

“Yeah, from an exact transcript of everything I said.”

Weld blanched, and I felt a little embarrassed over letting that slip. It had been a sore point since Tattletale had told me about it, and the words came out as soon as I thought them. Still, dancing around the issue wouldn’t help. He seemed to rally fairly quickly.

“It certainly made an impact.” He said it with this weird half smile that actually got a laugh from me.

I leaned back and let out a breath. “Yeah, that was a shit show. I did not expect that to get picked over to that extent, or blow up on that level.”

The ward shrugged. “This city, right?” I nodded to him. “So how are things up there?”

“You were at Lung’s escape, right?”

“Yeah, tried to stop him along with Armsmaster.” He paused for a moment. “Is he alright?”

“Sort of. Last I heard he was out of critical care, but I don’t know any more than that.”

He nodded slowly. “Anything else you can tell me?”

I took a deep breath, and considered how to do this. Then I shrugged and just dove in.

“Around the time the Rig was attacked the ABB triggered a multi-state blackout. They have some new timing thinker who was able to coordinate it with Bakuda. Bakuda launched that bombing spree, but only the first wave was random. The rest were targeted or disruptive, then there were a series of heists. No idea how much they managed to land. When that was going on the Undersiders were trapped in some kind broadcast murder arena by Bakuda, Uber, and Leet. Also a bunch of ABB members. Oh, and they were conscripting civilians by putting bombs in their heads. That got nasty. I heard the rest of the Wards ended up holding off Oni Lee and the new thinker at the Forsberg Gallery. No injuries, but the place was basically leveled. In the Protectorate Velocity and Assault are out of commission. No idea what’s happening with New Wave, except apparently Panacea’s still in the Master Stranger tank. Sounds like the group is breaking up or something.”

It took the cape a while to process all of that. “Uh, where were you in all of that?”

I sighed. “Tattletale called me in for help with the arena thing. It was a clusterfuck. Bakuda got away at the last minute along with Uber and Leet. I did what I could to mop things up, but it wasn’t exactly my finest hour.”

Weld looked down at his mangled state. “Yeah, well that seems to be going around. What happened with the Undersiders?”

I dropped my head. “Got them out. They’re going to owe me for that, big time.”

“Hey, what’s your deal with them anyway?”

I looked up and smiled slightly. The Ward had a disarming personality. It was easy to feel comfortable around him and you could see how he ended up as the poster child for case 53s.

“This going to get transcribed for Protectorate circulation as well?”

He looked up at the swirling dome of pitch black sea water. I could tell he was suppressing a reaction to that, and not a particularly pleasant one.

“Wrong answer get me left down here?” It was said in jest, but there was some real concern behind those words.

I shook my head. “I’m not abandoning you, not after all this.” I shook my head. “It’s just the last time I thought I was doing the right thing it blew up in my face. And the time before that. And honestly the time before that as well. I’d just like to break that particular streak.”

His expression softened. “Look, they make us swear an oath when we join, and I take that pretty seriously. That said, anything not directly linked to a parahuman felony might slip my mind.”

I smiled. “So that would be association with the back robbery, sale of the knives, potential link to the knives, everything they tried to pin on me after Panacea, and now everything they’re trying to pin on me after the rescue last night.”

“What happened last night?”

“Got some of the conscripts free of the bombs in their head. When I made the offer a gang member objected and someone shot him over it. So apparently that’s master suspicion.” I looked at him. “Actually, you better get ready for that. It seems like I can’t walk down the street in this city without someone claiming I’m the next Heartbreaker.”

Weld shook his head. “That stuff? It doesn't have traction outside the city. Plus I’m immune to most master effects. Manton interaction.”

“Lucky you.” I paused. “I notice you never answered the question about those felonies.”

That got a weak smile. “Okay, I’m not a lawyer, but you want my rough guesses on this stuff?”

“Best I’ve got so far. I’m not exactly flush with insight on this.”

“Right.” He pulled himself up, which made the damage more apparent and noticeable. “So, the bank thing? You weren’t there. Might count as an accessory, particularly if you were in on the take.”

“Definite no on that one.” From my tone I sensed he believed me. “Just the sale of the knives.”

He nodded. “Right, the knives.” He was starting to absently gesture with his hands as he spoke. Considering the half dead state I found him in I was happy to see it. “Selling tinker tech is a weird legal area, especially if you’re not doing it for a share of criminal proceeds. I’ve heard some nightmare stuff about the tax law around it, but for this it might get classified as illegal weapon sales, worst case.”

I nodded, and I had the sense he was sugar coating things for me. Still, it was a nice contrast to the dire panic I’d heard about from Piggot.

“For the Panacea stuff...” He shrugged his shoulders. “The category of what counts as ‘Assault with a parahuman power’ is pretty broad, legally speaking. They could probably also charge you with trespassing, if they’re feeling vindictive.”

“So they’ll charge me with trespassing?”

He made an irreverent gesture. “Possibly? Depends who’s running the case. The main thing is if Panacea presses charges, or I guess her guardian. The thing is, since she’s not mastered...”

“Panacea is mastered.”

Weld sputtered over his words. “Sorry what?”

“Yeah, that’s why the test was positive. I put some of it together with my thinker power and got the rest confirmed later.”

“Again, sorry, what? You’re saying you mastered her?”

“Fuck no.” I couldn’t keep the disgust out of my voice and the sharpness of it caused Weld to flinch back. “God fucking damn stupid...” I cleared my throat and turned to him. “Her sister, Glory Girl? She has an emotion aura. Panacea’s been exposed to it for years, with a developing brain. That shit would mess anyone up. That’s why she was setting off every warning light during the whatever test.”

Weld seemed seriously taken aback. “Are you saying Glory Girl is a master? Her area is classified as a shaker effect.”

I let out a slow breath through gritted teeth. “You know, I’m really starting to hate that classification system.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean...” I took a moment to center myself. “people take a system designed to define threat response and treat it like it can explain powers. The fact that a mental influencer has the same classification as someone who makes rock monsters or whatever should tell you that. You want Glory Girl’s aura to count as a shaker? Fine. It’s a shaker effect that can screw up someone’s mind.”

He seemed reluctant to concede the point. “Do you have any evidence...”

“What evidence? It’s constant mental alteration. You seriously think that’s going to have no effect on a brain? People end up with serious disorders from periods of low sunlight. You think actually screwing with neural chemistry is going to be less serious?”

Weld was looking at me critically and I realized how much passion I had inadvertently put into my statements. I took a couple of deep breaths and forced myself to calm down.

“You have a history with that kind of thing?”

“Not anything worth getting into.”

Thankfully he took the hint and decided to try to pick up the thread where we’d left things off.

“Okay, so Panacea is a mess. Might get an assault charge out of it, depends on the healing effect you used.” He paused slightly as if waiting for me to offer information. When I didn’t he pressed on without missing a beat. “As for the rescue, probably won’t stick.”

“There was a lot of property damage in the fight.”

“Trust me, that happens. It’s nothing the cape community hasn’t seen before.”

I shrugged. “If you say so.”

Weld seemed to pick up on my reluctance and changed the subject.

“So, Armsmaster told me about the knives you made.” I nodded along. “Samples he had disappeared right from his lab. He was convinced they were some kind of projection.”

This was getting closer to a transparent attempt to extract information, but I just shrugged along. “Yeah, the broken ones do that.”

Weld blanched. “What, seriously? How?”

“Tinker stuff.”

“Right.” He drew out the word as the Celestial Forge missed a connection with the Vehicles constellation. “That part of the sales pitch for the Undersiders?”

I shrugged again. “They knew what they were getting.” Well not really, but it was more favorable to them, so they can’t start complaining now. “It was a fair deal. If you’re worried about me selling that stuff to anyone else I can assure you against that.”

“You needed it to get set up, right?” His eyes drifted over my costume, motoroid, drones, and cutlass.

“You know how tinkering is. You’ve got a progression line from hunting for equipment at swap meets to the flying transforming motorcycle robot.”

“I think it’s a little more complicated than… Wait, motorcycle?”

I signaled Fleet and Weld watched the motoroid fold in on itself into the cape form of my motorcycle. With another signal it shifted back into robot mode.

“That’s fantastic.” He grinned slyly “Especially the sound effect.”

I nodded. “Discharge from the servo capacitors. Happens every time it shifts between forms.”

Weld blinked. “Seriously? That’s part of the design?”

I nodded at him. “Inherent to the mechanism. I couldn’t strip it out if I wanted to.”

He seemed stunned. “That’s just… Wow. I can’t believe you designed something like that into the bike.”

This was getting dangerously close to a blatant interrogation. Might as well see how far I can turn it in the other direction.

“So what did people think I was going to design? I mean the ones who weren’t convinced I was a shaker.”

Weld looked almost pained at the question. “To be honest, no one had a damn clue. They were throwing around everything from specializations in wavelengths, time reversal, nanotechnology...” I’m pretty sure that between my mask and deliberate lack of reaction I didn’t give anything away. “smart matter, and even power emulation. Last I heard they still had no clue what you did with Khepri’s weapons.”

With that I must have shown some reaction. It was probably telling that Taylor related frustration was more significant than the potential of being exposed as using S-class technology. Weld leaned forward in response.

“What is the deal with Khepri anyway?”

I considered everything surrounding Taylor, then the significant smaller slice of that I could afford to talk about. Without thinking I let out a long sigh of frustration.

Weld’s lips quirked. “That bad, huh?”

I returned the smile. “I didn’t exactly know what I was getting into there.”

“The thing with Aegis didn’t tip you off?” It was said jovially, but there was a definite edge to it.

“Before that Aegislash there was no sign of that. Oh, and I still say that’s on Aegis. The responce to being outnumbered five to one isn’t supposed to be a mad final charge. He needs to learn to take the L.”

“I’ll give you that, but... wait, Aegislash? That Aegislash?”

“Oh, yeah. Apparently Khepri makes a habit of that. Bakuda didn’t leave with all her limbs when she got away. Also, Lung has some kind of grudge against her. Don’t know what caused that, but I doubt it’s good.”

Weld looked a little ill at the concept, and I was right there with him. He pushed against the bench and rose to his feet. “Sounds pretty serious. I really appreciate this, but it seems like I should probably get back.”

The slight pleading tone was enough for me. “Sure, it’s why I came down here anyway.”

He gave me a sly grin. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Please,” I smiled behind my mask. “I’m a cold blooded mercenary. I was hired by a new tinker who wanted a chance to talk to a hero who hadn't completely blacklisted him. Trust me, I made him pay through the nose for the job. Just hope he doesn’t end up regretting it.” The last sentence came out with a touch of a hard edge, but Weld took it with good humor.

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” He glanced up at the dark swirling water. “What exactly is the plan for getting me out of here? Are we walking back?”

“No worries, I came here with five different options for getting you to the surface.”

“Seriously?”

“Wasn’t sure if there would be any problems with a specific one. Also brought four different healing technologies, just in case you were in worse shape.”

“Four types?” He glanced down at his body, specifically the missing sections and jagged additions. “Uh, I don’t have the best record with healing powers, but I would seriously appreciate it if you could do something about this.”

“You do know that everything I do is master suspected? Do you want to end up in the tank?”

Weld took the threat of isolation remarkably well considering the circumstances. “I’m immune to most master effects, so it’s not that much of a threat. Plus, this much corroded metal will take a couple of days to absorb. If you can deal with it for me, it’s all out in the wash.”

“You’re serious about this?” My nanite healing could work here. Even with his body and metal absorption, that was an absolute power. I didn’t have as much faith in Evermore Alchemy, Healing potions, or natural energy potions, but nanite healing could restore someone merged with a storage locker. It could sort this out.

Weld nodded. “Please. I don’t have a conventional sense of touch, but this is actually really uncomfortable.”

Cautiously I started to approach, then paused.

“What?”

“Just occurred to me. I’ve got a contract for healing tech active. I start giving it out for free and it’ll piss off all my clients.”

Weld’s face fell. “Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure I left my wallet in a lobster trap God knows how far back. Plus I don’t exactly carry parahuman healer money.”

“Most people don’t.” I looked at him. “How bout a trade?”

“What do you want?” His gesture suggested he wasn’t in the best of bargaining positions.

I looked over his body. “You can shapeshift, right? Are you okay with a tissue sample? I want to get a better look at that living metal.”

He actually smiled. “Not exactly difficult to come by.” A blob started secreting from his chest. “Any time I get stuck to something too large to break I need to shed some of my body. It’s not really a pleasant feeling.” The metal formed into a sphere and I caught it before it dropped to the seabed. “As prices go, it’s basically a souvenir.” There was a gleam as he smiled. “Course, I still want that back if this doesn't work.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

He nodded. “Great. So what next?”

“Well, first I put my glove on your shoulder.” I placed a gloved hand over one of the few intact patches of Weld’s costume.

“Then what?”

“Then you stay quiet while I fix you.” As I focused glowing blue lines spread from my hand across Weld’s body. It was the first time I had worked on a monstrous cape and it was an experience.

I didn’t have an innate understanding of medicine or biology. I could sort of follow along from what my nanites did, where they went and what they fixed. In this case I had no fucking clue. I was dealing with something closer to an eccentric sculpture than a living being. Types of metals were separated by organs with actual gold used for nerves. There was both biological and mechanical function almost superimposed upon each other. It was an almost deliberately jumbled and confusing mess.

If I’d been trying to correct it myself I wouldn’t know where to start. Fortunately I could just follow along as my nanites worked with their impossible medical skills. With no idea what to fix or where I flooded Weld’s system and watched their progress. It was fascinating, informative, and disgusting all at the same time.

Once again, the external picture was less dramatic than watching the process from the inside. Slowly the gaps in his body began to fill in, blue lines spread over extruding pieces of metal, either absorbing them or shearing off the excess mass. Even the streaks and discoloration of absorbed impurities vanished, leaving a mirror polish in place of the previous swirls of metal.

When I pulled my hand away Weld was basking in the shock of his restoration. I was too deep in thought to enjoy his reaction. Instead I was stuck contemplating the nature of his body.

Weld wasn’t supposed to look like this. This form wasn’t a natural state, it was being enforced and facilitated by his powers, but not in an intelligent way. This entire shape was a mistake, an error of launch that had persisted past the point of correction. It was something my nanites were designed to correct, but stood at the very limit of my ability to do so.

“That was incredible.” Weld grinned widely as he flexed his arms. Without the attached material he was more flexible and agile. I was still too deep in though to notice. It didn’t take him long to realize something was off. “Apeiron? Is something wrong?”

“Yes.” I answered without thinking. “And I don’t know if I can fix it.”

“What?” His voice was edging to panic as he closed the distance. “Fix what?”

“This.” I gestured at him. At his clear confusion I continued. “Whatever made you like this, a Case 53. I’m not sure I can fix it.”

A chorus of emotions played across Weld’s face faster than I could follow, accompanied by stuttering gasps before eventually settling on two words “Fix it?”

I took a breath and faced him directly. “This type of healing is specifically designed to correct serious mutation and physical alterations. Alterations due to parahuman effects are harder, the causes are too varied. I don’t know if I can do it.”

“When.” His voice pitched up on the word so he cleared his throat and tried again. “When did we talk about treating case 53 status?”

My eyes dropped to the sphere of metal in my left hand. “Well, you paid for healing. I’m just saying I might not be able to fix everything.”

“But, something? That means you can fix something, right?” The hope in his voice was heartbreaking.

“I told you I don’t know. The best I can do is try, and this is insanely complicated stuff to be…”

“Do it.” His voice was dead serious.

“What?”

“Whatever you can do, do it now.”

“Weld, this is experimental stuff. Even I don’t know how this can go. Plus you're a minor under the jurisdiction of...”

“Getting approval from the PRT will be a nightmare. I’m not putting this off.” He looked straight into my visor. “People look at me, they think I’m normal, that I’m fine because I look human. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I can barely feel anything. I can’t taste. It’s like I’m a ghost in the world. I don’t even sleep properly. If not for music I would go insane.” His eyes darted back to the depression where I had found him.

It was close, so damn close to what I’d been dealing with. Sustained by nanites I could ‘function’ but not really live. It would let me stay in the lab forever, but no connection, no link to the world, I’d go insane.

I felt like this would bite me in the ass, but it was something I needed to do.

“Alright.” His face lit up so bright it was almost painful. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do what I can.”

He nodded and braced himself. I took a deep breath and rested a hand on his shoulder.

I had no idea if this worked. The lack of connections to the Magitech constellation meant my understanding of parahuman effects and how to manipulate them was middling at best. The only reason this had a slight chance of success was the extensive healing I had just performed and the fact that half of Weld’s body operated on mechanical principles.

Particularly, without my Advanced Materials power this would have been hopeless. I was leveraging all of my knowledge of exotic material interactions, mechanical properties, and scientific principles. I was pushing my nanites to the limit of their capabilities, building experimental structures on top of experimental structures, reshaping the Ward’s body over and over in a desperate attempt to find the thread leading to his normal form.

It took everything I had, and it wasn’t enough. I could feel it slip away from me, the goal was just beyond my abilities. The minor, insignificant changes barely integrating into his form and the monument of my failure finally drove me to pull back.

Weld was staring at his hands. His metal hands on his metal body. The finish of his skin had dampened to a more matt texture than his usual gleam, but otherwise he was unchanged.

“What did you do?”

“I’m sorry.” His head shot up to face me. “I couldn't fix it.”

He ran a hand over one arm. “But… my skin?”

I took a breath. “I was able to push some nerves closer to the surface, and multiply them, but you have less than ten percent of the sensitivity a normal person would.”

“And I can smell.”

I nodded. “Sort of. I couldn’t restore taste, just some of the nerves. And no changes to anything else. Really powerful scents will probably get through, but you probably won't be able to taste anything with less than three chilies next to it on a menu. Or Thai food.”

“Thai food.” He was practically crying. “I can live with Thai food.”

“Look, I made some strong claims. I'm sorry I wasn’t able to fix everything.”

“No.” He took a deep breath and seemed to be savoring the experience. A wide smile spread across his face. “But you changed everything.”

****

Addendum PHO

♦ Topic: Apeiron Medical Technology Discussion Thread

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brocton Bay ► Capes

PanPanFanFan (Original Poster)

Posted On Apr 17th 2011:

This thread is for the discussion of the medical technology displayed by the tinker Apeiron during the battle of with Bakuda and the alleged encounter with Panacea (rumored)

(Showing page 24 of 156)

►PanPanFanFan (Original Poster)

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

With the clear demonstration of other technology there should be no reason to assume this is any different. The observed effect, while difficult to assess, has a clear technological indication. The prevailing theory is tinker tech, not power

►Blue Hatter

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

So we're just assuming that a complete body restoration system can be stored with a plain leather glove? Or was some of his other gear pulling double or quadruple duty?

►Red Dead Bed

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Who cares how it works. What does he charge for it? I mean, the Undersiders were able to hire him. How bad could it be?

►MD PI

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Bad. Very very bad. Take a look at what Scapegoat charges sometime.

►Red Dead Bed

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

They how did the Undersiders hire him?

►Spritzer

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

The thread's been over this. Basically it comes down to the old maxim.

Cash, Gas, or A**

►Irreverent Mook

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Right, and what if you're not rich, don't have tinker tech to trade, and aren't on a team with Lady Khepri?

►Spritzer

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Probably SOL

►Chillazard

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

Guys! Apeiron has PHO account! I messaged him about what he charges for healing!

►PanPanFanFan (Original Poster)

Replied On Apr 17th 2011:

You and half the eastern seaboard. The thread has already covered this about ten pages back.

That account is either dead or a red herring. It's had one update to add an image and nothing else. Don't fall for that crap without a confirmed cape label.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 ... 154, 155, 156

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Savvy Sultan (Macross) 400:  
> When people think of building things, they think of you. Provided you had the resources and the understanding of the technology, you could construct all manners of machines in a fourth of the time it would normally take. By yourself. You're no slouch with any of your tools either, wielding them with the precision of a machine with no loss of speed. Quality and a deadline? No problem.
> 
> Tinkerer (RWBY) 300:  
> You're a whiz at maintaining, modifying and making things. Everything from Sniper Scyfles to Toaster Ovens, as long as you made it yourself or had the blueprints on hand. Unlock the secret of Variable Weapon Crafting.
> 
> Aura (RWBY) Free:  
> You start off with an unlocked aura.
> 
> Dust (RWBY) Free:  
> Dust comes in four basic types: red fire, blue ice, green wind and yellow energy. They can be combined to make new variations.  
> After this jump, small amounts of Dust will appear in the Warehouse weekly. Enough for a firefight or two at once. Dust augmentation is found to increase the effectiveness of weaponry and ammunition.
> 
> Variable Weapon (RWBY) Free:  
> It's a thing that turns into another thing! One gun and one melee weapon, together at last.
> 
> Scroll (RWBY) Free:  
> Think a smartphone, with terrible wilderness reception, video camera, messaging and more! Practically a passport for civilized society.


	32. 26 Correspondence - Addendum Rory

It was harrowing to see how significant the effect of what I saw as a fairly minor alteration actually was to Weld. I had probably underestimated just how badly his sense had been diminished by his condition. He was taking in deep breaths of the seawater infused vapor of the maelstrom pocket while running his hands over the benches, pillars, and ground.

Whatever sense of urgency had been driving him earlier was completely forgotten. Going from nothing to even a hint of sensation was clearly an experience commanding all of his attention, at least much more significantly than the unstable situation brewing on the surface.

“Could...” He spoke for the first time since he’d begun exploring his new senses. He let a handful of silt flow between his fingers before continuing. “Could you do this for other Case 53s? Can you help them?”

The weight of that question hit me, made even worse by the hope in Weld’s voice. I could plainly see what this meant to him. I wanted to give him assurance that I could help, but the truth was more disappointing.

“I don’t know.” I took a breath before continuing. “My experience with this kind of thing isn’t that extensive. This isn’t a blanket cure, every application needs to be specialized. Sometimes there’s nothing I can do no matter how much I’d want to.” I remembered Taylor’s corona pollentia in the aftermath of Bakuda’s bomb. The mechanics of that tiny section of brain completely stumping what was probably otherwise the most powerful restorative technology on the planet.

Weld nodded slowly. “But there’s a chance, right?”

“A chance.” I agreed. “I won’t know until I’m able to examine them. Even then, some of these exotic effects are hard to understand. I won’t be able to fix them until...”

I shut my mouth. Weld was exceedingly personable. Personable to the point where I had almost revealed a detail of how my power worked. I needed more connections to the Magitech constellation if I was going to have a hope of figuring this out, but I had no idea when that would happen. And there was no way of honestly explaining that without getting into the mechanics of my power. Weld may have offered some assurance of discretion, but he was still a Protectorate cape. I wasn’t banking on anything that happened here staying a secret after he got back.

Weld was looking at me expectantly. I swallowed and continued. “Until I have a better understanding of the effects in play.” It was close enough to the truth without revealing additional details. He seemed to accept it, though his disappointment was clear.

The metal Ward let out a breath and sank onto one of the benches. He ran a hand slowly over the surface of the seat and the carved patterns on the sides. He raised a hand and took a long look at it. I noticed a slight shifting on one of his fingers.

“I... I think it feels a little easier to shift my hands now. There’s not as much delay, more detail, that kind of thing.”

I considered the augmentations and nodded. “You have more nerves, or what passes for nerves in your body, close to the surface now. Your body is seriously atypical, but the nervous system analog still controls things. You should have better surface control along with the tactile sensitivity.”

Weld’s head popped up when I said ‘surface control’. He searched around the area and found the scraps of metal that had been cast off when I healed him. I watched in silence as he approached one of the smaller pieces and reached towards it like it might bite him.

With a lightning fast movement Weld poked the chunk of sea iron and pulled pack his hand, a look of amazement on his face.

“It didn’t attach. It was still going to, I could feel it, but it wasn’t instant like before.” He poked the chunk of metal again, then again, sending it sliding along the ocean floor away from him.

“I can’t speak to the exact effect, not right now, but my guess is that part of what was an autonomous response has some level of input from you. I can’t say how much without some controlled tests and a baseline of how it functioned before.”

“It’s fine. This, this is huge. You have no idea. Just the chance, a fraction of a second to stop it, my God.”

The intensity of his reaction was getting a bit unnerving. This had gone from what passed as a friendly chat to something a lot more significant very quickly. Still, I knew the response wouldn’t be this strong if he hadn’t been living with some serious problems that he apparently worked very hard to keep to himself. I wasn’t going to pretend I knew what he had gone through, but I was familiar with that particular coping strategy well enough.

So what would I have wanted to hear at that point in my life?

“Weld?” He looked up at me. I hefted the chunk of metal flesh he had provided earlier. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re paid up for full treatment. I don’t know when or if I’m going to be able to manage anything more, but when I figure something you’re covered.” I paused. “Assuming the PRT ever allows me near one of their capes again.”

I tried to put a humorous spin on my last statement, but Weld’s face turned ashen at the idea. “I want you to know,” He spoke clearly and slowly. “Whatever you need, whatever it will take to make that happen, for me or any other Case 53, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

I took in his stern expression, his serious tone, his borderline treasonous proclamation, and let out a sigh. “You know, that is really not going to help with any of the master concerns that are floating around.”

There was a brief moment where Weld seemed to recognize just how serious things had gotten. I could almost see his previous statement playing through his head. We exchanged an awkward glance, then Weld snorted.

That broke the floodgates and let out a fit of laughter from both of us. It wasn’t even funny, just some kind of instinctive stress relief response to the sheer magnitude of the situation, the insanity of the location, and the intensity of our conversation.

It went on longer than it had any right to and slowly petered out to a series of small chuckles. One of those situations where by the time the laughter dies you couldn’t remember what was funny about the situation to begin with. As it dropped off Weld took a deep breath and made a valiant attempt to turn things serious again.

“So, you really think you might be able to help the other Case 53s?”

I shrugged. “Maybe? I won’t know until I see then, and like I said, everyone will likely be its own challenge. I don’t know how long it will take me or if I can even manage it at all.”

“But a chance?” I gave a non-committal nod. Weld let out a breath. “A chance. That’s more than we had before.”

It struck me how quickly he shifted from talking about the Case 53s like they were a separate group to talking about them as a member of them. As far as I knew there was no connection between them beyond shared circumstances, but maybe that was a stronger link than I anticipated.

My passenger hadn’t had much to say about the Case 53s. That was probably because I hadn’t dug too deeply into the subject. When I was still learning how to interpret the emotional reactions my passenger used to communicate I reviewed various cape phenomena to get a baseline. There was really nothing special about the Case 53s, at least in the context of a broad threat assessment. The best I’d managed to discern was that the theories that they were the result of some kind of cape virus making normal powers go crazy were absolute crap.

Weld shook his head before continuing. “You know, I’ve probably seen more Case 53s than anyone outside of the PRT research division.”

“Right. Aren’t you their spokesman or something?”

“Really more of a popular face. Make people comfortable with the concept, at least more so than a lot of the others.” He paused before continuing. “Some Case 53s out there, they can’t live anything like a normal life. Much worse than what I have to deal with. Anything you can do for them will mean the world.” He flexed his hand slowly.

“I understand.”

He gave me a knowing nod. “Right. I mean, for most of us just getting to the point where we can be out in public would be an achievement. That’s a bigger priority than figuring out what happened or where we came from.”

My passenger screamed at me so loudly I nearly fell off the bench. The reaction shocked Weld, but it had nothing on what I was going through. Whatever this was, it was bad. The full on, hands off kind of bad that made it dangerous to even look at. Very, very few things had gotten this kind of response from my passenger, and given how restrained he had been since my melt down after the bank robbery it was harrowing to feel this kind of intensity.

“Apeiron? Apeiron, are you alright?”

“No.” I grunted.

Weld moved in with concern. “You aren’t alright? What’s...”

“No. No, it’s my thinker power.” Weld stopped moving and I took a breath to steady myself. He watched me carefully before speaking again.

“I heard about that from the stuff with Panacea. You get hunches or feelings, right?”

“Sort of. It’s complicated, and not perfectly accurate, but the strong reactions are generally on point.”

“There’s another Case 53 back in the Boston Wards, Hunch. He has something similar. I don’t think it’s as comprehensive.” He gave me a hard look. “That was about the Case 53s? Where we came from?”

I considered how to approach this before diving in. “Yes. It’s, it’s bad. And dangerous. Seriously dangerous. The type of dangerous I don’t even like talking about.”

Weld grimaced. “How bad do you mean? Like what kind of level are we talking about here?”

I grit my teeth before pushing forward. Honesty was the only way to convey the depth of this situation, and there was only one word that would accurately express the danger involved.

“Simurgh.”

Weld’s face shifted from despair to full panic.

“It’s not her.” I quickly clarified.

“How…” He sputtered out, then tried again. “You don’t just throw around that kind of accusation. How do you know? And how do you know it’s not an Endbringer?”

And this was getting into a more detailed look at my power than I wanted to share. Unfortunately, I had to share it. Sending Weld out half informed would be like lighting an active bomb. Maybe it would be whatever this Case 53 threat was, or maybe that winged bitch would take interest, but something would come down on me if I didn’t sort this out.

“My power can tell the difference. I know this isn’t an Endbringer thing. It’s something else, and nearly as bad, at least on the same scale.”

“You’re saying that you can predict, actually predict the Endbringers?”

I shook my head vigorously. “No, no I can get some hints about them, personal warnings, danger levels, that kind of thing. Not where or when. I don’t think my power can predict that, and even if it could I can’t read it clearly enough to piece together the information.”

Weld sank onto his bench. “This is just…” He looked up. “You’re sure about this?”

I nodded slowly. “I have put a lot of analysis into the Simurgh, to stay off her radar.”

Weld was bright enough to put the pieces together. I watched his expression as everything fell into place. “Mannequin?”

I gave one small nod.

“I guess every tinker is concerned about that, and if they’re strong enough to be a target…” He didn’t finish the sentence, instead seemingly trying to find something to say. “So you had to cancel your space program?”

He said it with a sly grin, but when I didn’t react Weld’s mouth slowly fell open.

“Seriously?”

“Not while she’s up there.” I let out a sigh. “Look, I know you made a little glib joke about forgetting stuff and not sharing everything, but this I’m serious about. Please do not say anything about this. I have no idea how well my strategies are working. If anything disrupts them I don’t want to think about what would happen.”

“Uh, right. Of course.”

He was clearly struggling with the weight of the revelation. I almost felt bad about how much a relief it was to talk with someone else about this. This was the primary driver for my obsessive caution, more than any concerns about exposure or being press ganged by some crime lord. The Simurgh was a giant roadblock sitting at the end of any path I wanted to take. I was constantly burdened with knowledge that no matter how much I wanted to keep my head down we would cross paths sooner or later, and I would have to put my half-baked precog blocking tactics to the ultimate test.

Weld gave me a nervous look. “You were okay telling me all of that?”

I took a second to shuffle through my passenger’s reactions and shrugged. “What I got from my power suggested you probably wouldn’t back down from that point unless I laid everything out.”

“And it’s that important to back down on this?”

“At least for now? This power isn’t perfect, but generally it’s on point for the important stuff.”

“Right.” He sighed. “You get anything else on me?”

“Not that much really. Generally positive reactions and a sense of reliability.” I looked out at the swirling black water. “Also that leaving you down here would be a really bad thing.”

Weld followed my gaze and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll have to extend my gratitude for that.” He pushed himself up. “I guess we should get back then?”

I smiled. “I suppose. Shame, this has been the longest I’ve been able to talk to a hero without getting assaulted or ending up on a black list.”

Weld seemed to consider something. “Look, I know this is a long shot, but I have to at least try to make the offer. Is there any way you’d be willing to meet with the Protectorate?”

I shook my head. “Not with that mandate in place. I don’t trust I’ll be able to walk out of any meeting they set.” Weld tried to say something. “Regardless of any assurances made. My power isn’t putting a lot of faith in them being held.”

“It’s really that bad on the director?”

I shrugged. “It was bad, then that report made it to her and she reacted the way a lot of people would when their mental competence was questioned. Then there was all the master crap.” I scowled as I spoke. “I’m pretty sure any chance of making good with the local PRT is a lost cause at this point.”

“What…” Weld drew out the word and I could practically see the gears turning in his head.

Wait, was that racist? I mean it’s not like a metallic humanoid would actually cognate based on clockwork. Integrated optical or transdimensional processors would be the standard in place of human meat thinking.

Ok, quarter, jar, etcetera, etcetera.

“What if it wasn’t the local PRT?”

Weld’s question drew me out of my chain of thought.

“What do you mean?”

“Director Armstrong is head of the Boston PRT, and my guardian. When we get to the surface I should be able to reach him. That way you can at least talk with someone in the PRT who isn’t tied up in all this Brockton Bay… stuff.”

The last word was clearly a placeholder for a stronger term, likely evidence of years of PR training. This was someone who could endure more than anyone would reasonably be expected to without resorting to profanity. It was actually pretty impressive.

As I considered his offer I felt the Magitech constellation swing by once again without a connection. The infuriating lack of links to that set of abilities was starting to become a serious detriment to me. Weld must have picked up on the reaction.

“Something wrong? Thinker power?”

I shook my head. “No, that was something else. With Director Armstrong I’m not getting much, but what’s there is pretty positive. A lot better than Director Piggot, but you know, low bar.”

Weld made a non-committal nod and I remembered that I was essentially bashing his current boss. It would probably be best not to put him in any more of a conflict of interest than he already was.

I stood up from the bench and straightened my coat. “Right, let’s get out of here.”

“You said you had five ways you could do that?” He asked expectantly.

I nodded as I pulled up my omni-tool. I had been concerned I would find him seriously incapacitated and be unable to restore him. Most of the technologies I had prepared had been for that eventuality, and had uncertainty around how Weld would react to magnetism or extreme temperatures, with a final method relying on more alchemical transmutation than I was comfortable revealing outside an emergency. Fortunately, there was the first and most reliable fallback.

“Most of those options were emergency measures in case something went wrong during the recovery. Since you’re mobile I can fall back on my initial and most reliable option.”

“And what’s that?”

I navigated to my omni-tool’s fabricator. “This incredibly innovative technology, totally disruptive and just pioneered in the last forty thousand years.” I began the fabrication process. “It’s called rope.”

Weld stared blankly at the coil of tightly woven cord that materialized from my omni-tool’s reserves of industrial plastics.

“Seriously?”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t overcomplicate things. I don’t have to mess around with experimental technology, and it would be strong enough to hold you even if you were solid osmium.“ The benefit of being able to properly prepare for this mission meant I had a wide array of useful fabrication patterns available in my omni-tool’s memory, not just standard items or things I rush designed in the field.

Weld took the thick cord and gave it some experimental tugs. He nodded, but kept rolling the material between his thumb and forefinger as he replied.

“So that will be able to pull me out?” He gestured to the motoroid, with Fleet lifting its head in response.

“It should be able to. Between that and some hydrokinetic action this should be fairly trivial.”

That shifted Weld’s attention back to the cutlass, then up to the swirling dome. I think that was the first time the full scale of what was being done by the weapon actually hit him. He swallowed, then turned back to me.

“Right. Let’s get started.”

I did insist on properly tying Weld off. I didn’t doubt his strength, but I wasn’t going through the trouble of tracking him down and fishing him out if his grip slipped. I would say it was a crude climber’s harness, but it seemed even in this I couldn’t make something crude. It was an immaculate climber’s harness, with enough freedom for Weld to exert some control over the tow rope rather than end up dragged along like a sack of potatoes.

I had entered my armor and secured the rope. At Weld’s signal I grasped the hilt of the cutlass and slowly reduced the mass field. The swirling water around us slowed, then poured in, flooding our tiny pocket. My drones, not intended for aquatic operation, slowly winked out one by one leaving only empty eggshell thin spheres of carbide. As the warm light of the drones faded I triggered my armor's headlights, casting the seabed in harsh white light.

Weld wrapped a hand around the tow rope and gave me a thumbs up with his other hand. I nodded in return, then engaged my armor’s turbines while swinging the cutlass upwards.

An incredible amount of thrust combined with the hydrokinetic power of my blade created a surge the likes of which I’d never experienced. My armor shot forward, then slowed as the rope caught tight. I shifted power to the turbines and focused on managing the flow of water. The Natural Alchemy potion gave me a slightly better sense of it, even when separated from the ocean by my armor. With all my might I focused the ocean into a stream behind Weld, dragging the boy towards the surface.

The first part of our journey was basically a vertical ascent. Neither one of us had to worry about decompression effects at the moment, so my goal was simply to break the surface. That was a serious task, as we were in the deepest part of the bay bordering the open ocean.

Silty water streamed by us as we shot straight up until the silvery plane of the water’s surface came into view. It seemed there was barely a heartbeat between the first glimpse of the water’s edge and the sensation of launching free of the ocean and into the open air.

While I was confident I could haul Weld underwater, managing VTOL flight with several hundred pounds of unbalanced metal was another matter. As soon as I broke the surface I cut thrust and let my arc take me back into the ocean. Without the turbulence of my jets or the silty water I could clearly see Weld as he trailed behind me, following my path on pure momentum.

His expression as he launched from the water was somewhere between exhilarated and terrified. That became significantly more terrified as he hit the water and began to sink again.

Before he could pull me off balance I shifted my blade to generate a strong upward current beneath him and engaged my turbines again, powering towards the coast south of us.

What Weld managed while towed behind my low flying motoroid and buoyed up by the strength of a hydrokinetic weapon wasn’t exactly waterskiing, but was likely the closest to the concept he had ever or would ever manage. There was some instability at first, but once he found his feet, so to speak, he was having the time of his life.

I was focused on keeping variables stable during the trip when I felt the Celestial Forge make a new connection to the Quality constellation. It was a power called Do One Thing At A Time. To use it I had to do one thing at a time.

It was a serious power for reducing time and improving quality. Simply put, as long as I was only focused on doing a single task it doubles my skill and efficiency. So time taken is halved and the quality is doubled. Considering the increases I already had to crafting quality and speed that was incredible, but there was a much more significant aspect of the power.

Unlike every other power that was limited to specific types of tasks this applied to absolutely everything I could do. Try to learn something? Takes half as long and learn twice as well. Conducting an experiment? Time is halved and quality of the results doubled. In a fight and making an attack? As long as I’m not splitting focus the attack is twice as fast and twice as skilled.

It was an absolutely incredible and comprehensive power, both on its own and for how it stacked with every other ability I had. I would have wanted to consider it further, but we were rapidly approaching the coast.

Heading south from the mouth of the bay took you to the Beaches, an area of the city east of downtown and one I’d had almost nothing to do with in my time here. Calling them beaches was a bit generous, seeing that even the best beach present was a steep rocky affair. Compared to the Boardwalk it wasn’t exactly prime tourist real estate. Basically anything past the south ferry stop was barely considered by most residents.

The Beaches definitely had their own character apart from the rest of the city. They were insulated from the gang conflicts of the rest of the city and didn’t have that slow economic deterioration that was iconic of the Docks. If anything they were iconic for not having anything to be iconic about. A jumbled mess of poor civic planning, residential and commercial areas laid out like a camouflage pattern, and repeated ventures that were set to define the area before fizzling out.

In fact, the entire area kind of fizzled out as you got further from downtown. I’m not sure exactly where the city limits stood, but the urban nature slowly diminished until you were in one of the multiple suburbs that ringed the city, though without the clear natural barriers a place like Captain’s Hill benefited from. At least there you were sure what was in and out of Brockton Bay Proper.

None of that was really relevant as my low flying motoroid towed a Case 53 Ward onto one of the smoother beaches that ringed the area, bringing him in with a hydrokinetic assisted storm surge that crashed around him when he found his footing and deposited what looked like half of the seaweed in the bay onto his head and shoulders.

“That.” He panted, pulling the mats of Kelp away from him. “Was awesome. I never thought I’d get to do something like that.”

I triggered my armor and stepped out onto the beach. “No problem.” Weld trudged through and up the modest amount of pebbly sand, following me to an abandoned set of picnic tables in a small rest area. I checked around us, but the place was deserted. Late Sunday night after a city wide attack wasn’t the best occasion for a beach party, though there were probably some people from the college dense enough to give it a go.

“Are you ready for the call, or do you need a minute?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m ready.” He glanced up and down the beach. “If there’s a payphone I can dial in through that.”

I pulled up my omni-tool again. “Cell phone work?”

“Uh, yeah. Of course that thing has a phone feature.” Under his breath he might have muttered “Right next to the rope app.” He looked up at me again. “I mean, if you’re alright using your own line for this. I’m not going to give you away, but they trace everything that comes into a PRT office.”

“Don’t worry.” I began entering commands to Survey and directing the emulation. Already the effects of my latest power were demonstrating themselves. “I’m running the copy of the SIM from a disposable cell phone. I can afford to burn this number after the call. Towers can trace to this area, but if this call ends up with Director Armstrong calling in the cavalry then it’s a lost cause anyway.”

Weld shook his head. “It won’t come to that.”

“I wish I could share your optimism. Clearly you haven’t been in Brockton long enough to be cured of that.”

He gave me a wry smile, then looked at what must have seemed a jumbled display to the eyes of a layman. “So how do I use this thing?”

I entered a few more commands, then a standard telephone keypad appeared floating as part of the holographic display. The omni-tool’s upgrades had extended the range of holography and mass fields to more than just the immediate area around my arm, which was a godsend for this kind of application.

Weld reached out and poked the keypad, apparently surprised at the resistance it presented. With a glance to me he started keying in a number with a Boston area code. That led to an automated switchboard, then a tree of command options that Weld navigated without listening to the full message. Eventually he was being prompted for longer and longer chains of codes, all of which I was sure would be changed as soon as he was back in PRT hands. If he had to memorize this many numbers again I legitimately felt sorry for him.

Finally a ring sounded through the improvised phone audio which was rapidly answered by the tired voice of an older man.

“Weld? Is that you? Please confirm situation?” It was an odd mix of what must have been official procedure delivered with a very personal amount of concern.

“I’m here, Director. Condition green Charlie sapphire.” There was a sigh of relief audible through the line.

“Thank God. I’ve had words with your local director over how this was handled. I swear, if I wasn’t putting out fires here I would have been down there immediately.”

“Thank you, Sir.” There was a personal touch to their exchange that made me feel intrusive. It was clear that Armstrong’s status as Weld’s guardian was taken more seriously than what would have been strictly required by his position. “I was safely recovered by Apeiron.” Weld carefully pronounced my name as he spoke.

There was a period of silence from the open line. “Apeiron? Are you alright?”

The concern in the director’s voice made my stomach twist. Weld shot me a confused glance before replying. “I’m fine. He is here with me at the moment. He wanted to talk to a PRT official from outside the city.”

“Good evening Director. I’m glad to be able to speak with you.”

“Yes.” The man’s response was guarded. “To confirm, is this the extent of your demands for the recovery of our Ward?”

“Director Armstrong, I offered to put Apeiron in contact with you after he expressed concerns regarding amicable contact with the local office. No demands were made pertaining to my recovery.”

The man cleared his throat and I had a sense that I was about to enter into another conversation that would be analyzed to high heaven. “Apeiron, can you confirm that there are no demands or obligations attached to your actions?”

I glanced at Weld before replying. “I hold no obligation to the PRT or Protectorate for my actions tonight. At request I will terminate this call and depart leaving Weld free to be recovered or return under his own power. And if we could step back from the legal speak, I would prefer to continue this conversation without turning it into a sparring match.”

There was a pause before he replied. “Uh, yes, I suppose so. I hope you understand, after the events of the previous night, there is an understandable amount of concern being mandated.”

I did not like the way that sounded. Not at all. “That would be the conflict with ABB forces at the north storage facility and my following actions?” I really should not have come into this without at least reviewing the broadcast. Well, this wouldn’t be the first time avoidance base procrastination had come around to bite me in the ass.

“That is correct. Displayed abilities and allegations made following the events mandate certain protocols.”

“Apeiron mentioned there was extensive property damage during the confrontation?”

Weld was clearly even more in the dark than I was, and the earnestness in his tone was heart wrenching. Apparently Armstrong felt the same way, based on the delayed response.

“Yes. Yes Weld, there was extensive property damage.” Armstrong began speaking more slowly. “That is a point of concern going forward. I will make sure you are fully briefed later.” There was a pause and what may have been a sigh before he began speaking. “Apeiron, to clarify, you have no demands. This is voluntary communication with a PRT representative without obligation or any legal expectations, correct?”

“To restate, I was hoping to be able to talk with a representative who was not under the assumption that I was attempting to undermine the entire organization. If that is unwelcome I would be happy to depart.”

“That won’t be necessary.” A good deal of the formality had departed from his tone as he replied. “So, to clarify, do you have any terms for the content of this discussion?”

I glanced at Weld who shrugged. “I’m not going to answer any questions about my abilities or give any details about the Undersiders. Other than that I’m willing to address some of the PRT’s obvious concerns about my actions.”

“Let me formally state that at this point, to the best of my knowledge, the PRT is not planning any specific actions against Lady Khepri or the other Undersiders.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s good.” I wasn’t sure why he singled out Taylor specifically, but it was both a relief and more than I asked for.

“Then I suppose the best course of action would be to inquire about your intentions in Brockton Bay.”

I took a breath before answering. “My intentions are the same as I explained to Panacea. I intend to stop Bakuda. Given the apparent force multiplier present in the ABB’s new thinker that is currently my primary priority. In fact, if you could provide any information regarding their identity...”

“Unfortunately, that would be against current department policy.” There was a weariness to his voice. “Additionally, and in confidence, that information has not been provided to regional directors at this point. Primary concerns in most departments is addressing the aftereffects of the blackout.” I grit my teeth at the news, but fortunately he continued. “I can confirm that a press release is being planned that will likely contain that information, and it should be publically available within thirty six hours.”

Well, that was better than nothing.

“I’d also like to state that I have no master powers and have not mastered anyone. I know that probably won’t mean much, but given the state of accusations against me I wanted to weigh in.”

“I appreciate that. Rest assured, those accusations are being evaluated at the highest level. I cannot promise swift resolution given the resource requirements of the current situation, but I assure you there are those in the PRT looking at things with a highly critical eye.”

“I appreciate that.” Which I sort of did. A lack of swift resolution did nothing for the currently injured that Panacea could have saved or I could have healed if these nonsense charges hadn’t stuck. The Crafting constellation passed by without connection as I was once again cursing the way the current situation had unfolded.

“If you are willing, I would like to inquire as to your animosity to Director Piggot and any possibility of reaching a resolution for the duration of the current situation.”

“Director, that is very close to a question concerning the capacity of my thinker power.”

“I acknowledge that. Still, given the current situation, I hoped you would be able to at least provide a firm comment.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Do I dance around this, or just rip off the band-aid? I couldn’t do much worse than an accusation of insanity, and trying to backpedal now would just put me in a weak position. This was approaching the ‘fuck it’ threshold both in level of frustration and the amount of time it was costing me. I steeled myself and dove in.

“I do not believe it will be possible to work with Director Piggot.”

“I see. Is there any way you would be willing to consider working with her, even for the duration of the current crisis?”

I sighed. “Director, it isn’t a question of whether I’m willing. I don’t believe it will be possible.”

There was a pause on the line. “Could you possibly clarify that for me?”

“Simply put, I had serious concerns regarding being able to work with Director Piggot prior to my meeting with Panacea. During that encounter I made an admittedly serious accusation, but clarified the potential inaccuracy of it. The response to that accusation was extreme, and while I acknowledge it was based on all of my actions and not that charge specifically the effects are clear. Based on those actions I am more inclined to listen to those warnings provided by my thinker power.”

“I understand. Is there any way you would be willing to reconsider?”

I clenched and unclenched my fist. “Director, every action towards me has, intentionally or not, made it more difficult for me to function in the cape community, resolve misunderstandings, or just offer, much less provide, support. If I was completely cynical I would say it was intended to strengthen Director Piggot’s bargaining position in the event I needed to approach the PRT for concessions, leniency, or clemency. I’m not going to bargain from a position of weakness with the person who put me there.”

“Outside of the context of the Brockton Bay Protectorate and PRT, would you be willing to engage other branches of the organizations on more favorable terms?”

I noticed a signal from Survey. Well, it was good while it lasted. Probably wasn’t even Armstrong’s decision, but I still wasn’t waiting around to see where this would go.

“Well, I am a mercenary cape, so there’s always the possibility if you’re willing to pay.” I didn’t even attempt to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “I’m going to have to end this call. It was nice speaking with you Director. I can honestly say that. You can pick up Weld at the South Point Beach, just off Dutton Avenue.”

“Are you sure...” He stopped, likely knowing the reason for this. “Of course. Thank you for recovering Weld, and for taking the time to address some of our concerns.”

“You’re welcome Director. Goodbye.”

I terminated the connections and moved towards my motoroid. Weld was giving me a questioning look.

“They traced the call. Probably policy, but I don’t want to get mixed up with local heroes, not right now.”

The Ward nodded. “I understand.” He let out a breath. “Look, I’m sorry that didn’t go better.”

I shrugged. “It went well enough, though I’m sure that will only last until it gets picked over by Protectorate thinkers all over again.”

Weld nodded grimly. “I wish I could say otherwise, but they like to keep the think tank busy. Hunch is trying to get certified for that kind of work, and even the introductory stuff he handles is a massive workload.”

“At this point I’ll be happy if I can try to counter Bakuda without the Triumvirate coming after me.”

“Let’s hope.” He paused. “Look, it would probably help if there was a way to reach you, at least give them a chance of resolving things before they get out of hand.”

I nodded. “Made a PHO account before this started. Haven’t checked it since then, but you can reach me through there.”

Weld froze. “You made a PHO account with your cape name before you announced it?”

“Yeah?”

“And you said that stuff you did was broadcast by Uber and Leet?”

“Yeah?” The penny dropped. “My inbox is going to be a mess, isn’t it?”

“That’s probably the best you can hope for.” He shook his head. “Forums and social media get kind of crazy about capes.”

I grimaced. “To be honest, I’ve kind of been avoiding dealing with that kind of stuff.”

Weld looked out over the bay. “Well, you won’t hear me complain about the order you picked, but you should try to deal with that before it gets away from you.”

I nodded. “Right. Weren’t you a meme or something?”

He let out a breath. “Don’t remind me. People ask me to do the face every time I do press events. It gets old real fast.”

“I doubt I’ve got anything that bad, but thanks for the advice.”

“No, thank you.” He extended a hand and I shook it. His grip was a bit strong and I wondered if he was going to be overly tactile for a while. “I was serious about what I said. I’ve got your back, and anything that can help the other Case 53s, let me know and I’m there.”

His expression was completely serious. I really hoped it would’t come down to a choice between Protectorate loyalty and helping me. That was the kind of thing that would spawn master accusations I’d never be able to escape.

Instead I nodded back, broke the handshake and climbed into my motoroid. With a final wave I launched into a high arc, then dove into the bay.

Escaping underwater was really just about throwing off any observers. I didn’t doubt that the Protectorate would be on site soon. The chances that Weld’s recovery would be publically attributed to me were slim. I doubt they would go as far as fabrication, but leaving out how he got out of the bay was entirely possible and seemed to be in character for the current administration.

I… I would need to spend a good deal of time picking over likely fallout from this. For example, the Protectorate knew I had aquatic technology. Not really an impediment to me, but a paranoid director or Protectorate Leader might decide they need to waste resources securing their floating oil rig from oceanic incursions, which would of course draw resources away from whatever the ABB was planning next.

Still, there was only so much stupid that would be laid at my feet before it became obvious what the source was. I had made an attempt at peaceful contact, and Weld had a way to reach me. If that wasn’t enough to get them to pump the brakes on the ‘Blame Apeiron’ train then I was going to have to start checking for outside influences.

I triggered my potion reservoir and downed another invisibility potion. Once the effect settled I broke the surface and wheeled towards the docks.

Instead of heading home I circled around towards the north docks. This area had the worst coverage in terms of the residual blackout. It hadn’t taken as much damage, but that was mostly because there wasn’t much to destroy. Instead it sat at the lowest priority in terms of restoration. In this part of the city squatters probably outnumbered residents, and they operated without power anyway. It made the perfect location for an isolated workshop access.

Starting high enough with minimal turbine use to arrest velocity meant I could drop down to street level without sounding like a jetliner taking off. There was still some noise, but this was the kind of place that didn’t reward curious people. The odds of anyone investigating were minimal.

I landed in the entryway of an abandoned shipping center. The position was isolated from the road by two gates and a stone wall and there was an abundance of shutter doors compatible with my Garage adaptor. I transformed the motoroid and drove it into the workshop. Salt water wasn’t an issue for me, either inside or out it wouldn't cause any corrosion. Still, I decided to clean it.

Of course, I used my powers. An artificially inflicted dent that was quickly fixed triggered Stylish Mechanic, totally cleaning the entire machine. It was such a mundane abuse of power, and I absolutely loved it.

I looked over at the actual reason for coming here. My Ford Pinto sat in one of the Garage bays, waiting to be driven. Thanks to the facilities of the Garage and the hacking capabilities of my computer core the car was completely legal and registered, largely thanks to the security holes in the… in the computer systems that civilians used. Ha, dodged a quarter there.

I couldn’t just rush out at that moment. Partially that was because I was in a seawater soaked costume, and partially because Garment was waiting for me with the phone she had used to contact Flechette. Though she indicated that she wasn’t going to show it to me until I dealt with the seawater soaked costume problem.

That actually led to me closing the Garage, finding an isolated interior door to access my workshop entry way, securing that with my incredibly out of date bar lock, then dealing with problems one at a time.

As far as Garment was concerned the costume took precedence. At least she met me with a bathrobe and was open to the idea of ‘maintenance to activate cleaning powers’. That was followed by a blitz shower, so at least I didn’t smell like bay water anymore, and the discovery that yes, Garment does have perfect knowledge of my measurements and had apparently amused herself during confinement to the workshop by either letting out or replacing my entire wardrobe. After that came the delivery of Weld’s tissue sample to the Laboratorium, and the triggering of a theological dispute between the cyber skulls over whether it was alien biology, xeno-tech, or some ancient human invention. The electronic buzzing between the skulls got fairly heated before I found the ‘analysis pending’ categorization, and everyone seemed willing to accept that. Once everything was packed away or under scanning Garment finally shared her message history with me.

Garment had done a decent job through one word replies, though the significant gap from the first message announcing herself and when she’d been able to follow up after our life fiber training had seemingly caused some stress. There was a back and forth about exchanging the dress, with a mention that other protectorate heroes wanted to ‘meet’ her. I could guess the reason for that.

Interestingly, without prompting Garment had suggested the boxing gym as a meeting place. It was well received, there was just the question of timing. Ten in the morning the following day had been suggested, and Garment apparently understood my sleep preferences well enough to want confirmation.

“Thank you Garment, but today was a special case. I don’t plan on sleeping until noon every day.”

She seemed somewhat skeptical.

“I said plan. It might still happen, I might want it to happen, but not tomorrow. You can let them know the time works.”

Garment made a pleased gesture and started slowly typing on her phone. Fortunately Survey was present in a diminished form to help her with that.

Actually, that reminded me. I had hours of machine learning I needed to upload, as well as new parameters to input. Plus, my coding skill had just doubled as long as I held off from multitasking. At my level, doubling of skill was no joke. This could actually break new ground, even by the standards of my Master Builder power.

As I was moving towards the neural interface I felt the Celestial Forge make a connection to the Vehicles constellation. This was another version of my Valuable Memories power, only this time it’s presence in the Vehicles constellation actually made sense. This time instead of the nature of how memories functioned and the technology to manipulate them it gave me the understanding of how to build giant robots.

Yeah, I don’t understand the connection either.

When I said giant robots I was serious. Like, forty meters without a problem. They wouldn’t exactly be agile, but against anything less than an Endbringer or one of Bakuda’s special projects they would be pretty much unstoppable. And that was assuming I limited their construction to what I learned from this power. Combining it with my other technologies was a whole nother beast.

It occurred to me that for just about any other tinker getting a power like this would have been a cruel joke. Hell, if this happened to me a week ago I probably would have cursed it to high heaven. Thousands of tons of materials for a single project, all precisely constructed and aligned. The logistics would cripple any other tinker. For me it was just a question of where I was going to put it.

Setting aside the construction of robots that could pass as civic architecture, I made my way to the computer interface that I was regrettably obligated to admit was a throne. The combination of diamond as the base material and excessive style work meant trying to explain it away as anything else would just seem desperate. Instead I sat onto my ostentatious ‘throne’ and got to work.

My awareness expanded through the limited network of the workshop. Reaching out I could tell Fleet and Survey had nearly hit the development limits of the previous computer core. The transfer to the optical system would happen in two more iterations. I examined their development, correcting the occasional computational dead end or feedback loop, a process made so much easier by my One Thing At A Time power.

With that taken care of I began a transfer for the motoroid and drone records to update the A.I.s resources. Also, I merged in the continued development from Garment’s assistant A.I. that had been running on both her phone and laptop. It wasn’t the most computationally intense existence, but had more experience modeling and emulating behavior among all the versions of Survey.

Finally I set a task outline for Survey with instructions to compile reactions from the previous night. At the very least I wanted a complete copy of Uber and Leet’s broadcast, but I could trust Survey to collect if not analyze media and forum reactions and at least do some basic categorization of the information. That stuff would be hard enough for me to slog through without having to do the legwork as well.

Finally, I pulled my awareness back to the central core and worked to ready it for the transfer of Survey and Fleet’s main optimization routines. It was an easy enough process, but when I took a closer look at the structure of the neural landscape something stood out.

No, that wasn’t right. The problem was something didn’t stand out. Something was missing. There was a mental component that had been present earlier in the day that was now absent. It was hard to see, basically trying to shape something by the hole it left. Without my improved programming ability and the help of Survey I probably never could have managed it. When I realized what it was the answer terrified me.

The missing component was the life fibers.

Life fibers were a neurological organism. They interfaced with their hosts through either their blood or peripheral nervous systems. I understood how they could chemically and even genetically alter their hosts through contact. I hadn’t anticipated the mental aspect.

The peripheral nervous system gave the life fibers a direct route to the brains of their hosts. They were built for near perfect mental influence. The only reason this wasn’t a dire situation was a combination of the serious immaturity of my sample of fibers and the effects of the neural interface itself.

The fibers I had were young, rudimentary, and isolated. They didn’t have the massive core fiber necessary to direct them intelligently. With my nanite training program they were ridiculously well fed, so their effect on my brain had been limited to encouraging the same behavior that resulted in more of that. It probably could have overwhelmed me if not for the combination of Garment and the restorative effect of my nanites. On the scale of what they were capable of it was not catastrophic, though still definitely concerning.

The real savior was the neural interface. The life fibers had been connected to my brain when I had interfaced with the core. They may have an instinctual understanding of how to compromise a living brain, but that did not extend to an optical computational mental structure functioning in the method of a developed A.I. without equivalent comparisons to the original neural structure.

When the life fibers had been connected to me during my workouts they had been bold, aggressive, and hungry. Basically, they had been everything they were designed to be. When they were in the computational environment they had been the complete opposite. It was a cold unfamiliar mental space with no connection to anything they understood. The neural structure of the fibers had practically folded in on themselves, hiding in my mental shadow rather than trying to overwhelm it.

As concerning as the discovery was, it was also fascinating. The exposure to the computational throne had accelerated higher level cognitive processes, but ones that were atypical for life fibers to exhibit. Life fibers were designed to evolve, mostly to consume and conquer their hosts. These had found themselves in an environment where that wasn’t possible, connected to something they could barely understand and relied on for protection from the unknown.

I had promised myself that I would look after any intelligences I brought into this world, and the life fibers counted. They were expressing complex thoughts earlier than they should have, but they were still there. I needed to make managing them a priority. With this, the possibility that they could exist as more than mindless parasite or crafting fodder was a real possibility. I would have to make sure to pursue it carefully.

I disconnected from the interface, practically sagging under the weight of my discovery. It wasn’t just the presence of a new intelligence to look after. It was the fact that I had yet another project piled on top of everything else. At this rate I would desperately need more than two clones just to stay ahead of the workload.

I lowered myself down the stairs to find Garment proudly presenting the confirmation of the Gym meeting. Right, that was another thing. I had meant to check in at the gym. Now that was more of a necessity. I needed to come up with a plausible reason to be present with Garment at a time when the arrival of multiple Protectorate heroes would draw everyone in the neighborhood.

And that reminded me of another problem, though thankfully Garment was more understanding of this one.

“No, that design is too flashy. It has to conceal my build while still being close to what I wore before, otherwise people will get suspicious.”

Garment made an understanding gesture and began a new sketch. Between the two of us we could design just about anything. Concealing my new build was a minor challenge, with most of the difficulty being convincing Garment this didn’t need to be excessively fashion forward.

Garment handled the construction to save me from having to hide or explain my assorted style powers, though Decadence was immensely helpful in ensuring the cut made my body shape look almost unchanged. It was a bulkier outfit than I was used to, but still within the bounds of believability. After a quick change I sealed the main door, accessed my Garage, and then was pulling out of the shipping center in an incredibly well preserved and well performing Ford Pinto.

Garment still hated that car.

I hadn’t actually done much driving in Brockton Bay. My motorcycle was my first experience with having my own motor transport, and riding was a very different beast, particularly with an assist A.I. helping things along. My decision to keep the Pinto as mundane as possible meant I was handling things old school.

At least my perfect blueprint memory meant the street layout would never be a challenge. GPS was for people without mental superpowers.

Driving through, it seemed little of the damage from the previous night had been addressed. That probably was mostly due to the location. Nobody really cared about this area of the docks and someone taking the effort to board up a looted liquor store was the most that could be asked of them.

Signs of restoration, as well as patches of powered street lights, became more common as I got away from the north end of the docks. It was still run down, but in a typical urban blight way, not a bombed out war zone way. This part of the Docks had more residential areas, and that tended to bring a more significant sense of protectiveness than the ruined factories and abandoned warehouses of the further regions.

As things steadily improved during the drive towards my apartment I held out hope for full restoration of power. Regrettably that was not the case. The street was as dark as it had been earlier in the evening with the gym serving as its familiar island of illumination.

As I approached I could see it was still active, just not the huddled, packed shelter it had been the previous night. People were freely coming and going through the entrance without the picket of boxers serving to enforce the boundary. The crowd was still leaning towards people from the neighborhood, so it wasn’t exactly back to business as usual, but it was nice to see the gym helping out without being a desperate refuge.

I was easily able to find a space in the small parking area, the benefit of most people living within walking distance, and made my way through the main entrance. The atmosphere inside was a lot more jovial than it had been during my last visit. You still had the artificial divide between the boxing area and the social area. I looked around, but didn’t spot Mrs. Gartenberg enforcing the division. I would say that I could be overlooking a woman that size, but from what I had seen she had a tendency to make her presence felt if not exactly seen. If she was in the building you could probably tell she was in the building.

I didn’t make it far before I was spotted and called over, this time by an excited wave from Casey. The tattooed man called over the crowd and gestured emphatically, drawing me into Doug’s domain.

“Joe! Great to see you. Doug’s been trying to get a hold of you.”

“Hey Casey. Why’s that? Something wrong?” I doubted it from the way the man was grinning his crooked smile almost from ear to ear.

“Oh, nothing like that. Just had something to ask you. Also some big news about the gym.”

“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

He scoffed. “No thanks. Doug would hang me out to dry if I didn’t let him break the news. He’s been telling everyone all night. Hold up, I’ll go get him.”

Casey vanished into one of the back rooms leaving me to take in the scenery. There were still the sets of tables, scattered chairs, giant coffee makers, and trays of food. This time it was a definite community potluck atmosphere. There were still little edges of grimness in some of the people, but nothing like the sense of the world balancing on a razor’s edge that had filled the place the previous night.

While I was taking in the sight I felt another connection from the Celestial Forge. It was a new connection to the Resources and Durability constellation. The power was called Super Scientific Solution and when the details of the power entered my mind I immediately began to fear the actions of my next batch of duplicates.

There were two aspects to this power. The less concerning one was a research booster, halving the time to gather data, compose research, or test a theory. Useful, but completely divorced from the other part of the ability.

Simply put, this power may have provided the most advanced technology I had ever seen or heard of. It was incredibly sophisticated to the point of basically being full on Clarktech. Just two factors stopped it from being overwhelmingly powerful. First, it was completely blackboxed, to the point where I doubted I could ever decipher the principles for application to other fields. Second, it was limited to very, very specific applications.

With this power I could build any magical super technology, as long as it was for the purpose of addressing household problems and inconveniences.

I wasn’t kidding about the ‘super technology’ part. Just about anything was on the table. Advanced robotics, teleporters, mater transmutation, even temporal suspension. What’s more, it was easy to build. Everything could basically be assembled out of mundane, off the shelf equipment. No theoretical metals or nano assembly required. A trip to Radio Shack could rig up an oven that could fill in as a Star Trek replicator, or a refrigerator that isolated its contents from the time stream.

I was right to be concerned about this. My duplicates were barely predictable with their current set of abilities. The power to throw together Clarktech housewares on a moment’s notice was going to turn my workshop into a funhouse.

I didn’t have time to worry about that at the moment on account of Doug and Casey hurrying towards me from the edge of the crowd. I put the concerns out of my mind and moved to meet them.

“Joe!” Doug’s voice boomed over the din of the crowd causing some of those in his way to flinch back, and those who recognized his voice to clear a path out of self-preservation. Doug wasn’t one to be deterred and he could still move like a freight train when he wanted to.

When they got closer I noticed that Casey was holding a large Tupperware container with an amount of care normally reserved for newborn babies or live bombs. Whatever he intended he was overshadowed by Doug’s boisterous presence.

“My God, been a hell of a day. You won’t believe what's happening. Seriously, when…”

Casey loudly cleared his throat, briefly drowning out Doug. Normally this would be a borderline suicidal action, but Casey carefully angled the Tupperware into Doug’s field of view and the big man quickly collected himself.

“Oh, right. First things first. Mrs. Gartenberg made you something as thanks for helping out with the generator last night. That really made a difference. Calmed everyone down when it stopped cutting out, don’t know what would have happened if we lost it. So from all of us…” Casey shot him a look. “…but primarily Mrs. Gartenberg, she wanted you to have this.”

Casey handed me the Tupperware and I pried the lid open under their expectant gazes. Inside were neat rows of some kind of rolled pastry with a fruit topping. At my confused expression Doug broke in.

“Blintzes.”

“The good blintzes. Seriously, she normally only makes these on holidays.” Casey enthusiastically offered.

“Wow. Thank you. This is really nice.” I picked up one of the rolled pastries and felt the heft of it’s filling. Some kind of cream or cheese. Doug and Casey were watching me closely, though Casey was a lot less subtle about it than Doug.

“Uh, would you two like one?”

“Well okay I mean if you insist who am I to say no when Mrs. Gartenberg works so hurd om thum.” The end of Casey’s rapid fire speech was muffled as the pastry disappeared into his mouth. Doug accepted one with a good deal more dignity and bit into his at the same time as me.

It really was an excellent pastry. I had no idea how it compared by the standards of blintzes, but it was definitely delicious. Still, that thought reminded me of the massive volume of food I had consumed during training and the barely concealed results.

I shifted my attention to the rest of the gym where some of the regulars were beginning to circle like vultures. I glanced between Doug and Casey, who was shamelessly licking his fingers.

“There’s too many here for me, maybe some of the other guys would like one? I mean, everyone helped out.”

“Great idea. I’ll take care of that for you, give you and Doug a chance to talk.” The container disappeared from my hands, followed quickly by Casey as he vanished into the crowd, his presence only visible by the movement of the regulars as they shifted focus to their new target.

Doug just shook his head. “You’d never know it from the look of him, but Casey has a serious sweet tooth. We’ll have words if he doesn’t have at least one left for you afterwards.”

I nodded, then looked at Doug. “Hey, would it be incredibly cynical of me to assume there might be some other favor someone might want from me and the lovely pastries are a way to open dialogue?”

He scoffed. “No more cynical than anyone in this city. Okay, Drew Rogers? Mrs. Gartenberg’s neighbor’s sister’s friend’s… okay, I don’t know the connection. Place he worked is shut down, wrecked the other night. Has something else lined up, but needs a truck. Don’t ask me where Mrs. Gartenberg managed to find one, but the thing’s barely functional. Think you can take a look at it? If you can get a couple of weeks out of it Drew can probably get it fixed up proper, or find something else. Otherwise he’s pretty much out of luck.”

I nodded slowly. This was getting a bit risky in terms of potential exposure, but it also provided an opportunity. I could probably keep at least one more repair plausible.

“I should be able to. No promises, but if he could bring it by tomorrow morning I could take a look at it?”

Doug looked relieved. “That would be great. Actually, I wanted to ask you about that.”

“Oh? Casey said you had big news.”

He grinned wide. “Huge. Get this. Tomorrow Garment’s coming to the gym.”

“Seriously?” Doug was clearly too excited to find any flaws in my acting.

“Absolutely. And get this, she’s meeting the Protectorate here. They’re sending Miss Militia and Dauntless along with the Ward girls from last night.”

“Seriously? That’s incredible.” It really was. I was surprised they could pull two major heroes away from the streets at the moment. They must have been really desperate for either positive press or a recruitment pitch. Actually, would the press be here?

“The press is going to be here, big time, probably along with half the neighborhood. I’m asking anyone who can spare the time to stop by, help manage things. I know, with your job…”

“Don’t worry about it. I can make it, and I’ll look at the truck as well.” A thought occurred to me, and if I was doing a favor, actually a double favor since he asked me to do what I was going to request anyway, so it was a good time to ask. “Actually, my car’s parked outside. I don’t have a space at my apartment, and if tomorrow’s that busy I wouldn’t want to fight the parking lot…”

“That Pinto right? Just leave it overnight. No one will mess with it here. Least we can do.”

“Thanks.” I turned to see Casey return with a significantly depleted container of blintzes.

“Damn guys are like piranhas. Managed to save you the last one.”

“Thanks Casey.” I grabbed the final pastry and took a bite while looking over the crowd. It was later in the evening, so things were clearly thinning out, but I was guessing this was still a comforting space for people without power or who were from less safe parts of the Docks. I finished the blintz and nodded to both of them. “I’ve got to go. Please thank Mrs. Gartenberg for me. Those were wonderful.”

He nodded back. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear it.”

“Look after yourself out there. See you tomorrow.”

“Later Doug.”

I picked my way back through the crowd towards the exit and into the night air. It wasn’t a bad outcome. I had gotten access to Garment’s proper cape debut, secured a temporary parking spot, and even gotten some thank you desserts. As I made my way back to my apartment I considered my next action. As much as I wanted to just go to sleep, potentially with some duplicates managing any last minute tasks, I needed to get a look at the public response to my own cape debut.

I hated the idea. Honestly, I had managed to hold things together by just not thinking about the broadcast. Actually having to watch it, to see what people were saying about it, it was just gut wrenching. This was like a fear of public speaking taken to an insane level. I just wanted to curl up and ignore it.

Unfortunately that just wasn’t an option. I’d already blundered through one discussion without full understanding of what I was dealing with. I needed to get on top of this, no matter how much I hated it.

The knowledge that as soon as I opened my workshop I would have to dig through Survey’s media reports found me looking for any excuse to draw things out. I sorted through my apartment for any remaining food or bathroom items that might be worth transferring to my workshop apartment. I actually checked my civilian phone, saw Doug’s numerous messages and a single text from Dr. Campbell confirming our session for next week.

It was a nice way of him to check if I was still alive, and I really should have responded sooner. I’d have to program my civilian SIM into my omni-tool to manage things better. I replied to the text with a quick confirmation that I was fine and ready for the next session.

To be honest a week seemed like a lifetime away. I wanted to ask for an earlier appointment, but at the same time I didn’t want to risk something happening while I was at therapy. Again.

I shook off those thoughts, then got the pickle jar and dropped in the quarters I had missed. It was filling up faster than I was comfortable with, but at least I was starting to catch myself. That was progress, right?

Finally, with nothing else to distract me I slid my key into the closet door and opened the portal to my workshop entryway.

My costume was still displayed, as polished and pristine as I had left it. I shrugged out of my moderately bulky coat and hung it next to the costume. It had done an excellent job of hiding my new build without even a hint of recognition from anyone at the gym. I stretched my arms behind me and tried to work up the courage to finally tackle the horrors that were online reactions.

As a welcome distraction Garment entered from the main workshop carrying a few sheets of sketches. She froze as soon as she saw me.

“Hi Garment.” Instead of her usual reaction she made an agitated gesture.

“What?” I looked around, but couldn’t figure out what was upsetting her. I watched as she slid around to block the exit door, then made a strange lunging twisting gesture that I had never seen and couldn’t place.

“Garment, what’s wrong? Do you need me to get your laptop?” She waved off awkwardly with one hand, then twisted further her other hand. I had no idea what…

“Fuck! Fine, fine, I give. Get the fuck off me! Jesus fucking Christ!”

Suddenly a familiar figure was in my entryway. She was wearing denim shorts, green fishnets, a strapless top, and way too much jewelry. The outfit I had never seen before, but I instantly recognized the tall, barely teenage girl with a purple streak in her hair, a furious expression on her face, and one ear being held by Garment in a vice like grip.

Aisha Laborn was in my workshop.

******

Addendum Rory

Rory slumped into the PRT headquarters and pulled his helmet off sweat streaked hair. It felt weird being back here just a few months after graduating from the Wards, but with the Rig both wrecked and unstable the entire Protectorate would be working out of the PRT building until repairs could be completed.

That would have been a more daunting prospect if ‘the entire Protectorate’ had been on active duty. Just the loss of three members seemed to diminish the team to a shadow of its former self. That was probably because of Armsmaster. The team leader had enough presence for ten heroes and things felt lopsided without him.

It was his ruminations of the missing members that made it such a shock to see who was running the console.

“Velocity?”

The red clad cape turned and waved to him. The bulky cast around his right leg was incredibly eye catching, particularly with the brace holding it in place. He didn’t know the exact details, but the words ‘Spiral Fractures’ never had a good association.

“Hey Triumph.”

“Why aren’t you in bed?”

Robin brushed him off. “What’s that going to do for me? Hospital’s next door, someone needs to run console, and can’t sleep with the new meds, so hey, perfect opportunity.”

“Right, you actually cleared for this, or just running off again?” Rory immediately regretted his words, but the older cape didn’t seem to care.

“I’ll have you know I got a doctor’s sign off and everything. Not good to be totally confined.” He turned more serious and looked at the board. “Not with everything going on.”

Rory sighed and moved to sit in the second console chair. “Any news?”

“You mean ABB, or in general?”

“Either? Hopefully something good?”

Robin took a breath, then blurred briefly as he took on his breaker form and skimmed through the data presented. “No ABB cape action. Even unpowered members are laying low. Still problems with some of the looters and rioters from last night.”

Rory nodded. “Believe me, I know.” He rotated a shoulder where his healing factor was still working through a blunt impact from his last patrol.

“Empire’s chomping at the bit looking for payback. Assaults are up in their territory, probably trying to look tough after last night. Merchants are back to their usual tricks, so they’re either taking things in stride or don’t care. Other than that everything is petty crime and bar fights.”

No mention of the Undersiders, and he didn’t really expect there to be. That team was slippery before they became notorious. It still wasn’t clear how Bakuda had managed to lure them into that trap, but it wasn’t likely to be something they’d fall for again.

“It’s building to something.” He grumbled. “I can feel it. I’m pretty sure everyone can.”

“Nobody expects this is over, but we need every second of peace we can get, even if that’s being used to build up to something else.”

Rory hated to admit it but he needed to concede the point. They were in no state to handle things right now. Maybe, just maybe, if they were at full strength with New Wave behind them they could have countered this, or struck back properly. Instead they were in a holding action hoping for a miracle, or a neighboring city to bounce back and bail them out.

Though after what happened with Weld that city probably wouldn’t be Boston.

“Hey, some of your old team is still on shift. You want to swing down and say hello?”

Rory’s stomach flipped at Robin’s suggestion. The speedster had never been a Ward, so he had only the vaguest understanding of the team dynamic. A few months ago Rory had been their leader. They had been people he’d spent every day with for years. Then he was out to the Protectorate and handing things over to Aegis.

He had been so focused on making a place for himself on the new team he hadn’t even checked in with his friends. Not until the bank robbery, and at that point did it make a difference?

When he left the team Carlos had asked him for some leadership advice. He had nothing prepared, instead packaging some half remembered speech from an old baseball coach about digging deep and never giving up.

Never giving up wasn’t supposed to mean blindly charging an unknown cape when your entire team had been incapacitated. The fight had been shocking when Rory finally saw it, but that moment was something else. It left him feeling hollow. One cape. One unknown was all it took to tear everything down.

Finally seeing Apeiron in action hadn’t made him feel any better.

“Anything on our new tinker?”

Robin just shook his head. “Usual stuff, media reports, online gossip. Would be bog standard if they hadn’t built a love story around it.”

The mover pulled up one of the clips from the broadcast and Rory shook his head. “I don’t think that’s what’s going on.” At Velocity’s prompting he leaned in. “Okay, he definitely cares about her, no question. Massive concern for her safety that you don’t see to any of the other Undersiders.”

“Plus the equipment, plus the declarations…”

“All context. Look, there’s no actual affection there, just concern. He’s checking on her, not looking at her. There’s a big difference.”

“I’m guessing you were something of a lady’s man back in high school?” Rory snorted, but let Robin continue. “I guess I can see what you’re saying, but that stuff doesn’t always come through. You have two people in full face masks. The public is playing fill in the blanks, and it looks like you’re in the minority opinion.”

Rory sighed but conceded the point. “You heard anything about the others? Inside track from the hospital?”

“Well, Ethan will be released for home rest soon. He was bragging about having Battery wait on him.”

“Which she won’t.”

“Or course not.” He smirked, then turned serious. “Colin woke up for a bit. Not much, but a good sign.”

Rory sighed and found his eyes drifting to Robin’s cast. “Is there any word on when Amy will be released?”

The question just seemed to bring the injured cape down. “Nothing firm. They’re trying to bring in more resources to expedite the case, but so is every other city. No word on if, when, or how.”

Rory sighed. “What’s your opinion on all this? Actually a Tattletale plot? Apeiron puppetry? March pulling strings?”

Robin scoffed. “I doubt it’s March. I’ve seen her record from New York. Petty stuff. Obviously has some good synergy going, but not city wide scale.”

“Dennis did a good job against her.” He never would have expected it, but Clockblocker had stepped up in a major way.

“No question.” Robin agreed. “And the brass knows it.”

Ah, the double edged sword of success. Clockblocker was one of the Protectorate’s success stories in this disaster, and they would never forget it. Dennis’s days of being the goofball in the background were dead and buried. That’s the Protectorate. The reward for good work is always more work.

Of course there was the less favorable outcome of the Wards from that night. “Any word on Weld’s recovery?”

Robin just shook his head. “No way to get things organized today. The director’s scrambling to get a launch at first light, but the odds aren’t good. No knowing how long he’ll be stuck down there.”

Which was terrible for him, bad for the Protectorate, and would be a nightmare for Colin as soon as he was well enough to deal with the aftermath. From the way the Youth Guard rep was behaving, If he hadn’t been in intensive care she probably would have put him there herself.

Maybe with luck he could blame things on that concussion. There had been a lot of bombs in his lab.

“How is the director handling things?”

Robin gave him a flat look. “About as well as usual.”

“That bad?”

“I don’t think she’s properly slept since the bank. She might be as tough as they come, but everyone had limits. We don’t get some good news soon and I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen.”

“You banking on that pitch tomorrow?”

“That fabric cape?” Rory nodded. “Maybe? Even if she doesn’t sign up just having some friendly interaction in the press will help.”

“Let’s hope so, because we need a miracle right now.”

Robin rested a hand on his cast. “You don’t have to tell me.” He paused and looked up at the console.

“What?” Rory asked.

“Priority call from Boston.”

“Huh. I wonder what they want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter
> 
> Do One Thing At A Time (Dinotopia) 300:  
> When you focus yourself on doing a single task, your skill and efficiency doubles. Material requirements are unaffected, but time taken is halved and quality is doubled.
> 
> Valuable Memories:the construction of Megadei (Big O) 300:  
> You have knowledge related to any particular concept-the construction of Megadei, the nature of memories, Bigs, or the creation of chimeras. Paradigm will have a vested interest in you, and will protect you and provide you with funds if you work for them.
> 
> Simple Scientific Solution (Tenchi Muyo) 100:  
> Science solves everything, even the little household problems. You can create supertech improvements to common tools and appliances, up to and including automobiles or similar works of engineering.  
> Create dishwashers that can clean dishes in an instant, self heating plumbing or forcefield windowpanes that act as air conditioners.  
> Well established methodologies and an instinctive grasp of same allow you to draw conclusions or produce results incredibly fast. You halve the time it takes to gather data, compose research on some subject, or devise a test to prove/disprove something handy for when you have to figure out an enemy fortresses’s one weakness.


	33. 27 Intrusion - Addendum Hannah

Despite the girl standing right in front of me it took a moment to figure out what was happening. When I considered the events separately, Garment’s actions when I entered the Workshop followed by the current situation of Aisha being held by Garment, it suggested that Aisha had been here and Garment had seen and restrained her. For some reason my brain just didn’t want to make the connection between the two events. Aisha’s sudden presence was being regarded as just that, a sudden appearance in the workshop.

Taking a step back I could see that it was plainly a parahuman power affecting my mental state. Even trying to remember what I had previously thought about Aisha was difficult. As odd as it might sound, there was a legitimate challenge to remembering that you forgot.

This was a stranger power, and a serious one. It even covered the awareness of its presence once it was disabled. It was subtle and elegant memory alteration to the point where most people wouldn’t even realize what was happening.

I was not most people.

My mind has already been significantly altered by my own power. From the introduction of a completely new non-human perspective to having years of military experience suddenly ingrained into me, the spontaneous change of my memories was nothing new. I had even received a purpose built memory structure in the form of that armor database. Most significantly, I actually had an understanding of how memories worked, both in the mechanical function and in the more nebulous sense of how the mind processes and interacts with them.

The sum of all that knowledge was just enough for me to recognize that my mind had been altered. Whatever this power was doing was leagues above what I had heard the typical stranger power was like.

There was a gut and visceral reaction at having my workshop violated by an intruder. A significant portion of that was probably displaced anger at myself for not setting up the safeguards that could have prevented this. Of course I previously figured that my combination of discretion, secrecy, and what I had to admit was really just a heavy door stop, was enough to keep me safe. Clearly it wasn’t.

Part of this was the insane variety of parahuman powers. There was no way I could prepare for everything. With every combination of mover and stranger power out there someone would be able to slip by, which is why I’d relied on secrecy. Secrecy that was now blown wide open.

If it were anyone else I would probably have gone full lethal right there. Just grab my emergency reagents and put them down. Perimeter was breached and a full crisis response would be called for. Take out every intruder, suit up, seal workshop, and immediately relocate. Counter-offensives could be planned once the hostiles had been evaded or eliminated.

But this wasn’t anyone else. This was Aisha Laborn. Even with that, even with the knowledge of her background, my interactions with her father, and my passenger’s reactions to her, I could still see myself taking action against her. If she had responded to the situation with anger, hostility, or even fear I might have come down hard on her. But she wasn’t showing any of those things.

“Uh, hi Jozef?”

The forced casualness of her tone was completely at odds with her expression. As she stood there with Garment holding her ear she looked embarrassed, even ashamed. This wasn’t the reaction of someone whose criminal plot had been exposed. This was someone rapidly realizing they made a terrible decision and seeing the weight of what they’d gotten into bearing down on them. Someone who got their hand caught in the cookie jar rather than someone who had their evil scheme exposed.

This was a thirteen year old girl. Unfortunately it was also a thirteen year old parahuman. That complicated things immensely. Child parahumans were exactly as dangerous as adults, often more so due to lack of control or more profound impact of their trigger events. That wasn’t something I could ignore, no matter how obviously guilty she was about the whole situation.

Seeing there wasn’t malice would make it easier to deal with. No, actually that was completely untrue. Malice was easy to deal with. You dealt with it directly and often violently. This was worse than malice. This was stupidity. A series of idiotic decisions, more than a few of which were my fault, had led to the current situation of Ashia Laborn being in my workshop.

Aisha Laborn was in my workshop.

Considering that statement past the point of immediate reactionary panic it brought on a whole new wave of dread. Even beyond the multitude of concerns over security and secrecy I now had someone inside my workshop with every dangerous and unstable item stored within.

I glanced past Garment and wondered if it was too late to just huck Aisha out into the apartment and deal with things there. Unfortunately as good as that might feel it wouldn’t solve anything. She knew about the workshop, Garment, my access to it, and had seen all the equipment stored in the entryway. With the wide hallway/driveway leading to the Garage it was clear this wasn’t just a hidden room in my apartment, if that could even have been a possibility. Additionally I doubted hashing things out with a thirteen year old parahuman in a tiny apartment with thin walls would have anything like a good result.

Looking at Aisha I knew I had to do something, anything. Letting the current situation drag out would only make things worse. If she slipped away from Garment then with her memory power she could either vanish into the city or deeper into the workshop. The number of horrible things she could stumble across at that point didn’t bear thinking about.

I needed help, or the closest thing to help that I could manage. I took a breath, unclenched my jaw, and spoke.

“Just, just one minute.”

I turned towards my costume, making sure to keep Aisha in my field of vision. I had no idea if it would help if her stranger power activated, but I wasn’t taking chances. I pulled the left micromanipulator from my cape gear and slipped it on. I instantly felt the interface improved the precision of my motor control and quickly activated the integrated omni-tool’s display.

I looked down at the display and started scrolling through it with my haptic interface, tiny movements of the micromanipulator greatly speeding up the progress. Pulling up the data from the networked systems of the workshop I was able to check on some of the active projects. Not the Laboratorium, but those were still too advanced to properly connect with even the cyberpunk upgrades and I had concerns about linking them to the neural throne given the strength of their reactions.

My to-do list was still monolith, and unfortunately I had no more excuses to avoid looking at the data Survey had pulled concerning public reactions. I knew the fastest way to deal with that would be the neural interface, but I wasn’t ready to have that kind of stuff loaded straight into my brain. I would use one of the terminals or take the time to knock out a screen and interface with my super science housewares power.

Looking up I noticed I’d left the entryway unbarred. I also needed to improve security on that, though something that would ensure Garment could have access without any trouble. She was standing in front of the door with a strange gesture and seemed to be trying to get my attention. With a frustrated movement she shifted her right glove and…

“Fuck, I’m sorry. Jesus, I didn’t mean to.”

Aisha Laborn was in my workshop.

She was still being held awkwardly in Garment’s grip, but her expression had shifted from embarrassment at being caught doing something wrong to embarrassment at a personal failure. Whatever just happened, I could seriously believe she didn’t mean to do it.

That didn’t change the fact that I had to go through every step of that mental deconstruction once again to clarify to myself that yes, my memory had been altered and I hadn’t just overlooked a sudden major incursion into my workshop, and then overlooked it all over again. A single activation of her power and I was right back to square one. Whatever this stranger power was it functioned at an incredible level and took everything I had to just be aware of it.

I took a breath and focused on my previous task. This was a hell of a lot more serious than I thought. I didn’t just have a parahuman with strong stranger powers in my workshop. I had a parahuman with strong stranger powers that apparently she could barely control in my workshop. How recently would she have to have triggered for her powers to still be this raw?

I could not handle the effort of discerning my altered and original memories right now. I needed help, I needed a way to stop this from turning into a bigger disaster. Fortunately I had spent an immense amount of effort developing just that. A quick signal summoned Fleet to pilot the motoroid. Following that I activated my fabrication system and began forming another flight of drones.

With a straight shot from the Garage to my entryway the motoroid was peeling down the drive in motorcycle form just as the glowing spheres of Survey’s piloted drones formed around me. Aisha watched wide eyed as the beach ball sized drones formed out of my omni-gel reserves, suspended themselves on mass fields and began taking formation around me. Without prompting one hovered over above the stunned and embarrassed girl with Survey beginning a full set of scans and documentation.

“Aisha…” I stopped talking. Honestly I didn’t even know where to start. I wanted to open up on her about how stupid this course of action was. It was both a personal offense, a complete violation of what had until now been a bastion of security and privacy, and an incredibly reckless and stupid decision. I knew just enough about Aisha’s behavior to confidently say that, had Garment not caught her, she would have gotten herself killed or seriously injured within five minutes of running around the workshop. And that wasn’t even getting into the fact that she had followed a tinker into their lab with nothing but confidence in a probably freshly triggered stranger power to protect her.

That was another thing that hit me harder than I would have liked. I wanted to be angry at her, but if she was this raw and uncertain about her power then that meant she had triggered recently. The memories of my own trigger event were still fresh and painful. Something horrible had happened to Aisha in the last few days. Something bad enough to create a sense of complete hopelessness, a situation so desperate that the help of a passenger was the only way out.

It added a level of complexity to this situation that I really didn’t want to deal with. I hadn’t been acting logically right after my trigger event, expecting a thirteen year old to handle things better was completely unreasonable. A stranger trigger was completely different from a tinker trigger, but it was still a traumatic experience. It didn’t excuse this, but it was another point against just laying into her.

God, I didn’t know how to handle this. Even with my passenger’s affection for the girl he had a level of uncertainty around her behavior. Whatever it was about it that he found amusing in a public setting, even he had some concerns about how she would act around sensitive equipment or dangerous items. The basic opinion seemed to be that Aisha might be entertaining in most situations, but leaving her unattended around anything critical was a bad idea.

The sensation was actually a bit jarring. It was like my passenger regarded her as something like an amusing diversion rather than an actual person, some kind of force of chaos that was fun to watch but trying to deal with in person. It was disturbingly reminiscent of my first meeting where my passenger seemed to be happily ignoring every tragic element of Aisha’s past in order to enjoy her antics, regardless of those antics being the direct result of said tragedy.

Aisha was still watching me process the situation. It seemed neither of us knew what to say to resolve it, or even how to start making progress on the front. I would guess Aisha had an entire library of flippant dismissals, creative insults, or derogatory comments she would normally have used to weasel out of a bad spot, but she was intelligent enough to realize that I was not in the mood for any more crap. On my side I had the problem of expressing just how serious this was, then trying to figure out how to deal with it, the second part being the real challenge.

God, how did I manage that? Oh, I had a laundry list of solutions I could use to make a problem go away. If this was any other cape I would already be well into whichever one of them seemed easiest or most useful. But I wasn’t going to do any of that here. I wasn’t going to resort to violence, imprisonment, or destructive measures against a thirteen year old who clearly realized how badly she had fucked up. And with drastic options like mental alteration completely off the table that didn’t leave a lot of appealing options.

I let out a breath as my motoroid pulled up and Fleet transitioned it back into robot mode. Aisha shifted her attention from me to watch the transformation with wide eyes. Fleet stepped forward, waiting for commands, focusing on Garment for some reason. Survey had spread the fabricated drones over the area, including one blocking the entrance to the Laboratorium. I would need to get in there to update the tinker tech scans and start reviewing the analysis.

I couldn’t put that off long, but I needed to prioritize other things. With what Weld had said along with the way Director Armstrong behaved there was clearly some serious stuff happening in the news cycle and social media space, and that would have to take priority. I was about to pull up Survey’s report on my omni-tool when I felt the Celestial Forge move again.

It connected to a smallish mote from the Knowledge constellation. The power was called Xenospecialist and, along with providing some incidental equipment, made it easier for me to understand alien languages and technology. Not instant knowledge like some of the other perks, but greatly improved comprehension.

‘Alien Technology’ was one of those things that it seemed would be of limited usefulness, but for some reason every piece of tinker tech I had examined or even just heard of fell into that category. I had no idea why, but every one of Bakuda’s bombs registered as alien tech. From what I understood of Armsmaster’s gear it counted as well, as did the items I’d picked up from Uber and Leet, the Rig’s force field and suspension systems, and every other tinker item in the world.

Was my power trying to tell me something about passengers? I knew they were ‘alien’ in the sense of unnatural and disconnected from reality, but with this it seemed they were ‘alien’ in the extraterrestrial sense as well. That had serious implications, as did how this power affected my own technical skills.

The power made it easier to understand alien technology. It should be no surprise that this would have an impact on the entire technical base of the civilization of alien robots I was carrying around. My already impressive understanding of that type of technology had improved in a subtle but significant way. The surprising thing was the seemingly arbitrary way it applied to the other technology powers I possessed.

There was no improvement in Grease Monkey’s cyberpunk understanding. Likewise the numerous powers that improved mechanical or manufacturing skills were untouched. For some reason Aerospace Engineering Makes Things Go Fast and They're Like Legoes, Right? Both saw a benefit from this power despite nothing they provided or enhanced being more advanced than space age technology. Nothing magical or alchemical saw an increase, nor did my nanite understanding. The technology from Class: Engineer saw an oddly piecemeal increase in understanding, most parts counting but some were excluded, like it covered a mash of human and alien technology.

The oddest increase in comprehension was to my Simple Scientific Solution power. Despite that power’s mundane application it was shockingly advanced and, according to my latest power, very alien. Given what that power was already capable of it wasn’t that much of an increase. Certainly no closer to cracking the black box on that tech, but there were a few applications I could see myself pushing a bit further than I would have been able to manage otherwise. I looked towards the door and considered what I should…

“Sorry, sorry. I swear I’m not doing that on purpose.”

I looked at an increasingly frustrated Garment. At the Survey controlled drone floating above her. At the confused stance of my motoroid. And at the girl being held at the center of their attention.

Aisha Laborn was in my workshop.

I clenched my fists, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Once again, I had to take the time to pick apart my memories and capture the effect Aisha’s power was having on them. It was easier now that I was on my third attempt, but that just added an edge of frustration and tedium to the process. I could not keep doing this. Aisha’s intrusion was a matter of dire seriousness, but every time I started trying to figure out how to resolve it I would be right back at square one.

If I thought for one second she was doing this on purpose I probably would have lost it, but she had the expression and behavior of someone who accidently just spilled a drink over themselves and was having to bear the scrutiny of everyone around them. Neither I nor my passenger thought she was a good enough actor to convey this kind of thing, and he seemed to confirm my theories about her having control problems.

This time, when I analyzed the effect of the power on my memories I took a hard look at things. It was incredibly difficult, the power did an excellent job at concealing the effects of its use. A person could have every memory of Aisha wiped away and never notice anything was missing, or that anything had returned when the power was disabled.

That. That was the key. The power was autonomous. It targeted memories of Aisha and suppressed them in a way that made her absence in your thoughts completely mundane and unnoticed. I could only imagine how a girl who seemed to enjoy attention so much was dealing with a persistent power that made people ignore her. For most people that would be it. A passing understanding of what had been done to them with them powerless to do anything about it.

I was not most people.

I clenched and unclenched my hands again. This would effectively pull off the Band-Aid as far as minimizing exposure went, but it would also get me to a point where I could actually process what was happening in front of me.

“I believe you.” Aisha sank in relief. Actually looking at her without the haze of rage and indignation I could see the signs of stress that recent events must have taken on her. I took a breath and pressed on. “But I can’t deal with this if I’m trying to remember what’s happening every couple of minutes.” She nodded cautiously. “So, follow me. We’re going to deal with this.”

I properly barred the main entrance, then I braced myself, opened the workshop door and stepped through. I focused on confident strides as I heard Aisha gasp as Garment guided her after me. “God fucking damn.”

“Up here.” I gestured and started climbing the steps towards my neural interface. Aisha made it half way up before stopping in her tracks despite Garment ushering her forward, though at least not by the ear this time.

“The hell is that?”

I sighed. Design decisions made in isolation that seemed fine at the time definitely started showing cracks under the inspection of another person. I avoided looking back to hide my discomfort. “It’s the interface for my computer system.”

“But that’s diamond? Solid fucking diamond? And gold, right?”

“It’s an optical computer. Diamond is the best medium, and gold is an excellent conductor for the relays.”

“Right…” She trailed off, then muttered. “So that’s why it looks like something Lady Kale would seize in a plot to take over Avalon?”

I sighed. “The design is…” I stopped and turned back to face her. “Was that a Princess Gwenevere reference?”

She looked up at me in confusion. “Yeah? Wait, you know that show.”

I took a breath. “I have two sisters. I couldn’t avoid it when I was growing up. But seriously, why would I design stuff based on a cartoon?”

Aisha glanced at my motoroid, then looked back and gave me an innocent shrug.

I shook my head, then paused. “Didn’t that show come out like the year you were born, or something?”

A genuine smile crossed her face. “Reruns.” She grinned a bit wider. “They always showed it after school, or early mornings if my mom was…” She suddenly turned away and coughed. “Anyway, that show was the shit, especially Fallon.”

I stared down at her. How the hell did we get to discussing childhood cartoon preferences? Well, I had hideously over designed a computer interface and she brought up that crystal princess show I always had to sit through with my sisters. And she had specifically mentioned Fallon, the tough, independent, borderline reckless character from that show. She was also a dark skinned girl with purple highlights.

Looking down at the girl with the streak of purple in her hair, Aisha clearly realized I saw the association and felt absolutely no shame over it. I nodded “Yeah, Fallon was great.” By which I meant she was one of the more tolerable aspects of that show when you were forced to watch it.

Aisha beamed at the comment, then sighed. “Too bad they fucked it up in the sequel.”

“Avalon, Web of Magic? The one with the Japanese guy that came over after Kyushu?” I had actually watched some of that show of my own free will. I mean, the story lines were still convoluted, the magic system was overly complicated, and there was that whole thing with the female King Arthur, but at least the fights were good.

Aisha nodded and her face darkened. “Kinoko Nasu did my girl dirty. Like Fallon would ever lose to some Irish spear boy.”

I frowned. “Didn’t she come back later on?”

“That wasn’t her.” Aisha spat. “That was her heroic spirit summoned into a perfect illusion of her, and that’s not even getting into the counter guardian shit. Seriously they thought they could just replace her with Adriane and everyone would be okay with it.”

I blinked in surprise. Out of every possible course following an intrusion into my workshop a discussion of television animation plots where I was both out geeked and out lored by Aisha Laborn wasn’t even on my radar. I guess everyone has something they’re passionate about. I hadn’t thought about those shows in years. Both of my sisters were hugely into the first one, and with them older and outnumbering me that meant I had no hope of avoiding it.

That was a pretty common story in my house, to be honest. I would get outvoted on almost everything, and whenever things went my way there was always this sense of imposition from it, like I was making everyone’s life worse because of it.

I pushed the thoughts away. This wasn’t something I wanted to get into. I had spent enough time picking through that stuff with Dr. Campbell. It was in the past. Yeah, it still affected me, but dwelling on it wouldn’t help at this point. Moving on was hard, but that’s what all that mindfulness crap was about.

I looked over at my command throne. It really was tempting to just go in and deal with these problems directly. It would be easy, and that was the problem. There were no easy solutions for this kind of thing. Glancing down at Garment, Fleet, and one of Survey’s drones I considered what I should do next…

“Sorry, I got distracted.” Aisha was clenching her teeth and focusing on me with serious intensity. I blinked as I once again processed the mental alterations.

Aisha Laborn was in my workshop.

I took a deep breath and let it out. “Aisha, I am going to sit in the interface. After I do I want you to cycle your power. Can you handle that?” I let more frustration leak into my voice than I intended. Aisha was looking more ashamed than concerned over the tone I was using. She kept her focus, but gave a slight nod.

I sank into the interface and felt the comforting sensation of my mind expanding through the system, my way of thinking shifting to better accommodate the series of optical logic gates built into the atomic structure of the diamond itself. Through accelerated perception Aisha was looking for confirmation before she disabled her power. I gave a signal with my human body, then ramped up the cognitive acceleration to levels that would be dangerous to sustain.

By thinking at the speed of light I could observe the process as it happened. My understanding of not just memory technology but the very nature of memory itself let me comprehend the effect in play on a fundamental level. It was a multilayered process. It emanated from Aisha nearly instantaneously, but at my level of cognitive acceleration I could follow the power’s work step by step.

There was a signature, an incredibly complicated one, attached to memories of a certain topic. In this case the topic of Aisha Laborn was being targeted. The effect sought out the engrams related to that subject and both actively suppressed them from being accessed and blocked the formation of any new information being stored.

The truly impressive part was the use of the mind’s own natural mechanisms to avoid exposure. Humans were great at rationalizing away things they didn’t want to think about and avoiding problems. I was practically a living testament to that principle. This power engaged that process in an incredibly elegant manner. Unless a person was absolutely forced to confront the reality of the missing information they would completely ignore it and come up with their own reasons for doing so.

I could see this in my own experience. With the help of the interface I recognized how I’d come up with a paper thin reasoning for my aversion to the gym in the absence of Aisha and never gave serious thought to if the idea made sense. I’d dismissed what was a ridiculous circumstance around Aisha’s father the night of the bombings and seen that Doug had clearly done the same.

With the benefit of an uncompromised perspective I could tell that was probably where Aisha had triggered. A street assault severe enough to put down Mr. Laborn would have to be particularly brutal. That man wasn’t a soft target, so I could only imagine what kind of situation would lead to him being hospitalized and Aisha triggering. It must have been horrific.

Aisha cycled her power off and I felt the effects recede. Memories that were blocked off were suddenly accessible again and my human brain could form new memories of the girl standing before the throne with a look of intensity on her face. With this full set of information I could get to work.

As suspected, electronic perception and storage wasn’t affected by Aisha’s power. On a very close examination there was some disruption of the stored data, but it was orders of magnitude less efficient than the alteration of living brains. Eventually records of her existence would degrade, but not on any meaningful timeframe.

Garment was also immune, but that was likely because she was a spirit of fashion with no physical brain to be targeted. Whatever the exact mechanism of this power was it wasn’t able to handle that kind of challenge.

With my mind in a digital state and a comprehensive understanding of the effects at play I could put my plan into action. There was a very specific mechanism used to target and block engrams. The power dug through stored memory and impeded access to memories relating to its host. And if I understood that mechanism I could disrupt it.

What I was doing here was full on, undeniable alteration of my own mind. I still had fears that this would be the first step on a slippery slope that would send me careening into everything I dreaded about my original trigger, but they were outweighed by concerns over the constant cycled changes to my memory. It was enough for me to push past my discomfort and finally attempt memory alteration.

The process was simple. No, that was wrong on every level. The process was so intensely complicated I would need to rewrite entire concepts of neural science just to explain it. What I meant was by comparison to what my knowledge of memory science was capable of, it was on the less complicated side, but that said more about me than the procedure. It could at least be simply explained.

If Aisha’s power targeted memories of her then all I had to do was alter my memories so they couldn’t be targeted. Imagine a search engine that only looks for memories tagged ‘Aisha’, but all of your memories have been altered to be tagged ‘AiSha’. The mental change isn’t significant enough to alter the content of the memories, but it breaks the association that lets the power target them.

Then take that explanation, throw out everything except the words ‘power targeted’ and replace it with an insanely complex arrangement of gray matter constructs, cerebral artifacts, neurochemical interactions, neuron structure alignments, and several complicated explanations of multidimensional interaction mechanisms. Then you might start to appreciate what I was actually doing to my own brain.

Aisha cycled her power again and I felt the wave of energy search through my mind and find nothing to attach to. I still couldn’t create new memories of her, but none of my previous experiences were affected. I dropped the acceleration and stood up from the throne.

Looking around I saw Garment, my motoroid, and a drone floating above a point on the stairs.

“Aisha?” The drone moved slightly. I remembered informing Survey to keep it aligned with the girl’s head. “I can’t see you, but I’m assuming you’re still there.”

Garment made a gesture of confirmation and gently pushed at something in front of her. Suddenly Aisha was stumbling forward, careful not to trip on the steps. She glared back at Garment who made a dismissive gesture, then up at me in shock.

“You remembered me? Even when my power was on?” I nodded at her. I didn’t think I’d ever see a parahuman so happy to have their power thoroughly subverted. And it was subverted. For the first time since she appeared I didn’t have to tear apart my own thought processes to figure out what was happening. It totally was worth exposing more of my workshop.

Actually that though made my guts wrench. I had dealt with the immediate concern, but now had to figure out how to deal with the larger problem that Aisha Laborn was in my workshop.

“How did you do that?”

With the problem of repeated memory loss addressed my previous frustrations were bubbling to the surface. I badly wanted to tell her she was in no position to ask questions and start laying into her for her stupid and reckless behavior. But there was just something so genuine and hopeful about her question that made it hard to dive into that anger.

“Your power specifically targets memories associated with you. I altered mine just enough that they can’t be targeted automatically, but not enough to change their contents.”

Her eyes were wide as she took in my explanation. “Can you do that for anyone else? I mean, let them remember me?”

And there were my guts wrenching for an entirely different reason. The implications of her situation were really hitting me now. Yes, she had a crazy strong stranger power, but that came with a cost. Her parents, her brother, everyone she knew had forgotten about her existence at all times beyond the brief windows where she was able to suspend her powers. She had suddenly seen a possible ray of hope, a solution to that situation, and I had to squash it.

“No.” I shook my head. “That type of work is incredibly precise. I could barely handle it on my own mind. I wouldn’t want to risk it on anyone else. One mistake and they could end up with a warped recollection of you, or even forget you permanently.”

From the look on her face it was like I had just told her Santa wasn’t real. God damn, what was it that had capes putting all their hopes in me for salvation? I just went through this with Weld, now Aisha. Crap, when word got out of what happened with Weld I’d probably see every Case 53 in the country show up. How many times was I going to have to say ‘Sorry, I can’t help you’?

I was standing looking over my workshop with Garment, my motoroid and drone. I couldn’t remember seeing Aisha since I left the interface, but considering the length of time and the position of the drone that I had following her I was guessing she had let her control of her power slip. Probably not an intentional activation, but still inconvenient.

“Aisha, I’m assuming you’re still there. If this isn’t the first time I’ve said this, I can’t hold on to new memories of you. I only have what I protected while connected to the interface. Could you please deactivate your power?”

Suddenly Aisha was there and I remembered the previous exchange. If she needed her focus to hold the effect back then that news must have broken it. This wasn’t going to be easy to deal with. I wanted to help her, but I also wanted to throttle her for the stupidity of her action and the violation it represented.

I took a breath. Going off the handle wouldn’t help. As I was calming myself down the Time constellation passed by without a connection and Aisha seemed to notice, just like she had last time. I had made another connection earlier while I was managing the memory effect. A small mote from the Crafting constellation called Customized Weapons. It covered more than just weapons, improving efficiency of design and manufacture while ensuring that equipment was ergonomic, streamlined, and efficient.

It was a minor if useful power, but the real advantage was that I was connected to a high resolution neural scan at the time it was granted. For the first time I had an actual record of how these powers affected my mind. Not that this was one with major implications, but any information on how the information was integrated could prove useful for managing more extreme effects.

Might be. It was a project with uncertain benefits that was sitting well behind a lot of more pressing concerns, such as the one standing before me. For now I let out the breath I’d been holding, unclenched my teeth, and turned to Aisha.

“Before anything else, I want to say you coming in here was an incredibly stupid move.” There were hints of defiance as I spoke, particularly around the word ‘stupid’. I think if I had opened up screaming like I’d wanted to she wouldn’t have been able to restrain herself and things would have devolved into a shout off. Instead she stood there, avoiding eye contact but still listening to my measured tone.

“Capes are dangerous, pretty much universally.” I remembered her assessment of my threat level the last time we spoke. “I don’t care how harmless you think I am. There are a million other ways this could have gone wrong. You are damn lucky I hadn’t put in automatic defenses yet.” Guess what I’ll be adding next? “Plus as a tinker there are hundreds of things here that will kill you if you mess with them.” I sighed. “Plus there’s the possibility of running into other capes. Parahuman powers are too varied to rely on any defense to protect you against everything.”

Aisha was clearly someone who did not enjoy being lectured. Between the focus that it apparently took to hold off her power and her natural reaction to this kind of thing the amount of effort she was putting into enduring the reprimand was legitimately impressive. After I finished she nodded slowly. “I get what you mean about other capes.”

Garment loomed behind her in her immaculate gown and crossed the pure white opera gloves serving as her arms with an air of menace. Even with no visible face she seemed to be glaring down at the girl. It was the most aggressive that I’d ever seen her. On one hand it was gratifying to know she took security seriously, but on the other it was a little scary seeing this much intensity.

I let out a breath. This would have been so much easier if I could have just thrown her into a stasis field. Still, I couldn’t do that to her, her brother, or her father. Also, once I started that route I would quickly run out of stasis fields. I only had a few big enough to hold humans and a rapidly expanding list of headaches that was probably only going to grow larger as time went on.

“I want you to tell me what happened.”

Aisha looked at me in confusion. “What do you mean what happened? From when?”

“From whenever you want to start. Preferably far back enough that you can explain how you reached the decision to barge into my workshop.”

“I didn’t know it was your workshop, or whatever.” She glanced around the cavernous space and up at the diamond throne. “I just saw you at the gym and decided to follow you here.” She seemed to realize too late that that didn’t sound much better.

I was looking at the drone I set to mark Aisha’s position. I checked the time stamp and noted the duration since I’d used the interface to block off my earlier memories. Garment was standing behind the drone, looking agitated but not overly concerned.

“Aisha, I’m assuming we’re in the middle of a conversation and you lost control.” Garment made a gesture of assent. Good. “It’s okay. Take the time you need to…”

She was standing under the drone looking up at me. I remembered where we left the conversation and gestured for her to continue. She took a breath, clearly upset at the lapse, but pressed on.

“Well, you showed up in a baggy jacket with something up with your eyes. I just wanted to see what was happening.”

I blinked, then pulled up the display for my omni-tool’s scanner. I checked the close up of my eye. Whatever after effect there were from the water breathing potion had faded to the point of near invisibility. There was absolutely no sign of the earlier glow and only a slight distortion in the color of the iris. Either it had been much more noticeable back at the gym or Aisha secretly had the observational skills of a detective and the color sense of a professional artist.

Once again I thanked God for the consistent indifference of that place. There was something refreshing about a location where people literally did not care if you were in organized crime, a villain henchman, tied up with side hustles, or concealing horrible personal secrets. As long as you showed up, paid your dues, and didn’t cause trouble they couldn’t care less.

“So you were at the gym? You followed me from there?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s all that happened.”

Garment’s hand moved like lightning and whipped a white speck from Aisha’s top. She held the blob of familiar material up on the end of one gloved finger. Aisha looked at the blintz filling with a guilty expression.

“Hey, you were sharing them. And I didn’t eat any more than Casey did.” She crossed her arms and huffed. Honestly, the situation was more amusing than annoying. There were a million things that could have been done with effective invisibility that were much, much worse than taking a larger than warranted share of freely offered pastries.

“Right. So you followed me here?”

She avoided my gaze and shrugged. “Yeah? Figured I’d get some confirmation about that stuff from the other night, maybe talk to you later, once I got a better handle on things. I just wasn’t expecting the whole portal to Narnia thing in the closet.”

Right. New cape, messing around with their powers, and in a position where they couldn’t shift back to a normal life if they wanted to. It was understandable, but understanding something doesn’t make it right. She had been in my apartment. Been floating around as I sorted my kitchen and bathroom, as I put quarters in the jar, as I messaged Dr. Campbell.

I understood where she was coming from. I understood why she thought she could get away with it. I understood her mindset, the impact of her trigger, the isolation of her powers. I understood all that stuff, and I was still pissed off.

Luckily I was quite good at pretending things didn’t bother me. Call it an unhealthy expression of emotions all you want, being able to bury irritation at a situation and push forward is a useful skill and one I had plenty of practice at. I took a breath and drew on the same skills that let me make it through an amicable debrief with the Undersiders after Taylor had vivisected Aegis on live television with my knife.

“Your trigger?” From the way she reacted she clearly recognized the term. “It was when your dad was attacked? You were there?”

She nodded slowly. “There were...”

“You don’t have to get into it.” I stated. “Not unless you want to.” She paused, then nodded again.

Right, so I had an extremely powerful stranger who triggered barely 24 hours ago sitting in the middle of my warehouse. Said stranger was also one of the most impulsive and irresponsible girls I had ever encountered.

“So…” I started, then suddenly wasn’t sure where to go with that statement. Sort of like this whole situation. “What have you been doing for the last day?”

It was a little weak as interrogations went, but it was probably as good a starting point as any.

Aisha took a little time before she responded. Garment’s increasingly aggressive stance didn’t seem to help the girl’s mood. Finally she seemed to find the words and pushed forward.

“After the… attack I was able to get my dad to the hospital. Still didn’t know what was happening back then, just scared the hell out of the guys that attacked us, then got him into a cab and managed to keep things together long enough to make the trip. Had to stay in the front the whole time, pushing down my power whenever he forgot about me.”

Even sharing that much seemed to weigh on her. I wanted for her to continue.

“After that I started to put things together, how this worked, that kind of thing.” I nodded. “I got a hold of my brother, but it was hard. If I can’t hold back my power for the entire phone call then people just hang up.” Her voice was bitter and I could understand why. It also confirmed details about the significant range and scale of her power.

I nodded to her. “This close to your trigger your corona pollentia still stabilizing. Control should get easier once you get more experience and get more in sync with your passenger.”

She gave me a blank look and Garment made an exasperated gesture towards her. I remembered that stuff was high level and theoretical even amongst cape researchers.

“Right, the corona pollentia is the chunk of your brain that lets you become a parahuman. When you trigger it develops all the structures you need to control your powers. Big changes first, then significantly slower. Practice more with your powers and you build more connections, and generally get better control or more understanding of your powers.”

She nodded along. “Right, but what the hell is a passenger?”

I sighed. “That’s a lot more complicated.” She clearly wasn’t going to leave it at that. I decided to keep things vague and in line with the accurate parts of current theories. “There’s this direction behind powers, around who gets them and how they manifest. There are a number of names for that, mostly passengers or agents. The idea is the closer you are to your passenger the better you’re in control of your powers.”

She gave me a confused look. “How does that work?”

I shrugged. “Generally people screw around with their powers until they find something that works for them, then they keep doing it. You get a lot of false positives, which generally means people do stupid or destructive things compulsively because they think it will help with their powers.” Or because the meat computer connected to their brain is edging them on, but that’s not the kind of thing you lay out for a young teen who just had powers dumped on her.

She seemed to accept that, and at my prompting continued her story.

“Right, so after that I tried to figure out what I could do, if there was anyone who could see me. I saw the broadcast from last night.” She looked straight at me. “That was you.”

There was no question or request for confirmation. I didn’t doubt that she was certain of things even before she had seen my costume in the entryway. Aisha was an annoyingly observant girl in a way that made her a pain to deal with.

It also meant she had seen everything I’d done last night and still decided to barge into my apartment and workshop. That crossed the line between confident and stupid in a rather profound way.

She continued without waiting for a reaction. “I had been wandering around, checking on things. Got to the gym when Doug was trying to reach you. Figured I’d hang out and wait for you to show up.” The Toolkits constellation passed by as I gave her a questioning look. She just shrugged. “They had a nice thing going. Plenty of food no one would miss, and everyone was going on about the cape visit tomorrow.” She looked over her shoulder at the clearly irritated Garment. “From the way that talked about her I figured she’d be nicer. Also didn’t know you were together.”

I was a bit confused by Garment’s behavior. I could understand her being upset over having someone sneak in to the Workshop, but this seemed more personal somehow. Whatever had her on edge was clearly a serious matter.

“Garment?” She stood up straight, looming over Aisha and made a series of motions explaining herself, including several angry gestures towards the girl. As I watched, things finally fell into place. “Ah, I see.”

“See what?” Aisha asked, looking between us in concern.

I just shook my head. “Sorry, there’s nothing that can be done for it now.” I looked up at Garment. “So do you need to start now?”

She made an enthusiastic gesture and started leading Aisha away by the arm.

“Start what? What’s going on?”

“Trust me, it’s best if you don’t try to fight it.”

“What?”

“Look, you brought this on yourself when you snuck in here. I couldn’t stop her if I wanted to?”

“Stop her?” She looked up at Garment as she was led down the stairs and into the workshop. “I mean, stop her! Whatever she's doing, stop her!”

I sighed. “Don’t worry, it will be over soon.” I turned back to the throne as Garment half dragged Aisha deeper into the workshop.

The various obscenities that Aisha was yelling eventually transitioned to flickers of her power, which was still as annoying as ever. I sank back into the interface and used the mechanical nature of my expanded consciousness to shield myself from the effect as well as update the targeting protection to my memories of the conversation.

My gut instinct and passenger’s reaction suggested she was being earnest in her accounting of the events leading up to invading my workshop. In support of that, I had a full sensor analysis available from the drone that Survey had hovering over her the entire time. It wasn’t exactly a perfect polygraph, but the scans and records were detailed enough to suggest that she was telling the truth. Or suggest as well as was possible when monitoring a stressed out teenager without a proper set of baseline readings to compare things to.

That suggested I was just dealing with extreme levels of foolhardiness and impulsive behavior. Frankly, when I considered what Aisha could have gotten up to using that power this wasn’t the worst possibility. Of all the parahumans she could have decided to intrude on, well I wasn’t the safest, not with what I had lying around here, but I was the least likely to come down hard on her. God, even poking in on the Undersiders would probably have ended with a version of the welcome Bitch gave me, only with less favorable results.

For some reason that thought amused my passenger. Come to think about it the Undersiders had even worse security than I did. I may have slacked off on door security and automated defenses, but at least I had people in my workshop to support me. Without electronic sensors or someone conveniently immune to her stranger power Aisha could have waltzed into their base and done whatever she wanted.

Were the kind of precautions the Undersiders carried typical of villains? Well, not every team had a tinker to install defenses. Professional security systems either had to be installed by your own men or needed industry connection that could be trusted. Powers that could no-sell a stranger were even rarer than tinkers who could provide security. The typical defensive system was probably in line with what I’d been using, mundane locks combined with secrecy.

I took some time to plan out the construction of new security measures for my main entrance. Between the knowledge sets I’d already acquired and Simple Scientific Solution extending into home security there were a lot of possibilities. I would be able to easily avoid a repeat of this intrusion. Linking an EM particle field from my Skills: Physics to the central computer could allow selective permeability to specific objects or people as long as I had properly calibrated emitters and a source of energetic plasma to power them. It would be almost like what they did with force fields on Star Trek.

Actually, with that thought, if I could specialize the EM emitters enough and couple them with some kind of photon matrix I could create solid holograms. Maybe. It was just physics concepts rather than any hint to the application, so that was something of a challenge, but I could definitely create the impression of a normal closet behind my entrance door instead of giving people a view of the Workshop’s central access room. Master Builder had some holographic principles as well, and with the boost from Xenospecialist I could probably pull them off without needing cybertonium.

Class: Engineer was a lot less subtle, but I was in favor of building a heavy mass barrier at the entryway to just provide a solid obstruction if everything else failed. It wouldn’t be subtle in any sense of the word, but having a giant glowing force wall come down should be a hell of a deterrent.

Last line of defense would be a security system from Simple Scientific Solution. That power was more than a little eccentric in its application, but it was basically magic by every standard except the technical one. I probably didn’t even need the other options, but on the off chance that someone was able to bypass whatever system was put in place with that Clarketech power I needed to have a fallback of some kind.

As useful as all those applications were there was a sense that I was closing the barn door after the horses had already escaped. Aisha was here, Aisha knew about my workshop, and I had to deal with that problem. It would have been so much easier if I was the kind of bastard who could live with indefinitely imprisoning a thirteen year old girl. Even easier if I was willing to mess with memories, but that was a serious dark path that I didn’t even want to touch. Not if there was any other option.

So what were my options here? If mindwipe and imprisonment weren’t choices then I would have to deal with the fact that Aisha was going back into the world knowing about what she had seen here. I was understandably uncomfortable with that situation. Every instinct I’d gotten from my military training was screaming at me about operational security.

The only way I could leave this with a true sense of safety would be to abandon my non-cape identity. Go dark, cut all ties to my civilian life, and live on the run. I could probably hack in a new set of ID without too much trouble and relocate to somewhere else in the city for the duration of the current crisis, then to somewhere else in the country after that. My family might be at risk, but with only Aisha’s word for people to go by they would probably be safe in the long run.

That thought horrified me more than I expected. I didn’t have the best situation in my civilian life, but I had put a huge amount of effort into pulling myself back together over the last two years. Walking away made it feel like all that progress, all that effort, was for nothing. I didn’t want to burn the identity I’d grown up with and start fresh, no matter how good an idea it would be.

But what were my other options? Rely on the discretion of Aisha Laborn for my future survival? There was another spike of anger at the chaos this violation of my privacy had brought down on me. That wasn’t a point in her favor. I would effectively be hoping that her good nature and wise decision making would protect me, when she hadn’t displayed much of either.

Okay, that wasn’t exactly fair. She had pegged me as a parahuman days ago. Given that I wasn’t swimming in PRT agents or gang capes she had kept that to herself. Aisha could at least keep a secret, but for how long and to what extent? And we were talking about parahumans here. For some people, some powers, it didn’t matter how much you wanted to keep things secret.

That was the real source of dread. The major, impassable threats that I had worked so hard to dance around, the ones I had warned Weld about, they were just waiting for something like this. I had specific defenses of debatable effectiveness designed to hold off precognition. Aisha didn’t. Her power might be able to buy her some leeway, but all it would take is a single point of failure. Garment had demonstrated that quite effectively.

Endbringers were notoriously resistant to parahuman abilities. I didn’t expect that the Simurgh would be fooled by Aisha’s memory power. Even if she couldn’t see me there was a good chance that whatever impulsive thing Aisha was going to do would start pinging on whatever future sense the winged bitch used.

That was the real problem here. I had been dancing around the impact of more dangerous elements of the world. With Aisha barging into my workshop she upset whatever tenuous balance I had. There was the possibility that any action I took would still bite me in the ass. Everything was going to ping on precogs. Using memory tech on someone with memory powers could have all kinds of unexpected results. Confinement in a stasis field wouldn’t affect her passenger, and that could be serious trouble.

Aisha had a normal passenger, one of the giant conflict driven meat computers that plugged itself into her brain. It probably had some level of contribution to her reckless actions, but I doubted Aisha needed much help in that department. The real problem was the fact that there was a passenger linked to her brain, a brain that was inside my workshop.

I was incredibly lucky that my passenger, despite all of his quirks, operated outside of the cluster of either entity. Passengers weren’t exactly a network, and it wasn’t like they completely understood everything that was going on around the parahumans they were connected to, but a lot of powers and effects relied on interactions between passengers. There were exchanges, links, connections, and even occasional data transfers that I had no way of regulating or blocking.

Maybe if I had a better understanding of magitech I would be able to influence passenger connection, block information transfer, or even understand what was happening in order to quantify the risk. Right now the only inroad I had made in that area was my call beads, but using them to investigate passengers would be like hooking up a telescope to a fire hydrant. A situation where neither technology was designed for what you were trying to accomplish.

It was a dismal situation. Even with all the power and technology at my disposal I didn’t have what I needed to magically fix a problem of this magnitude.

Except I did.

I fucking did! Of all the immense libraries of technology, the production speed increases, the immaculate crafting abilities, the legitimate magic, none of them could help with this problem. Instead it was a single borderline novelty houseware power that would save the day.

Need a magical fix? I had Clarketech appliances at my disposal, and recently improved proficiency with them. Literally anything was possible as long as it addressed a household issue. And you know what counted as a household issue?

Privacy.

My mind was spinning at high levels of cognitive acceleration as I worked out the design for the solution to my problems, ignoring a missed connection to the Knowledge constellation as I powered through. This was high level even for a power that granted magical feats of technology. It was also simple when you thought about it. Nobody liked nosey neighbors. So preventing being spied upon was obviously a household problem. The kind of household problem that Simple Scientific Solution was designed to address.

It was telling how far I was pushing this by the amount of effort the design was taking. This wasn’t self-heating plumbing, force field windows, a car upgrade, or even a butler robot. This was privacy against every possible thing in existence. Assurance that no power on earth would be able to peek into my workshop. Absolute proof against detection.

I was building an N-dimensional privacy curtain. The concept was high level even for me, and the application was totally beyond my own understanding. Essentially it was a curtain that would surround my workshop while extending in every possible dimension in order to block spying methods. It even extended 4-dimensionally both forward and backward in time, effectively blocking both pre and post cognition.

There was also a certain feeling to it that suggested it was a scaled up version of something intended to prevent peeping toms from peering into bathrooms. I got that sense from a lot of the technology provided by Simple Scientific Solution. It was staggeringly powerful within its own field, but didn’t seem to take itself too seriously.

That became more apparent as I disconnected from the interface and set about installing the system. The assembly method didn’t involve the construction of any large apparatus or the installation of jamming systems, or any other kind of multi-dimensional technology I would expect to have to use. Instead I was treating sheets of fabric and then stringing them up in such a way that as I hauled on the curtain pull they were dragged out of sync with our universe. I didn’t even need to move around the workshop while installing it. I could just haul everything into place from a single point and let the dimensional geometry of the curtain take care of things.

And just like that I had just created a contained area that was proof against every form of detection, even other passengers, and accomplished it using junk and spare sheets. I didn’t know whether to be insulted at the simplicity of it, or cackle madly at the scale of the accomplishment. This wouldn’t protect me or any of my works when they were outside, but everything within my workshop was safe from observation. That winged bitch couldn’t spy on it. Other parahumans couldn’t spy on us. Even tinker tech surveillance couldn’t breach the privacy curtain.

I had to take a moment to just bask in the significance. I had done it. It wasn’t perfect, but I had one place where I would be safe, where the Simurgh couldn’t see me. Anything that went out that door was fair game, but in here I could plan, I could build, I could experiment. I could do anything and as long as I kept it contained it would be safe. I could practically feel the crushing weight that burden had placed on me evaporate from my shoulders. For the first time since I’d learned the scale of my powers I could really relax.

More than relax, I could plan. With the nebulous threat of the Simurgh there were things I didn’t even want to think about. Now I could actually devote time to working on counter strategies or tracking down the reason it would be so dangerous to kill an Endbringer. Hell, I could even plan to use this technology. It wasn’t something that could be moved and needed stable structures to be anchored to, but with the speed I could set it up conceivably I could break it out the next time the winged bitch attacked a city, creating pockets of blind spots to her predictions. It was a risky idea, but at least now I could actually consider it without tipping her off.

Even my passenger was happy for me. Thanks to the different nature of my connections I was still in contact with my passenger, but the data links of other passengers would be disrupted. Not enough to impact the powers of their hosts, but enough that data gathered would be useless, like it was being taken through a high blur filter. While it didn’t solve the problem of what Aisha would do when she left, it took care of a much bigger concern than just an unguarded entrance.

Speaking of which, I started work on proper security for the main entrance. I decided to go with a stable EM barrier using call beads to provide the power source. My initial design was a bit clunky, but considering I was doing all the engineering from first principles I was happy with the end product. The result was a transparent field across the entryway that would scale to different sizes of door. I didn’t have selective access programs yet, but as far as blocking the door went it was a big step up from a chunk of steel.

I also installed a fallback security system from Simple Scientific Solution. Like all the tech from that power it was insanely advanced while also being somehow irreverent in its application. I chose the option that would teleport any intruder that bypassed the force field into the nearest large body of water. I elected to leave out the feature that would also stamp the word ‘idiot’ onto their forehead during transit.

I was headed back to my throne to review the system controls when I heard the sound of feet stamping my way from the direction of the textile area. First there was the sight of one of Survey’s drones floating up the stairs. Then I saw the form of Aisha follow underneath it with a furious expression on her face. I was pretty sure of the reason for that, which was confirmed when I saw her new outfit.

Instead of her strapless top, shorts, and fishnets Aisha was wearing a fitted purple A-line dress with green highlights that extended to mid-shin length. As she strode forward I could see her sneakers had been switched out for a pair of ankle boots that matched the rest of her outfit. Her collection of piercings and jewelry somehow paired well with the new style, providing a contrasting and highlighting effect rather than its previous jumbled mess.

“So, I see things went well with Garment.”

“She’s a fucking madwoman.” Aisha glared back at the form of Garment who was cresting the stairs while carrying Aisha’s old outfit in a small bag. She was holding it away from her like a garbage bag that could contaminate her as she moved in to fuss slightly with the way Aisha’s dress was sitting.

“I told you, it’s fine. Let up already.” She shifted her glare towards me. “She just doesn’t stop.”

I just smiled at her. “You know, that is a really nice dress.”

Aisha’s face darkened as she scowled at me. Her hands balled into fists and when she spoke it was with a voice of pure vitriol.

“It is beautiful and I love it.”

At the sound of Aisha’s pained statement Garment made an expression of pure joy and started once again fussing over the girl, reluctantly ceasing when Aisha batted her away. I could not hold back a chuckle at the display.

“It’s not funny.” Aisha insisted, in defiance of all physical evidence. “She kept making dresses. I literally couldn’t stop her.” Garment beamed with pride at the girl’s accusation.

“Ah,” I replied. “I thought it was taking a bit long for one outfit.”

“This is serious.” Aisha insisted. “Some of those dresses have corsets. And not the fun kind, the kind you have to wear under the dress.”

Aisha’s apparent fear and distaste for historic under layers was completely lost on Garment who just proudly confirmed the accusation. I just shrugged.

“Don’t look at me. There are two tuxedos and a three piece suit she’s still trying to get me to wear.”

Aisha blinked. “Seriously?” She looked to Garment for confirmation, who raised a finger of one glove, handed off the bag with Aisha’s old clothes, and hurried off to her workspace, her gown streaming around her as she moved.

Aisha looked into the bag with a conflicted expression, then sighed and set it on the ground. “Hey, is she always like this?”

“Pretty much.” I admitted.

She looked pensive. “I mean, it’s not bad. It’s just intense. She has a lot of energy, and it’s hard to deal with that much attention.”

I nodded. “That about sums it up.”

Suddenly she turned to me with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “I guess she can get you to wear whatever she wants, huh?”

It took me a moment to figure out what she was talking about. Then it hit me. Garment had taken her to the textile area.

“You saw the mural.” My voice was flat as I replied.

“I saw the mural.” Her voice was considerably more amused.

I let out a sigh and silently cursed the duplicate who thought that was a good idea. Which meant I was cursing myself, really. That felt oddly appropriate given the circumstances.

“Uh, hey.” I shifted my attention back to Aisha, who was looking embarrassed again. She shifted nervously. “Okay, before anything else I wanted to say…” She fumbled for a moment then pushed forward.

“Look, I just wanted to say, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” She wilted slightly under the flat look I gave her and seemed to realize that wouldn’t be enough. She swallowed and tried again.

“I saw you at the gym and figured, you know, you were probably Apeiron. It would be cool to see where you lived.” Saying it out loud she seemed to understand how it came across. Aisha averted her eyes and tried again. “Uh, I figured, you know, I might see some gadget lying around, or something about your cape stuff.” She cringed slightly as she admitted to spying and invasion of privacy. Still, she didn’t back out.

“I didn’t expect all this.” She looked around at the workspace around us. “Fuck, I was just messing around. I know I’ve put my foot in it here, so I just wanted to say…” She swallowed, steeled herself, and looked directly at me.

“I’m sorry.”

I stared blankly down at Aisha as she watched my reaction. Apologizing, or at least meaning it when you apologize, was clearly new ground for the girl. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was the first time she had said those words without sarcasm or derision behind them.

I got that this was significant for her, and I didn’t want to dismiss it, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the cluster fuck she had caused. I didn’t want to discourage her, but at the same time this wasn’t the end of it.

“Thank you.”

I kept the reply as neutral as I could and didn’t elaborate on it. She watched me for a moment longer, then nodded.

“Uh, right. I mean, I saw the stuff from last night, so I knew it was going to be big, but I mean…” She gestured at the space around us, the walkways, multiple levels, complicated machinery, conduits, and the stairway leading to the diamond throne. She was clearly anxious about it, but was holding herself back.

I sighed. “You want to ask about it?”

She nodded meekly, which was a seriously uncharacteristic behavior for her. “Yeah? I mean, fuck, look at this place.” She raised her voice at the end of her statement and it echoed slightly around the workshop. “The way everyone was talking about the other night I figured you had something crazy up your sleeve, but this is just insane.”

I didn’t respond to that, just noting a missed connection to the Alchemy constellation. Instead I waited for her to continue.

“I’m serious, about being sorry? I really didn’t think this would…” She puttered out. “I guess I didn’t think.”

I nodded slowly. That was a serious admission. As I considered it something occurred to me.

“You haven’t activated your power.” She blinked at that. “Not recently, not by accident.”

She considered things. “I think… It’s like, knowing that you aren’t going to wander off if I slip up is making it easier to not slip up?” She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know if powers normally work this way, but it’s like the more I try to control it the more it does its own thing. Like I just have this thing in my life and I have to deal with it and don’t know what it’s going to do and can only sort of direct it and hope for the best.”

I stood there stone faced as Aisha went on, clearly blind to the parallel she was describing to the current situation. This was one of those things that would have been funny if I wasn’t the one dealing with it.

Aisha dropped her head and continued. “When, when you said my name while my power was active I swear I nearly had a heart attack.” Her expression was complicated. “Since I got my power I haven’t been able to get anyone to notice me for more than a couple of minutes. I don’t know, maybe I thought you’d be able to help me, like how you did with Grue… and the Undersiders.”

She sighed, and I was once again seeing Weld standing at the bottom of the ocean marveling at the petty improvement I’d been able to accomplish. And that shitty realization that the only people consistently aware of her existence were inside this Workshop.

I would say she should have just asked for help, but with her personal experience and the difficulty in bringing up that topic I couldn’t blame her for wanting to be sure of things before she tried. I could blame her for a lot of other stuff, but not for letting anxiety stop her from taking the obvious solution.

Maybe I wasn’t quite as angry with her as I had been. We weren’t on good terms yet, but this was better than it had been. If her situation was as serious as she said there was at least a chance she’d keep things confidential as long as I could help her with her powers.

My contemplation was broken by the arrival of Garment hauling all three suits, which from a glance I could tell had been altered to match my new build. Aisha glanced at my arms and shoulders, then at the clothes Garment was holding. I could tell that was another thing she wanted to ask about but was restraining herself. As it stood she was clearly grateful to be distracted from the previous topic.

“Yes Garment, they’re really nice work.” Garment gestured towards my Alchemist Lab. “Uh, no. That’s not the best idea right now.” I did not need duplicate stress on top of Aisha stress.

Garment seemed to accept my answer, but presented the white tuxedo with enthusiasm, and much to Aisha’s amusement. “Now’s not really the best time for that.”

The way she held the tux suggested we had different ideas about how to match clothing to events. A bit more harping back and forth was enough to get her to relent, though Aisha treated the entire exchange as free theater. After Garment backed down I turned to Aisha’s smiling face.

“Alright,” I sighed. “I’m prepared to upgrade you from intruder to unwelcome guest.” She smiled at that. “Come on, let’s figure out what we’re doing next.”

The only place that was set up for a conversation that didn’t also have dangerous technology or chemicals lying around was my office. That meant I had to take her through a good portion of the workshop. Generally it wasn’t worse than what she had already seen, and her passenger wasn’t getting direct information anymore. It might be able to piece things together from her perceptions, but that was unlikely and would be unreliable.

The only thing I was concerned about was the need to walk through the cybernetics lab and clinic. I really didn’t want to answer questions about that kind of medical facility. Surprisingly she passed through without comment. Instead it was an unexpected item that drew her attention severely enough to cause her to lose her grip on her power.

That’s how I found myself standing in the cybernetics clinic staring at a bobbing drone that I knew symbolized Aisha’s location. Having done this dance before I waited for her to get things back under control.

Almost immediately Aisha was in the clinic, frantically pointing to the side wall and shouting in excitement.

“Is that a fucking rocket hammer?”

I grinned at that. “Yep. Rocket hammer.”

“Holy shit.” She looked between it and me frantically. “How does it work? Can I use it? Does it like, fly, or just hit things good.”

I held up a hand and she struggled to calm herself down. “It’s untested, but no, you can’t use it. I could barely manage the balance on that. You would kill yourself.” And just like that, Christmas was canceled. God damn, was I too much of a soft touch? Yes. Yes I was. “But if things go well I’ll show you how it works later.”

Aisha beamed, and even Garment seemed pleased with the idea. I mean, as long as she didn’t design a rocket hammer fashion line to go along with it that was fine with me.

With more promises made and obligations taken on I moved into my office with Garment and Aisha following. Garment settled demurely at the table with Aisha following her with a bit less grace. She had natural agility, but was clearly unused to wearing longer dresses.

“Would you like something to drink?”

Aisha leaned back and looked at the wetbar. “You have any liquor?”

I sighed even though it was clearly said as a joke. “First, no I don’t. Second, you are thirteen. There is no way you are consuming any alcohol in my presence. I’m barely comfortable being alone in a room with someone your age.” Garment made an offended gesture. “Sorry, being the only other human in a room with someone your age.” Garment switched to an accepting gesture.

Aisha gave Garment a questioning look, then turned back to me. “Uh, soda, juice, whatever?”

I nodded and looked over what I had on hand, shortly realizing that I had barely anything in stock. Before this craziness I was sticking to a discount fitness diet that didn’t exactly have room for high fructose corn syrup. Even when my food budget improved there wasn’t exactly a rush to fill my beverage cabinet. I’m not exactly big on entertaining and Garment is an easy houseguest.

The result was that I had a drinks cabinet containing a set of beautiful bar crystal, some bottles of sparkling water, a couple of limes, assorted condiments, some chocolate protein shakes, and instant coffee crystals.

I looked over the contents, then back at Aisha. “Would tea be alright?”

She didn’t look that excited about the idea, but shrugged along. “Sure, that’s fine.”

“Right. Just give me a minute.”

I retreated from the office to the kitchen in my apartment and hunted through the cabinets. I was more of a coffee person than tea, but tea was cheap, easy to stock, and better when I only wanted a cupful of caffeine. I had been bigger on it when I was at university, mostly out of convenience, but had held onto the habit since then.

Still, my current skill with tea was an entirely different beast from when I would brew it in the common room of my dorm. Even beyond all the other forms of skill increase, tea was just close enough to a potion to benefit from my Alchemy knowledge. Natural Alchemy in particular had an affinity for tea, and with it I was able to coax a level of quality out of the powdery mess that had sat in a tea bag for months that would normally only be found in the finest custom grown and perfectly prepared leaves.

Aisha’s eyebrows rose when I returned with a tray holding a freshly transmuted teapot and set of cups. I think she might have been preparing some flippant comment, but whatever it was died when she saw the tea set and smelled the beverage.

I poured each of us a cup, including Garment, and Aisha tentatively sipped hers, then her eyes widened.

“This is really good tea.”

I smiled a bit awkwardly. “Uh, thanks.” It turns out there’s a big gulf between knowing how to properly prepare tea and how to serve it with any level of class. I’m sure I was breaking any number of protocols around the beverage, but my lack of formality seemed to help Aisha relax.

Plus it really was good tea. The natural energy wasn’t doing anything more than improving the ingredients, but when combined with my crafting skills was enough to take the beverage to a significant level of quality.

I sighed into my cup and watched Garment not drink hers, but admire the design of the cup and teapot. Considering my recent powers this was probably the last time I’d have to make do with what I could scrounge up. If I didn’t get a domestic food synthesizer one of my duplicates would build it, probably programed with whatever foods they would expect to get the biggest reaction from me.

Aisha took a long sip from her cup, savoring the beverage, then set it on the table and turned to me. “So, what now?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” she gestured around. “Break out the veiled threats, show off scary technology, and explain how bad it will be for me if I betray your secrets.”

I noticed she didn’t even float the possibility that I would carry through on any of those threats or use the scary technology. I mean, I wouldn’t, but it was still a bit upsetting to be called out on that by a thirteen year old.

“How about we just skip to the third one?”

“Great.” She grinned slightly and lifted her cup. The tea and atmosphere seemed to have returned some of her usual ‘charm’. “So what’s the worst consequence if I run off and expose your secrets?”

“The Simurgh shows up, mind puppets me, and leads humanity into a new age of terror and darkness which will make the deeds of the Slaughterhouse Nine look like a childish tantrum.”

Whatever retort she had prepared died in her throat. Whatever she was going to say was forgotten and her cup dropped from her hand to hit the table, spilling a few drops of tea.

“You’re fucking serious?”

I nodded grimly. “You’ve seen it out there. Stuff I can do makes Sphere’s stuff look like child’s play. I’ve been dodging her radar, but someone fucks that up and we will have an Endbringer attack, and probably from her.”

“Holy fuck.” She stared at me blankly. “You really mean it. And it could…” She swallowed. “It could actually happen, right? This is what they go for. They could be coming right now, and we can’t stop them. What will happen when…”

“Aisha?” Her mouth shut with a click. “Drink your tea.”

She absently picked up the cup and took another sip. Despite her obvious agitation the hot beverage seemed to calm her slightly.

“Sorry to drop that on you, but that’s the scale we’re playing at.” She nodded along. “I’m not going to make threats, or deals, or try to keep you under control. What I will do is say plainly, if this stuff gets exposed a lot of people will die. Odds are some of them will be people you care about.” She looked at me. “That’s not a threat, just a fact of the situation. So I’m going to trust you to make the right decision here, because I don’t see any other way of this working out.”

I sank back in my seat and let Aisha process things. As I took another sip of my tea I felt the Celestial Forge make a new connection to the Size constellation. The power was called Gadget Master and covered the process of creating spy gadgets. Both the miniaturization of technology and the ability to build it in forms that would normally be impossible. Also a lot of creative assassination options, and lasers. So many lasers, lasers in everything.

The interesting part was how the knowledge was conveyed. This wasn’t just dumped into my head or presented as a database or granted as instinctive understanding. This was a trained skill. Years of personal instruction by a master of spy technology. It was disorienting, but not as bad as Master Builder or Class: Engineer had been. But beyond that it provided a level of context and understanding I hadn’t gotten from most of my other powers.

It was more than just how to build technology or apply what seemed to be impossible principles. This was a real understanding of how to function in a development lab, coordinate teams, develop experimental technology, adequately test it, and ensure delivery or an item that would function exactly as it was supposed to.

Also, everyone in the memories had an English accent. Not sure what that was about, maybe it’s just the standard for spy stuff.

I looked up from my musings at the empty chair with Survey’s drone floating above it. Before I could start processing how I got here I found Aisha in the seat, watching me with an empty cup. I smiled and picked up the teapot to refill her cup.

“Sorry about that. And I understand.” She took a sip. “Fuck, I don’t like it, but I understand. You’ve seriously been dealing with that this whole time?”

I nodded. “I have ways to deal with it, but they’re sensitive.”

“And I nearly fucked them up?”

I didn’t refute it.

“Fuck. Okay, got it. Secrets, important, stop everyone from dying.” She sank under the weight of her statement. “Hey, I know you’re not keen to share stuff, but that thing you just did?” I flinched in response. “It’s a power thing, right?”

I sighed. “It happens when I figure something out, new tinker stuff.” It was accurate and vague at the same time, and Aisha seemed to buy it.

“And it just happens whenever, and you can’t stop it?”

I shrugged. She had put enough together herself, I didn’t want to feed her any more information.

She snorted slightly. “People are going to be disappointed when they find out.” I raised an eyebrow. “They’ve been saying it’s some kind of strategy trance, or that you’re switching around your powers.”

I blinked. “Sorry, what?”

“Oh, right. It’s not on the news reports, just forums and social media stuff.”

I felt a pit form in my stomach. I looked at the girl and it felt like I was confessing a sin. “I haven’t looked at that stuff yet.”

“You really should. I mean, you get a better sense of the public on twitter than from the news.”

“No.” I took a breath. “I haven’t seen any of the reactions.”

Aisha’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously?” She actually looked to Garment for confirmation, which she gave with an affirmative gesture. “Fuck. Uh, you should really get on that.”

I swallowed. “I have a summary I’m going to review…”

“No, like now. I mean, how do you ignore that kind of thing? What have you been doing?”

“You know that workshop you snuck into tonight?” My sarcastic tone didn’t land, and Garment seemed to be taking Aisha’s side on this. I looked between them, but didn’t see any way out.

“Now?”

“Probably for the best.” Garment seemed to agree with Aisha. “Look, I’ve seen most of it.” The way she said that set of warning bells about how big ‘all of it’ would be. “I can kind of help walk you through it?”

And fuck. Apparently my avoidance of this subject was so plainly visible that a thirteen year old girl was taking pity on me over it. Well, that meant there was no way to back out with any dignity, so it was time to bite the bullet.

I pulled up my omni-tool interface and accessed Survey’s report. The office had a large wall mounted screen that I didn’t remember from before, so probably the result of some duplicate’s 20% time. Still convenient and wirelessly accessible, so I called up the video of the broadcast.

I had thought the screen was a bit mundane for a 20% project, and I was right. The real project had been the installation of hidden Dolby quality surround sound speakers in the office that took everyone off guard. Still, once I got the volume to a level that was safe for human hearing it added a serious depth to the broadcast.

Though that kind of depth wasn’t always a good thing. There were elements of the video I’d feel bad about exposing Aisha to if she hadn’t already clearly watched it. She actually narrated over some of the parts, pointing things out as the video went along.

“That thing with Regent hasn’t been broadcast on the news. They showed everyone else get captured, and all the stuff after, but not that.”

I could understand that, as watching the events unfold was hideous in the extreme. Regent’s reaction afterwards was making a lot more sense. I had an idea from the state I found him in, but seeing it play out was a whole other level of horror.

“Okay, this part pissed a lot of people off.” She gestured at a compilation of Taylor, Grue, and Tattletale playing cat and mouse with the ABB in the lockers. “They said the knives threw off the betting odds more than was accounted for.”

“People gambled on this?”

“Oh yeah, massively. Pretty much every long bet lost since nobody guessed on you showing up.”

The video progressed to Grue’s capture and the effect of Bakuda’s bomb. It was something I was already seriously familiar with, and Aisha seemed to have some trouble watching it.

“Uh, because of the darkness people were saying Grue’s a Case 53.” It seemed like she was trying to distract herself from the image on the screen.

“I can’t comment on that one way or the other.”

“What,” She scoffed. “You have a Doctor/Patient thing going?”

“Confidentiality is generally a good idea in this business.” Aisha shut her mouth and nodded at that.

“Right,” She indicated to Tattletale’s desperate call. “People have picked over this trying to figure out the deal she was calling in.” And there wasn’t much to go on there. I watched as Tattletale assured me she’d thrown off her pursuers, apparently oblivious to the recording, only to be caught by an explosion and trapped by Bakuda. What followed was my own exchange with an uncomfortable series of insults directed towards Bakuda culminating in seeing the effect of her phasing bomb first hand.

It wasn’t any more pleasant to watch than it had been to correct.

After that the broadcast transitioned to Bakuda’s speech in the courtyard, Aisha started getting more excited as it went on, occasionally cutting to fixed camera glimpses of Taylor as she evaded bombs and lobbed grenades. Finally her enthusiasm reached its peak just as Bakuda built to the crescendo of her speech.

“And after this day no one will dare oppose us!”

She paused slightly, either for applause or to drink in the reactions, but was only met with the thunder of an exploding wall and the peel of my motoroid tearing through the courtyard with dust and cement fragments trailing from me.

“Absolute fucking poetry! Nobody knows how you managed to time it like that.”

Neither did I. Apparently my entrance had come off as an orchestrated piece of drama rather than the desperate mad rush that I’d actually been attempting. I nodded to Aisha while sighing internally. This kind of crap was the reason I should have reviewed this sooner. There was a big difference between a cape who rushed to help and one who tries to make an entrance. For good or ill apparently people thought I fell into the latter category, and given how this video played out I couldn’t really argue with them.

Following that was my exchange with Bakuda, though my side of the conversation wasn’t initially audible, not until I transformed my motoroid and started using the speakers. At Aisha’s request I paused the video.

“So why did you do that anyway?”

I looked at her, then at the screen. “Needed to show off my tech. Also the speakers are more intimidating.”

She shook her head. “No, not that. Roll it back a bit.” I did and the transformation played again. “That. The Transformers thing.”

“What Transformers thing?”

She gave me a blank look. “Uh, the sound it played?”

“It didn’t play anything. That was a servo discharge.”

“Whatever. The reason it made the Transformers sound.”

“What sound? I’ve seen those movies. Transformers sound nothing like that.”

“What?” She glanced at the screen. “Look, do you have youtube on this thing?”

She clearly wasn’t letting this go. I sighed and got the remote keyboard from the desk and launched a web browser on the main screen. Aisha went to Youtube and searched for ‘Apeiron Transformers’.

To my surprise there was a huge list of results, including a very long video titled ‘Tripredacus Guardian Analysis, Part 1’.

Aisha played a short video called ‘Apeiron Transformer Comparison’. It started with the clip of my motoroid transforming, then showed an excerpt from the old 80s cartoon, then side by side with a visual breakdown of the sound profile for both the sound effect and the servo capacitor discharge.

They were almost identical.

The video went on, repeating the process for other Transformers shows and movies. Some were closer, some were less similar, but there was a definite connection.

“Wow.” I didn’t know what to say. “That’s a weird coincidence.”

Aisha looked between me and Garment, her face twisted in confusion. “What? Seriously, that’s your explanation?”

“Yes?” I tried. “Look, it is a normal discharge of sound as a component of the machinery cycles through its functions. I didn’t even know about this stuff.”

“But…” Aisha just started scrolling through videos. The long list of videos or many people presenting different theories, including some with footage from my first fight with Uber and Leet. I didn’t know what to say. I guess this was one of those things where people ran with random details of a cape to try to make sense of things. I mean, some of the theories about Eidolon that get thrown around…

When Aisha realized there were no answers to be found she shifted back to the video. Whatever disappointment she had was forgotten as the next portion played. I watched my exchange with Bakuda, the insulting offer to take the rest of the Undersiders and my refusal of it. Aisha was watching my face the whole time the video played. After my final refusal Ashia gestured for me to pause the video.

“Well…” She drew out the word expectantly.

“Well what?” I gave her a blank look. “She made a bad offer and I turned her down.” Aisha’s mouth dropped open. “What’s the big deal?”

“What’s the…” Her expression shifted from surprise to concern as the Time constellation moved past without a connection. “Look, can I control that with this?” She held up the keyboard and I quickly linked it to the video controls.

Aisha rolled back the broadcast and replayed part of the conversation. At my blank expression she played it again, this time emphasizing certain phrases.

“Okay, what am I looking for here?”

“Subtext!” Over the course of the repeated viewings Aisha had shifted from excited to frustrated and was now bordering on concerned. I considered the exchange again and pondered what it could mean.

A horrible thought occurred to me.

“Wait.” I cringed to even ask this. “Do people think I was interested in Khepri?” Aisha’s face was all the answer I needed.

“What?” I actually felt nauseous. “Who the hell could think that? It doesn’t really come across like that does it?” I looked to Garment for confirmation, and she indicated a small amount with the thumb and forefinger of one glove. Under Aisha’s critical gaze she shifted to indicating a small distance with both gloves, then gradually increased it to the length of her natural reach.

“But, why…” I trailed off, not even knowing how to form the question.

“Why do people think you turned down Bakuda for Khepri?” Aisha offered.

“Yes.” I paused. “Wait, what?”

“Bakapon is pretty minor compared to Khepeiron, but there are still some serious supporters, especially with how the fight ended.”

I was really having a difficult time processing this, and the fact that the word Khepeiron jumped out at me didn’t help. That fucking hashtag.

“How big is this? How many people think that…” I really didn’t want to say it. God fucking damn it, the implications of this. Had Taylor had to deal with this along with recovery from her injury?

Aisha seemed like she’d been looking forward to showing this off and was clearly having a hard time with my reaction. “Well, a lot of people on social media. Plus PHO has covered it a lot, and it was mentioned in a few news reports, but they use words like ‘reported’ and ‘suspected’.

Fuck. And something else jumped out at me. Director Armstrong specifically mentioning Taylor separate from the other Undersiders. This wasn’t just a mad theory being thrown around by idiots online, the PRT was operating under the idea that it might be true. Official policy from a government department was based on the idea that I was romantically pursuing a fifteen year old.

I shakily pulled up the summary document from Survey’s analysis. All my previous apprehension about dealing with this was coming back a hundred times stronger. The only thing that kept me going was the fear of how much worse it could get if I kept ignoring it.

And there it was, neatly categorized data on the subject of a suspected relationship between me and Taylor. There were clips of what were considered the key moments from the broadcast, categorized by Survey based on how much they had been shared in relation to the topic and hashtag. My ‘proclamation’ to Bakuda concerning Taylor. Various defensive actions during the first fight with Uber and Leet. The creation of the insects with Sting. Oh, apparently my statements to Bakuda upon finding Brian were being considered evidence, with some people assuming I had called her ‘damaged goods’ compared to Taylor. Then various points from the final confrontation, culminating in my defense of her from the last resort bombs and pulling her from the crater.

My stomach felt like lead. This was horrible on so many levels. I didn’t even know how to deal with it. I couldn’t ignore it, it had too much momentum behind it, but I didn’t know how to handle something like this. God fucking damn it.

“Uh, are you okay?” I looked up to see concern from both Aisha and Garment. God, I wanted to blow them off. Explaining this wouldn’t make it easier to deal with, but fuck if I knew another way.

“I…” I swallowed and tried again. “The last relationship I had I badly misread romantic signals. Like, disaster level.” Aisha nodded. I let out a breath and continued. “I’ve tried to stay away from that stuff since then, just avoid making the same mistakes.” I looked up at the display. “Fuck, I guess I can even screw up that.”

Garment got up from the table and moved over to my side, resting a glove on my shoulder. Aisha looked between us before speaking.

“So, I’m guessing Khepri actually is underage?”

I stiffened slightly. “I’m not going to share details about the Undersiders.” Aisha seemed to have reached the right assumption, a bit ironic coming from a girl two years Taylor’s junior and considering her previous behavior. I scanned through the summary on those topics. Well, some people were calling me out on it. Some assumed we were both teenagers. Some assumed Taylor was a lot older, with her being tall for her age. A disturbing minority were blatant about how they didn’t care, which was the kind of thing that made me want to reconsider my goal of saving the world from the Endbringers.

“Okay, it’s not actually that bad.” I gave Aisha a seriously critical look. “Eww, like not that. Some people think you’re a couple.” I hated even hearing it said out loud. “But they’re just louder. The only thing people are actually sure about is that you care about her.”

There was an unspoken question hanging in the air. Well, with how deep Aisha was I might as well try to clear this up. It wouldn’t be more dangerous than anything else she discovered.

“I have a thinker power.” I explained. “Sometimes it lets me predict stuff. Khepri is important. Something big is going to happen and she’ll make a big difference.”

“So you’re protecting her.” I nodded and watched the girl ponder things. “Wait, was that what happened when we met?” I must have done a bad job of concealing my reaction. “Seriously? Did you know I was going to become a cape?”

“No, it’s not that clear.” She gave me a questioning look. “It was just recognition. I’ve gotten the same thing from other capes. You were the first it happened to before you triggered.”

She seemed to be mildly concerned by that, but eventually nodded and moved on. “So what are you going to do?”

The question hit me like a brick. “Talk to her, probably.” I swallowed. “I have a meeting coming up with the Undersiders in a day or two. I’ll see if I can reach her before that. If not I can explain things there.” Wouldn’t that be a treat? If the city wasn’t under threat I would be seriously considering departing for another hemisphere.

I took another breath. This was affecting me too much. Well, given everything, I understood where the severity of the impact came from. But the fact was that none of this had any impact on the current crisis. It was a horrible distraction. I would say I didn’t have time for it, but this was the kind of thing that would eat away at me if I didn’t do something. I didn’t know if I could change public perception, and didn’t want to try until I could talk with Taylor. The concern that I would fuck things up worse was too much of a deterrent.

“That meeting?” Aisha asked. “Is it about going after the ABB?”

I blinked. “Oh, fuck no.” That seemed to take her by surprise. “The Undersiders aren’t going anywhere near the ABB.” She gave me a questioning glance. “They owe me a huge amount of money for that healing. More than they can pay. The meeting is about how they’ll work it off, mostly by not causing any more headaches.” Not that that was as much of a possibility as it had been before the ‘Khepeiron’ mess.

“Wait, the Undersiders owe you money?” there was a glint in her eye. “Grue owes you money?”

I nodded. “A small mountain of it. Enough that they’d need to trade vital organs or family members to pay it off.”

For some reason that caused Aisha to crack a smile, then dissolve into a fit of giggles that lasted longer than it seemed like any joke should have warranted. Still, it was a nice distraction from the dismal tasks ahead of me. Great, I had gone from wanting to avoid the reaction to my cape debut to wanting to avoid the consequences of the reaction to my cape debut.

After she got over whatever was so funny about my last statement Aisha wiped tears away from her eyes and turned towards me again.

“You’re going against the ABB?”

I sighed and nodded. “Yeah. This is bad stuff. Their thinker is dangerous, Bakuda’s a nightmare even when injured, Uber and Leet and becoming a serious threat, and Oni Lee is a crazy force multiplier.”

“And Lung?”

“Yeah, he’s there too.” She gave me a critical look.

“Seriously?”

I shrugged. “I’m more worried about what Bakuda or Leet can throw at me than someone whose powers are ‘big’ and ‘fire’.”

“You’re really not worried about Lung?”

“He can get to the point where he would tear me apart, but if anyone fights Lung for that long it’s their own fault. Every cape in the city knows that dance. You fight until you run. Or he runs, which happens a lot more of the time than anyone talks about.” I shook my head. “If I can take out Bakuda, Oni Lee, or the thinker then that’s it. Might not bring down the gang, but this power bloc they have going will fall apart.”

Aisha nodded and turned back to the screen. “Uh, most of the other stuff is about healing technology, or weird power theories. Nothing like the stuff with Khepri.”

Well thank God for that, though reviewing the healing discussion wasn’t much better. Petitions from the critically ill to the local PRT to reconsider classifications were hard. The discussions about whether it would be worth getting Bakuda to put a bomb in your head if it meant free healing were worse.

I hadn’t really discriminated about what got fixed post-surgery. People had a lot of injuries and exotic effects from all the bombs at that facility. I wasn’t going to guess which conditions were due to them and which were pre-existing. So in the course of my work I had cured multiple cases of diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, several ulcers, cases of glaucoma, heart disease, liver damage, various chronic conditions and infections, and one peanut allergy. The assumption was that I had taken the disabled bombs as payment, which I sort of had. That led to the dangerous idea that I traded healing for tinker tech, even booby-trapped and embedded tinker tech.

I really hoped nobody acted on the nonsense that was being thrown around in those comments, but I hadn’t exactly been impressed by the intelligence of the average internet user today.

Of the rest of the reactions only one theory had any kind of momentum behind it.

“Alexandria and Hero?”

“Hey, people shipped them anyway. It’s really just an excuse to pick that up again.”

I shook my head. I remembered when Hero died. It was a tragedy, especially Alexandria’s reaction to it. I didn’t know if this kind of nonsense was a tribute to that, or a disgrace to his memory. I just hoped it would die down before anything came of it.

With the last of the summary reviewed I sank back in my chair and downed the last of my now cold but still excellent tea. The process was just as emotionally draining as I’d been afraid of, and had the added bonus of dragging out some of my worst memories. I… I seriously needed to speak with Taylor. I could check in with Tattletale tomorrow. I probably should let her know about Weld. Maybe figure out what to do from there.

I looked over at Aisha who was currently finishing Garment’s cup of tea with significant relish, then checking the pot for any remaining drops. I smiled faintly at the scene. She hadn’t accidently dropped her focus since we first sat down. I didn’t know if there was an emotional component or if she was just getting a better handle on things.

I still didn’t know if I could completely trust her out there, but I’d done everything I was willing to do to mitigate the risk. From my expression she seemed to pick up my meaning.

“So is this it? Am I free to go?”

“I would say against my better judgement, yes.” I sighed. “Remember what we talked about?”

She frowned. “No, I had forgotten about how the wrong word could bring down Endbringers on me. Thanks for reminding me.”

“So you’ll take this seriously?”

“Fuck, yes. I don’t actually want the city to be destroyed, if you can believe that.”

I nodded. I still didn’t feel great about this, but it was the best move I had. “Alright, let’s go.”

“So, rocket hammer time?”

It took me a moment to remember what she was talking about. Well, the review of online reactions had turned into a tour of my personal issues instead of the love story and parade of impressed forum members she’d been hoping for. This was the least I could do to finish on a positive note.

Considering how furious I was with her earlier this evening I would never have thought I’d be making anything up to her. To be fair I kind of wanted a chance to try it out myself.

It took a while to get things set up, including another visit to the neural interface after Aisha’s excitement made managing her power more difficult. The Celestial Forge also made another connection to a larger mote from the Crafting constellation. It was called Dwarven Craft and was the third smithing power I’d gotten and easily the most powerful. The mote was as large as any I’d gotten so far, and the reason for that was clear.

The basic application of the power took my metalworking abilities to an even higher level than I had imagined. This was a major boost to every form of metal work and personal equipment crafting. Items I made would hold up for hundreds of years even without considering the benefits of my other powers. Even my rune work improved through this power.

A secondary effect of Dwarven Craft let me run a large forge single handedly. That would have been an achievement anyway, but this wasn’t referring to normal forges. It was talking about giant fantasy dwarf forges, the kinds that put my entire workshop to shame. I could run one of those entirely by myself. The big impact of this was that suddenly I could manage production of metal on almost any level, no matter how complicated the alloy being manufactured or how large the project.

It also gave me the understanding of how to smelt, forge, and work mystical metals. In addition to giving additional and improved understanding of the metals from my Unnatural Skill power it also opened up new metals including Mithril. I would still need to transmute it using alchemy, but even that would be easier to accomplish.

But for the moment the main aspect of the power being used was the beyond-master level tool handling ability. Normally forging hammers didn’t have rocket boosters, but this power was strong enough to be adaptable.

The demonstration of the rocket hammer did raise one major question.

Why did I wait so long to try this?

Seriously, the visceral thrill of precisely guiding a rocket propelled spike through targets while holding on for dear life is something I could not recommend strongly enough. With the smooth flow of T’ai Chi Chuan combined with the strength benefits of my recent training I was practically flying around the training area we had set up. Actually, with some of the more creative swings I think I did technically count as flying.

Compared to weapons like the wind blade or water cutlass the rocket hammer was basically a novelty. It was also incredibly fun to use and pretty much instantly raised my spirits. Aisha cheered from the sidelines as I shredded every random or surplus item or chunk of machinery that Fleet had been able to scrounge up.

I ran the hammer until I killed the fuel reserve, then was willing to call it despite Aisha’s requests to the contrary. After that I had to face the reality of her leaving the workshop, and any consequences of that decision. To be honest it still seriously concerned me. And despite building a definite rapport with her I hadn’t totally moved past my initial offense at her intrusion.

That was the thing. I could stay logical. I could explain every aspect of the situation. I could completely recognize the right decision to make. None of that addressed the emotions in play. I was still angry at Aisha for pulling this on me, and I probably would be for a while. But that didn’t change the facts of the situation.

I had as much of an assurance as I could get. I was trusting her. Oh God, I was trusting Aisha Laborn. This was the kind of situation that people looked back on in after action reports with phases like ‘inciting incident’.

Yeah, I wasn’t totally confident about this decision, but considering the alternatives were violations of every principle I had committed to I was going to have to roll the dice.

Aisha was currently standing by the main entrance poking the forcefield and pulling her hand back each time it sparked.

“Did you seriously build a force field door while Garment was making my dresses?”

I shrugged. “Most of the work was done. I just had to install it.” That was kind of true when you considered how much of the design and assembly process had been carried by my power. Also, it was clear this system would prevent a repeat of her previous stunt.

“Are you going to be alright out there?” I knew how strong her power was, but releasing a thirteen year old onto the streets on Brockton Bay didn’t feel right.

Aisha eyed my motoroid. “If I say no do I get a ride on your superbike?”

“No.” I countered. “But I will get my car from the gym and drop you off.”

She scrunched her nose. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

Garment approached with three dresses with hangers and garment bags. Basically what I had talked her down to after realizing the scope of the wardrobe she had made for Aisha. The girl seemed to have it even worse as a model than I did, and that was saying something.

Aisha took the offered clothing with good grace and looked out towards the apartment. “You’ll be okay with this?”

I nodded. “I’ll hit my interface after this. Just flicker your power once and I’ll be able to update my memories. You going to be okay?”

She returned the nod. “My brother’s place isn’t too far. I think I can hold things long enough to check in with him properly. Uh, thanks for helping with that.” I nodded, though I wasn’t sure how much difference I made. “And about the other stuff, I promise I’ll be careful.”

I sighed. “It’s probably best if you don’t even mention it out there.”

That got a grim nod. “I won’t.” She grinned slightly. “Goodbye Jozef.” As over pronounced as ever. After she gave a final wave to Garment I dropped the field and escorted her through.

I lost track of things on the way back to my workshop, but checked with Garment.

“She gone?” Garment made an affirmative gesture. I let out a breath, activated the shield, and headed for my interface. There was a bit of a delay before her power cycled and I could remember saying goodbye. This might be a stopgap, but I needed an actual way to counter this kind of stranger effect.

I stretched as I got off my throne. Well, it was done. I had let someone with full knowledge of my workshop and better understanding of my capacity out into the world. All because I was too moral to break out the experimental mindwipes. Villains must have things so much easier.

Hey, if I focused on the concern over my security risk, I could almost forget the horrible quagmire that was the reaction to my cape debut. God that was a mess.

Seriously how the fuck do I deal with that kind of thing? I can barely manage a one on one conversation. I can’t steer public perception, at least not with any finesse. What were my options? Ask Tattletale for help?

Yeah, letting her manage things definitely won’t end in a worse disaster than this mess with Aisha.

It was getting late, both my passenger and Garment were making movements suggesting bed would be a good idea. I waved Garment off with an assurance I would turn in soon. There was just one thing I needed to check first.

Xenospecialist, like Tinkerer before it, had come with a small set of equipment. Most of it was fairly basic, remarkable only by the fact that it had fiat backing if lost or destroyed. Some body armor, boots, ID tags, a case of pistols and reload system, and a passably advanced personal digital assistant.

There was one unique item that I wanted to investigate. A potential power source provided from a small pump added to my workshop. It could theoretically be easily processed into an ideal source of clean energy. The flow rate was a pittance, but I had powers that could multiply materials, so it was potentially all the energy I’d ever need.

Still, something about it didn’t sit right. Maybe it was the insight from my Advance Materials power, or just the scope of understanding I had thanks to my volume of accumulated knowledge. Whatever it was it had me show up at the pump with every scanner and analysis tool at my disposal.

Two minutes later I was very grateful I did.

Two minutes after that I was sealing off the area and coordinating the most aggressive decontamination program I could assemble. The pump hadn’t activated, so the chance that anything had gotten out was negligible, but that wasn’t a risk I was entertaining. If anything it served as a potent reminder of just how badly things could have gone if Aisha had been able to run loose in my workshop. I was just grateful she had never gone anywhere near this place.

After a blitz of emergency construction, installation of fail safes, and transmutation to completely seal the area I was finally satisfied that the Imulsion pump was properly contained.

My power was just mystifying sometimes.

With that done I slumped off to my workshop apartment. I was dreading this. Well, I was dreading a lot of things after today, but sleep was the worst. Nothing quite like lying awake with nothing but your anxieties to keep you company. It was basically a greatest hits compilation of every mistake from the previous day. Actually, you were lucky if it was just the previous day.

When my head hit the pillow I was braced for a long period of restlessness before I could get anything close to sleep. Instead I was pleasantly surprised by my power. It was a side benefit that nearly made up for the fact that it had dumped a bio-weapon fuel pump into my workshop.

One Thing At A Time triggered whenever I was only doing one thing. Well, trying to fall asleep? That counts as one thing. Meaning not only did I fall asleep twice as fast I did it twice as well. Twice as well meant without an hour of anxious tossing and dwelling on things I couldn’t do anything about.

I may not be able to manage my public image. I might not be able to control what theories were circulated about my cape identity. I might not even control my workshop. But I could fall asleep properly. At this point I was willing to take that as a win, however minor.

*********

Addendum Hannah

Hannah trudged through the hallways of the PRT Headquarters. Her workload since the attack on the Rig had become borderline insane. She wasn’t one to complain, but people assumed that since she didn’t sleep, that she must have an endless amount of free time to absorb whatever task needed to be done. Unfortunately, after nearly two decades in the Wards and Protectorate with everyone constantly making that assumption any buffer granted by her status as a Noctis cape had long since vanished.

It was worse with Colin being incapacitated. He regularly took on the work of a dozen people in addition to his leadership duties. Hannah would have struggled to handle his duties during one of the rare times of peace, much less a region wide disaster centered on Brockton Bay.

Her heart went out to the man, but she could recognize the irony of his own invention being what resulted in the confinement of the one cape who could have gotten him back into the field. Still, she didn’t have time to consider that kind thing, not with the city in its current state.

She was turning to the ready room preparing for her third patrol shift when she nearly ran into an armored figure with a glowing white helmet.

“Oh, Shawn.” She stuttered. Dauntless pulled off his helmet and she could see the exhaustion plastered across his face. She ran through the duty roster in her head. Had Shawn stood down since the ABB attack? He’d been active during her second shift, but if he was trying to keep up with her by sneaking naps during his breaks he was set for a burnout. The taller cape wilted under the glare of her accusation.

“Before you say anything, I know.” He let out a heavy breath. “Director’s sent me home. Need to rest and clean up for the pitch tomorrow.”

Hannah blinked. It had nearly slipped her mind. She remembered agreeing to it when the suggestion came in, it made sense as active leader and the most senior female member of the team. It was just that there seemed to have been a dozen fires to put out since this afternoon. In fact, the previous two days had felt like months.

“Right.” She tried to remember her schedule after her evening shift. “We should meet before we head over, review things. Have you had a chance to watch the videos yet?”

It was the wrong question to ask and she could tell as soon as she posed it. She cut in before he could make some excuse or worse, apologize for not having time to check social media reactions while running continuous patrols.

“We’ll go over them in the morning. Really just the introduction and combat video.” She thought back to the report. “There’s been some more posts, but it’s all craft projects or clothing making.”

Shawn blinked slowly. “Isn’t that what she does?”

Hannah resisted the urge to agree with him. Garment was practically built to be a Rogue. It was only her decision to help during the ABB bombings and blackout that was bringing this on. She desperately hoped the offer wouldn’t be met badly, but there was no way to tell.

There was also the fact that she was a potential Case 53. That had its own challenges and special requirements. The whole affair seemed like an attempt to score cheap points with the public.

The thought of Case 53’s reminded her of the primary cause of tonight’s stress.

“I should tell you, Weld has been recovered.”

The news punched through Shawn’s exhaustion and caused his face to lit up. “That’s great news.” He saw her expression. “Isn’t it?”

She sighed. “Recovered by Apeiron.”

Dauntless’s face dropped as the weight of the news hit him. “Oh.”

Right, ‘Oh’. That about covered it. Hannah didn’t know what to add, and apparently Shawn was trying to figure out what part of the mess he should inquire about first.

“What did he have to say about it?”

Hannah grit her teeth. “Weld didn’t know about the events last night. Apeiron gave him the cliff notes, then they had a nice chat before he hauled Weld up to the surface. What he’s saying doesn’t match the behavior models, but the analysts aren’t sure it’s not a double bluff from Apeiron.” Hannah took a moment. Not sure not bluff. Yes, that was right. Sometimes she wished she could claim sleep deprivation. It was easier to explain than mental exhaustion.

“How’s the Director?”

“I think she’s still on the line with Boston.”

“This late? Wait, Director Armstong is Weld’s guardian right? Is she…”

“She didn’t call, he did. Weld called Boston rather than headquarters after he was retrieved.” Which was a breach of policy, but that seemed to be the least of concerns for both the department and the Ward. “He got Apeiron on the line, so at least we have some data to analyse.” For all the good it would do. Really just a confirmation of how bad the split was between the director and the new cape.

“Hannah, look, do you think it’s worth it to focus this much time on a single rookie cape.” He made a placating gesture. “I get how scary those weapons were, and the technology implications, but if we don’t focus on the ABB there’s no telling how bad things could get.” He swallowed. “You saw what happened when those implanted bombs went up. Shouldn’t we be focused on that?”

Hannah flinched under the earnestness of it. Shawn hadn’t been a cape long enough to see the compromises that had to be made in the job. Everyone asked why the Protectorate didn’t just mount up and stomp out the Merchants or the Empire. It was a sad fact of this business that a holding action against every front was better than letting any side run rampant.

Apeiron may be a new cape, but his debut was handled masterfully. Some of the analysts were talking about using it as a textbook case. A period of building rumors and disruptive appearance followed by a dramatic and powerful display against a third party while securing massive coverage on both social and conventional media. One of the prevailing theories was that his ‘relationship’ with Khepri was completely fabricated to resonate with the public.

The mere fact that Lung had escaped and was at large, but being overshadowed in his own city, was proof of how precisely these incidents had been managed.

“You need to remember, heroes aren’t the only ones who manage their image.” She shook her head. “I agree with the Director, there’s something else going on here. Too many things are lining up at once.”

“What about the new ABB thinker, that March girl? She has a timing power, right?”

Hannah frowned. “I talked with Flechette about her. She doesn’t work on this scale. Small groups or team coordination. Not city-wide plots. She obviously works well with Leet and Bakuda, but she’s not the main threat.” He looked uncertain, so she continued. “I’ve seen the Think Tank reports. They don’t have anything on her.”

He didn’t look convinced, but exhaustion was clearly catching up with him. His response was drowned out by a yawn.

“Look, go get some sleep and we can review this in the morning.” Before the meeting with Garment but after her night shift. Sometimes she wished she could sleep just to be able to jump forward past several hours of tedium, stress, and busywork.

She could afford to avoid dropping the rest of the Weld-related bombshells until then. Bombshells was an apt way of describing the news, especially if half of what they were hearing from Medical was true.

“Right, right.” The second word petered out to another yawn. “Uh, give Weld my best. It’s good to have him back.”

Right, back. Even though he was barely here in the first place. What was it the woman from the Youth Guard had been yelling? A Ward not even lasting a full day? Lost before his welcome party?

Hannah sighed and checked the ready room for coffee before going back on shift. It had been way too long a day, and was looking to be an even worse night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Xenospecialist (Gears of War) 200:  
> The problem with fighting and violence is that it's no place for an egghead, and as a result valuable information could be lost to a wayward grenade before study. You've taken it upon yourself to bring that knowledge back, and as such you have an easier time understanding alien language and technology. It won't give you instant knowledge, but as you study further you will find it becomes easier to comprehend.
> 
> COG Armor (Gears of War) Free:  
> Standard issue armor that's made of multiple metal plates. On the back of the suit is a magnetic 'holster', that resembles a general infantry backpack, allowing people to carry two weapons on their backs. The armor provides medium protection against damage (multiple assault rifle shots only bruise the wearer), but will not withstand concentrated or sustained gunfire. Helmet optional.
> 
> Combat Boots (Gears of War) Free:  
> They're thick, they're heavy, and they'll serve you well. Along with giving excellent comfort and protection from the myriad of terrains you'll find here, they're also very handy for stomping the heads of enemies like watermelons at a comedian show.
> 
> MX8 Snub Pistol (Gears of War) Free:  
> The standard sidearm for all COG soldiers, this weapon makes up for its low damage and small 12-round magazine through a high rate of fire and its impressive accuracy. Expect to find ammo for it everywhere. Weapon purchases will grant a small stockpile of them inside your warehouse to equip your allies with.
> 
> COG Tags (Gears of War) Free:  
> A form of identification that takes the form of a necklace with small gear-shaped tags. They will have whatever identification you desire upon them.
> 
> Personal Digital Assistant (Gears of War) Free:  
> There is still a reliance on technology, even if the war with the Locust make things... problematic. With this, you'll have an easier time with Command and keeping track of your data.
> 
> Weapon Reload System (Gears of War) Free:  
> You will also gain a weapon reload system inside the warehouse for the unique weapons you may have purchased from this jump.
> 
> Imulsion (Gears of War) Free:  
> Upon completion of this jump, you gain a small pump in your Warehouse that can supply you with fifty gallons worth of Imulsion per month. Do be careful when handling this, especially around other biological organisms.
> 
> Customized Weapons (XCOM) 100:  
> You know that efficiency is number one, because waste is a thief. You know how to make the best designs better, and will ensure that the equipment in use is ergonomic, streamlined, and efficient.
> 
> Gadget Master (007) 300:  
> You’ve been trained by Major Boothroyd at the skills of his job. You’re excellent at creating and maintaining gadgets of all types. You can miniaturize nearly anything, and hide things in forms that... really shouldn’t work. You can even make lasers! You’re also good at coming up with ideas for unusual methods of assassination; beheading umbrellas, flamethrower bagpipes, and the like.
> 
> Dwarven Craft (Lord of the Rings) 400:  
> You are a master smith, able to singlehandedly run even a large forge. You can make weapons and armor that stand up to hundreds of years of continuous use, and even know how to mine and forge mystical metals such as Mithril.


	34. 28 Preamble - Addendum Sophia

I woke up refreshed and unusually optimistic after what may have been the best night’s sleep of my life. It wasn’t until I checked my watch that I realized what had brought on this turn of events. The time stood there, plain as day.

3:27am

I hadn’t been doing anything else while sleeping. I would never be doing anything else while sleeping. As such my Do One Thing At A Time power would always activate, meaning I would always have the quality of my sleep doubled and the time halved. I had just gotten about nine hours of excellent sleep in half the time.

I set aside all the considerations of saved time, improved health, better mental state, and everything else that would carry from having consistent better quality sleep. There was something else I had to deal with. Something much more serious.

I was still adjusting to how the Celestial Forge was affecting me. The mental powers that directly altered my mind, the persistent powers that made themselves an intrusive presence in my life, the constant management of new connections. It made me contend with the perspective of an inorganic existence and dropped a full set of military reflexes into my brain with no context. It was a drastic and frightening force, but I never anticipated this. In all the possibilities I never anticipated it would cause such a fundamental shift in my character to the point where I would be unrecognizable to my previous self, but this one power had done it. It had done the impossible.

I was now a morning person.

There was no way around it. This was my life from now on and there was nothing I could do about it. Even staying up until three in the morning would see me awake and refreshed by seven. High quality sleep in less time meant I would always be ready to face the day. It was such a drastic shift in character that it chilled me to the bone.

A warm shower helped with that, but it was weird not having to push away clouds of sleep in order to stumble through my morning routine. It just didn’t feel like a proper start to the day without having to drag yourself through the basic steps of hygiene necessary to be ready to join society. Seriously, what kind of person was actually mentally functional within half an hour of leaving bed? It was supposed to be Dawn of the Dead until at least the second cup of coffee. This just wasn’t natural.

Setting aside my grousing about what was a broad if discordant benefit I started to plan out what to do with the extra time granted by this turn of events. I had expected to spend most of the morning trying to pull myself together, prepping for Garment’s meeting/press conference/party at the gym, and then figuring out how to smuggle Garment into the area without tipping anyone off. Not that difficult a prospect with access to my workshop, but still something I’d need to handle carefully.

Now I actually had time for projects. I made myself some breakfast as I sorted what I needed to take care of. I had a pile of analysis from the Laboratorium that needed to be sorted. Likewise I needed to direct some of that research personally, potentially with destructive testing from duplicates’ equipment.

Most of those bombs were horrible, but they were still incredibly powerful. More so than any similar munitions I could create. Even the higher level technology from Master Builder or Class: Engineer didn’t exceed Bakuda’s better work. It was kind of incredible how differently I functioned from other tinkers. What’s more, Bakuda was almost certainly a chaos tinker, and that just complicated things further. Still, I had the power to turn her technology against her and I was damn well going to use it.

I had to wonder what was happening to her. She had practically staked a leadership claim on the ABB, but between that thinker and Lung’s escape I couldn’t see that lasting even if she wasn’t mutilated. Most likely the tinker nightmare of being locked in your lab making equipment for other people, but I couldn’t see that holding either. There were too many variables and too little information. I needed to personally dig into Tattletale’s data and see what my next move should be.

The breakfast I made was really, really good. Eggs and coffee are pretty much as basic as things can get, but all of my crafting and quality powers came together to produce a work of art. I meant that literally as the plated food was worthy of appearing in a museum. I had thought yesterday’s breakfast was a high point, but this was twice the quality, if that can even be believed.

And oh God, the coffee. I had a reliance on early morning caffeine that would have me drinking burnt black tar if it would banish the dregs of sleep, but this was something else. Dark and rich, but complex. It actually had all those hints of subtle flavors that coffee snobs go on about but nobody else seems to be able to pick up. The entire experience was incredible, particularly since I only needed to make a tiny volume with Workaholic handling the rest. It meant I had an entire pot of coffee made with the dedicated care of a tiny artisan batch.

With how well I had slept I didn’t even need the caffeine, but I still powered through the coffee like it was the water of life. It was exhilarating being able to do mundane tasks at such a stellar level, and frustrating that I would have to be so careful about concealing my actions. It was the kind of thing that I wanted to show off, but couldn’t. I mean, at the moment I couldn’t, not even in my hero identity.

That thought brought back all the memories about the mess online. Well, online was the worst, but the mess spilled over everywhere. I needed to do something about that, but until I spoke to Taylor I didn’t want to take any major steps. I had probably only narrowly avoided questions about the Apeiron/Khepri quagmire during my call with Director Armstrong. Any public communication would open the door to that mess and while a public denial seemed the way to go Taylor deserved to have input on exactly how that was framed.

That was something I was putting aside for the moment. Given that it was the middle of the night I actually had good reason for that rather than just my usual unhealthy desire to ignore these kinds of things.

I got dressed and headed out into the workshop. As usual there were too many things to do. I needed help, which meant it was time for more duplicates. Moving through I could see the division between the areas that had been worked on, upgraded, or just altered. The major projects and essential upgrades were mixed in with aesthetic improvements and small alterations for the sake of convenience. It gave the workshop something of a patchwork feel and I could only wonder what Aisha had made of it.

I wasn’t totally comfortable with having that many details of how I operated exposed, but at least Aisha had seemed to take my warnings seriously. And to be honest, if someone was going to find out about this place having it be a near perfect stranger was probably the best possibility. That power was probably strong enough to even cover her level of recklessness.

I still can’t believe I had actually been able to talk about the Simurgh. As I walked I passed by a portion of the privacy curtain where it extended into 3-space. Because of the multidimensional nature of the material it looked like a window treatment randomly attached to the wall before it slipped back between dimensions. That single structure finally freed me to be able to think about the Simurgh without constant fear that I was sending out a locator signal.

No one really knew how the Simurgh’s power worked. Well, my passenger did, but that wasn’t the clearest channel of communication. The best I was able to glean from my interactions was that it wasn’t exactly telepathy. Every other aspect of it was huge and terrifying, but it wasn’t actually mind-reading type telepathy. But there was definitely something like that, something close enough that extreme caution was necessary.

And right now in this space I didn’t need to worry about it. I could think and plan anything I wanted and as long as it stayed here it would be safe. It was an incredible feeling. Fuck, for once I could really think about the Endbringers, how to counter them and maybe even stop them for good, without worrying about the actions bringing them down on my head. As long as I didn’t let any of the plans inform actions outside the workshop it would finally be safe.

On my way to the Alchemist’s Lab I made a detour to swing by the textiles area. I found Garment working on some combination of new hyperfibers into a customized weave that created a kind of shimmering effect without looking artificial. It was incredible work and I was glad she had found something that seemed to be an actual challenge. Garment worked at the limit of mortal skill, but she clearly enjoyed pushing that as far as it would go. In this case that meant space age blended fabrics.

She greeted me as I entered the collection of polymer fabricators, textile assembly machines, and advanced monitoring systems all with that towering mural of my procession of costumes hanging over it. Unlike the piecemeal arrangement of the rest of the workshop, this area had been thoroughly and comprehensively upgraded to the peak of what my current technology could bear. Given this wasn’t a high priority area for any of the pressing projects that meant either Garment had been able to persuade duplicates to help in their spare time or they had been generous in assisting her.

There were racks and racks of clothes. Both the products of Garment’s frenzied experimentation with new technology and more conventional but still beautifully made offerings. There was an entire row of dresses sized for Aisha, either made during her forced fitting or in preparation for their next meeting. I was about to ask Garment about that when I felt the Celestial Forge connect to a smaller mote from the Knowledge constellation.

Then I screamed.

The sensation of it was severe enough to actually bring me to my knees. This wasn’t like anything I had dealt with before. I wouldn’t say I was used to the way the Celestial Forge messed with my memories, instincts, skills, and knowledge, but it was at least something I had come to expect.

I didn’t expect a chunk of metal to suddenly appear in my brain.

I blinked frantically trying to clear the display that was being projected into my optic nerve before finally managing the correct mental commands to clear the startup documentation. It was more than just the intrusive feeling of having a piece of cranial cyberware suddenly shoved into your head. This was an implanted Neural Interface with its own set of interface protocols that I had to rapidly familiarize myself with as I felt the intrusive item connecting to my brain.

It was made so much worse by the fact that I understood exactly what was happening. My new power was called Space Command Engineer. It gave me the basis to understand a host of new technologies, including the implant that was buried in the back of my skull. I knew exactly how it was connected, what would have to be done to install it, and how deeply it intruded into my brain. In an instant I had received the effect of a major intrusive surgery and healing period and was now living with the aftereffects.

I noticed Garment’s gloves resting on my shoulders and looked up at her concerned body language. I took a breath, then reached to feel the back of my head. There, just under the surface of my skin, I could feel the base of the implant. The sensation made me shudder, but I pushed through.

“It’s… okay. I’m fine.” Her posture suggested she didn’t totally believe me. I took a breath before continuing. “Look, you know what powers I get, right?” She made an affirmative gesture. “Right, then you know what just happened?”

Garment slowly ran a glove finger over the base of the implant. The sensation was even more unnerving coming from someone else and at my reaction she pulled back and rested the hand on my shoulder.

“It will be okay.” I was more adamant as I spoke. “It was just a surprise.” A horrible intrusive surprise that made me seriously concerned for what else I could end up dealing with from the Forge. Mental intrusions were one thing, but random implants were more concerning. I had no idea how far that could go. Given the fact that there were higher levels of the Forge I hadn’t even touched I was more than a little concerned about what could be waiting for me.

I took a moment to adjust to the new sensation of the neural implant while reviewing the rest of what came with the power. Most of the technology wasn’t terribly advanced and the understanding wasn’t totally comprehensive. It was operational engineering, not design level. Still, there were some principles that could be useful.

The real meat of the power was the ability to make small improvements to any technology if I spent enough time working on it. It provided a small but universal boost to the quality of every technological item I could produce. A small increase, but an incredibly broad one.

Outside of the implant there was a scattering of petty equipment. A suit of armor, a magnum pistol, grenades, and an ATV. None of it was cutting edge or that useful given my other resources, but considering it was all fiat backed there was some potential for use after a run of upgrades.

And then there was the neural interface. This was a standard level military interface. Leagues above what was intended for civilian use, but not the kind of thing that coordinated armies or ran entire starships. I was actually lucky on that front since any of those would require an external port and I’d end up walking around with a chunk of metal sticking out of the back of my skull.

In comparison to my command throne it was incredibly basic, but that said it was still both advanced and useful. I just wish I could have had some say in the decision before it was shoved into my head. Even a bit of warning was appreciated. Still, better to happen here than in the field. God, if I had gone through this at Garment’s debut I don’t know how I would have played it off.

The hardware of the implant was interesting. It was fiat backed and integrated into my body in an unusual way, almost like it was an expected part of this form. I didn’t have to worry about healing alchemy or nanites tearing it out or the system wearing out, breaking down, or running out of power. It was closer to a part of my body than anything I could have installed myself.

That same relationship with fiat backed items of the Forge applied to the implant. It would restore itself if someone damaged it and I could upgrade or modify it to add new technology. Still, that would require self-inflicted brain surgery, something I was very uncomfortable with. Actually, if this hadn’t been crammed into my brain uninvited I probably would have held off on any kind of similar implant indefinitely.

The device didn’t totally need upgrading. It was hundreds of years ahead of modern technology, though still had a definite human element to its design. There was some limited capacity for direct information exchange between the implant and the mind of the person it was inflicted on, but mostly seemed to be intended for a greater deal of user convenience.

The optical nerve HUD was a good example of that. Technically all that information could be directly accessed from the broader connections between the brain and the implant, but my guess was, as this was military tech, it was designed to be implanted in soldiers pretty much universally. Since not everyone who signed up needed advanced applications of the device or had the time to learn cognitive integration it mostly served as an IFF device and discrete display screen.

At least I didn’t have that problem. Between the comprehensive understanding of this technology provided by my power and my previous knowledge in both computer software and memory interface I could grasp the higher-level features of the implant almost immediately. Used at that level it could bypass any needs for conventional interfaces, allow direct control of vehicles and tools, and improve the communication and processing of information.

In fact, there was a disturbingly comforting sensation connected to the implant. The constant discordant thought patterns that came with Master Builder and its related powers were incredibly comfortable with the idea of having a portion of my brain suddenly become mechanical and computerized. It made the implant a lot easier to deal with, but also made me a little concerned about how much those alien robot memories were affecting me.

As I adjusted to the protocols and interface settings I could feel the systems of the workshop open up to me. The place wasn’t fully networked, but with my implant I could mentally access most of the connected systems. That included the computer core and command throne where the primary copies of Fleet and Survey had finally transferred themselves.

There was a spike of interest through the network from both of the developing A.I.s and I made a note to check in on them properly as soon as I could. In the meantime I had managed to deal with the sudden shock of brain cybernetics well enough to climb to my feet.

“I’m okay now. Seriously.” Garment was still being overly gentle with me in a way that was both endearing and patronizing. To stop her doting I shifted focus back to my original question.

“That is really nice work. All that’s for Aisha?”

Garment clearly knew what I was doing, but her pride in her work was enough to somewhat mitigate her concern at the current situation, causing her to lead me through the various outfits she had assembled, both for Aisha and in general.

Seeing what was on display I got where Aisha’s concerns were coming from. Considering what the girl normally wore being presented with an outfit whose components included the term ‘second petticoat’ it was a wonder she only stormed off rather than running screaming.

Between that collection and all the other projects there was one question I had to raise.

“Garment, how is your material budget doing?”

She made a dismissive gesture and indicated towards the abundance of both finished outfits and component materials.

“I’m serious. I know some of this can be provided with my power or synthesized by the workshop, but if you need more funds for conventional supplies please let me know.”

She made a negative gesture and led me towards a chest at the edge of her work area. I probably should have figured something was up by the fact that the thing was designed like someone took one of those overdone novelty Halloween decorations and decided to do it dead seriously. It looked like a pirate treasure chest that would have been the cornerstone of a movie franchise. When she opened it I realized that wasn’t too far from the truth.

“So…” I drew out the word. “I’m guessing that one of my duplicates helped you with this?”

Garment gestured excitedly and lifted one of the items from the chest with a clink. This was apparently another one of those weird power interactions. Garment could turn money into clothing. I didn’t know how that worked or if there were any implications to destroying legal tender and summoning bolts of cloth into the world. It appeared I also didn’t know how far that definition of currency could be stretched.

I guess it made sense. There were countries that did or had used the gold standard, and they still minted bullion coins. I guess I just assumed you had to be connected to a government to make your own currency, rather than churning out gold coins with a material duplication power.

“Yes, uh, very nice.” I replied as Garment showed me one of the coins that filled the chest. “Please never show it to anyone.”

Garment almost looked offended at the idea, and held up the one ounce coin for a closer look.

“Yes, it’s a very nice likeness. My point stands.” I mean, it was a nice profile of me, including the visor from my cape costume, and an image of Garment’s gloves very tastefully adorned the opposite side. Still, not something I ever wanted anyone to see.

Garment made a placating gesture and the coin vanished from her hand. Shortly after a bolt of silk started spinning itself out of nowhere, assembling the basis for another outfit.

“Well, I guess you’re set then.” I didn’t know what the exchange rate was, but it probably wouldn’t make a dent in that chest unless she was trying to clothe the entire nation in formal wear.

Come to think of it, I wouldn’t exactly put something like that past her.

I shook off the thought and turned towards Alchemist’s Lab. “I’ve got a lot to do. Are you alright until then?”

She made an affirmative gesture and shooed me off. I sighed and started towards the lab.

My implant was still a decidedly unsettling sensation in my head. There was this contrasting feeling of it both having suddenly arrived and having been in my head for years. The dichotomy was inexplicable, but I was willing to bet that a detailed medical examination would find evidence of the device being part of my brain for a long time. All part of the insanity that was my power’s ‘fiat’.

I missed a connection to the Toolkits constellation as I entered my Alchemy workshop. I had taken a sizable chunk out of my reserves of duplication potion during the search for Weld and would have to spend some time replenishing them. I still had enough reserves for the moment, so I headed for the rack of vials and quickly downed one.

I watched each gulp trigger a duplicate that stepped out of my body and turned around. The interesting thing was that this time we all had neural implants. Looking from one to the other I could sense their wireless signal and extend basic communication. There was some discordance at first as perfectly identical systems tried to communicate with each other, but within a couple of seconds we had that sorted out.

“Okay.” I spoke even as I split focus to parse data being broadcast from the brains of my duplicates. “There is once again a lot of work to do.”

The second smirked at me. “Always is.” He looked at the first while transmitting a rather comprehensive list of potential projects to both of us. There seemed to be some interesting symmetry with my perfect blueprint memory and the available functions of the implant. “What should we start with?”

Before anyone could respond there was a discordant screech of broadcast data requests, diagnostic code, and sensor sweeps. It took less than a second to figure out the source.

“A.I. updates.” The first pointed at me. “You start with A.I. updates before Survey gets caught in a loop or something worse. We’ll get groundwork set up out here.”

I was about to agree when I was hit with another stream of error codes, coding queries, and incompatibility issues. I decided pleasantries could be set on hold and hurried to the computer core. On the way I did my best to link to the system with my implant, but it was a far cry from what I was capable of on the throne. The best I managed was for Survey to put queries on hold until I could try to sort things out.

When I sank into the throne I unsurprisingly needed a new set of calibrations before I could connect. A system that scanned down to the individual neuron would obviously have a bit of difficulty applying the same cognitive map to a brain that had newly installed hardware. I did my best to speed up the process because the sense I was getting from Survey was shifting from frantic information requests to something like real panic.

I understood why once I was finally able to fully immerse in the system. The optical core was a completely different environment from the previous system that had been handling A.I. development. Not only did it allow faster progression but it could handle more complicated development paths that would previously have been abandoned as too resource intensive.

Both A.I. had transferred on schedule while I was asleep. They were still working under hard limits, but with the new system they could reach those boundaries much faster and begin optimization routines. Part of that was my fault.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the best software tinker currently operating. If not there wasn’t that much of a gap. Master Builder alone had a staggering wealth of knowledge on artificial intelligences, and provided it in the form of lived experiences. Additionally Grease Monkey, Nanite Sciences, Machinist, Class: Engineer, and even Engineering all provided insights on the development and optimization of autonomous programs. Combined with the increase in skill from Do One Thing At A Time and my final set of supportive corrections had set both programs on a greatly accelerated development curve.

I was also seeing more divergence in their development due to the tasks they had been using to inform their development. It was probably why, of the two A.I.s, it was Survey who was having more problems.

Fleet had been developing along the same curve as Survey, but in a much more focused area. It was a driving A.I. first and foremost. While the role had expanded to coordination of more complicated vehicles it never varied from that initial purpose. Add to it the fact that Fleet’s seed had been written when my knowledge of A.I. development was considerably more basic and you ended up with a competent if perhaps overly focused artificial intelligence.

Survey was another matter entirely. I had laid down the initial code shortly after I received Master Builder, and as such it carried a level of intricate design right from the start, rather than having those aspects patched in later. Additionally, Survey’s purpose was data acquisition and analysis, a considerably more complicated prospect than vehicle operation.

In the process of development, Survey had taken the task of gathering as much information about my workshop and abilities as possible. I had already run into some problems in that area concerning the more complicated aspects of the Celestial Forge and its unpredictable nature, but it seemed like there were some critical gaps of information that Survey had been struggling with over a key topic.

Survey was trying to understand me. It was a perfectly understandable part of the program’s work, but the constant shifts due to the Celestial Forge were creating errors in modeling that, since transferring to the new computer core, had been growing larger and larger. The A.I. had been relying more and more on information exchanges with Fleet for support, almost leaning into the older A.I.’s ability to ignore conflicting or irrelevant information in order to remain functional.

When the neural implant had linked me to the Workshop’s systems a series of floating unknowns had apparently fallen into place, stabilizing Survey’s models and leading to a period of stable development. That was until I drank that potion and Survey had to contend with two exact copies of my mind with all of my abilities also appearing on the network.

I didn’t waste any time in diving in to address the programming errors that had developed, even taking cognitive acceleration above strictly safe levels for a period. There were some key takeaways from this. For instance, keeping details of what was actually happening from an information gathering A.I. was a recipe for disaster. Additionally I really shouldn’t be surprised that a program designed to gather and analyze data was trying to gather and analyze as much data as possible.

It also told me that I would need to step up my monitoring of these programs. The previous tactic of assigning tasks and trusting the optimization to handle things with regular monitoring might have worked under the limitations of my previous system, but the new computer core took what was a responsible level of attentiveness to full on negligence.

Oh, and lucky me. I had just gotten the hardware necessary to facilitate constant contact and monitoring. At least that should let me avoid any repeats of this mess.

In addition to code corrections I had to spend a substantial amount of time addressing the holes in Survey’s database of the Workshop and my abilities. By that I meant everything. Power interactions, acquisitions, breakdown of different classifications of effects, even mundane things like sources of workshop changes. It was more than I liked sharing, but I couldn’t trust the program to do its job without access to that information.

I was about to impress on the A.I. the importance of keeping this information contained, but it seemed I was beaten to it. It did make sense that a system designed around information would be able to understand how significant a certain set of data was. Containment countermeasures were being put in place before I could suggest anything. Significant countermeasures.

I did step in to assist with coding the contingencies in a manner that would only delete the data in question rather than function as a digital suicide bomb for the entire A.I., degrading it beyond recovery. Still, the strength of the response made it clear the importance was understood. Though that was probably because it also filled in a lot of computational holes that Survey was struggling with. Really, having that kind of failsafe for data management was a good idea in general, even more so if you had an A.I. managing the trigger.

Checking on Fleet for any similar problems all I found was a desire for advanced notice of any planned upgrades to the motoroid to facilitate modeling the systems pre-launch and a sense of disappointment on not being involved in the repair or deployment of the Pinto.

Also something that could be considered concern for Survey. I mean, that was an artifact of the collaborative nature of the two A.I.s, but as they became more complex that kind of thing created the basis for actual emotions.

And the A.I.s were definitely becoming complex. In Survey’s case complex enough to have expressed opinions on the previous situation in a way that made me want to more closely monitor Garment’s twitter usage. Honestly, I’m not sure if accurate use of reaction images counts as a step forward in language skills.

With things finally calmed down I turned my attention towards the optimization space. I was able to focus on each A.I. in turn, assisting with development and correcting errors. By focusing individually my power activated to speed and improve my work, letting me dive further into the code than would have otherwise been possible. I also took some time for scheduling capacity improvements based on the powers I’d received to this point.

With everything resolved I could interact with the A.I. properly. With the neural interface throne making me part of the system I could sense their functions, but it was still good to engage them verbally to examine the limits of language development.

“Thank you for assistance with development and execution of primary functions.” Survey’s statement came as a text string with different synthesized voices overlaid as the merits of each of them was considered. Fleet’s response was more direct.

“Thanks. What next?” Standard text with a basic speech program running in the background. Upon understanding that the meaning of the statement had been conveyed Fleet held back, waiting for a response.

I responded both in spoken English, with text, and a precise set of data instructions. “Update interface protocols to ensure adequate information sharing. Begin workshop and equipment upgrade projects. Prepare Garment for meeting with local authorities.”

The message was well received, though with more enthusiasm from Survey than Fleet, at least once it was confirmed that the construction or operation of a vehicle wouldn’t be necessary for any of these tasks. That brought us to the first item. Fortunately, my latest power had a considerable amount of information on how to interface with, manage, and utilize A.I. safely and effectively.

“Is an identity profile necessary with upgraded direct processing connections available to your body?”

Survey’s question had the same cluster of data and shifting voices as it was asked. I checked on Fleet who seemed to be happy to let Survey take the lead here.

“It creates a focal point for interaction with other people, which encourages more detailed communication that can provide data for ongoing development.”

It would also help the programs develop a sense of identity, though it was too early to float that concept. Interacting with them at this stage was weird. They were basic enough that, at least with my level of understanding, I could follow every step of their program operation that led to their questions, decisions, and ‘emotions’. Being able to see the detailed breakdown of the cause behind the responses made it hard to really consider them emotions, but I could see the direction they were headed. There was a strange, almost transient quality to the situation.

Ultimately I was just asking for an image to be connected to their communication. Fleet responded almost immediately with a helmeted figure that I quickly confirmed was just the result of an image search for ‘Racecar Driver’. Survey took a good deal longer, including requests for the processing not to be monitored. The end result was a facial composite that, upon examination, had been drawn from various fashion models. I guess handing off duties as Garment’s assistant should have been expected to have some ongoing effects.

Just as I had unnecessarily reviewed the profile images they had chosen and set up the new communications profiles I received a notification from my duplicates. It seemed that even with the cognitive acceleration I had burned through most of their duration. Given that things were stable enough for me to disconnect I headed back to the Alchemist’s Lab before the duplicates could vanish.

One of the duplicates greeted me as I entered the lab and missed a connection to the Crafting constellation. “Thanks for taking care of that.”

I tried to brush it off. “It was nothing.”

The second duplicate stepped forward. “It was important and needed to be done, so thanks.”

The gratitude was a bit weird, especially when it was basically me thanking myself. Still, I got where it was coming from. The cascading errors had been concerning for the integrity of the coding project, but more so for what it could mean for Survey’s developing intelligence. My duplicates had the same level of concern for the A.I.’s wellbeing as I did, seeming enough that they were ignoring their 20% time allowance to follow up on things.

Survey had been maintaining a continuous link with my neural implant since I disconnected from the computer core. The link seemed to be a grounding presence for the A.I. in a way I hadn’t totally realized was necessary. It provided reassurance of the nature of the Workshop environment and projects in a way that could be called comforting. This was the difference between approaching this like a coding project and approaching it like you were dealing with real people. It was still a transition period, but that just made it more important.

“Good news here.” The first indicated to an assembled ritual space. “I think we’re finally ready to try some transmutation.”

“Do you think the reason we put this off for so long was because the power was literally called ‘Deranged Alchemist’?”

I shook my head. “Pretty sure the deranged part only applies to the homunculi stuff.”

“Yeah, definitely not touching that.”

“Likewise.”

I nodded along with my duplicates. “So, what are we working on here?”

They grinned and did that obnoxious ‘answer at the same time’ thing. “Mithril.”

The stunt would have been more impressive if not for the fact that I could tell they were using their neural implants to coordinate the timing. Actually, technically none of us needed to speak at all. The data transfer capacity of the implant and our understanding of its principles was more than enough to allow mind to mind communication. Still, I think my duplicates understood that human interaction was important, even if it was as weird as speaking with copies of yourself.

I turned my attention to the ritual space. There was a small puck of silvery metal in the center of a runic array with reagents aligned around it. As I was trying to piece together what had been done one of the duplicates leaned forward.

“Here.” There was the ping of data transfer from his implant and I could instantly review the preparations. The ingot was a blend of 86% silver, 12% nickel, and small but incredibly precise amounts of vanadium, niobium, molybdenum, osmium, neodymium, gallium, titanium, chromium, and magnesium. It was basically a dog’s breakfast of metals with no real value, especially compared to my hyperalloys. However, taken together with alchemical principles it made the perfect transmutation base for mithril.

They had even planned out the ritual and it looked seriously promising. I had been building to this for a while, but the boost from Dwarven Craft had taken me over the top. It had also slightly expanded the metallurgy section of the Alchemist’s Laboratory, since the place scaled with my alchemical knowledge. I was still a ways from being able to make cybertonium, but this was an important first step.

The transmutation was a proper ritual, and as such additional participants were immensely helpful. It was pretty much the only reason I had a hope of pulling this off. I looked at the pair of duplicates. “We’re not going to have time for this before your counter is up, are we?”

The first shook his head. “Needs to be done with the next set. But, on a positive note…” He gestured to the second who was standing next to a brewing potion.

“You’re restocking?”

“And upgrading.” He smiled. “Do One Thing At A Time will double the quality of the potion.”

I started running the numbers in my head. “So, wait, nonlinear relation for potion duration, and beyond conventional limits. New duration should be…”

“Probably around fifteen minutes. Here.” Another data transfer confirmed the analysis. It wasn’t a titanic upgrade, but with halving the time to make the potions and the duplicates lasting for a quarter of an hour it could open up some longer projects.

It would also increase that 20% time period to three minutes. Three minutes where they would be able to build super science housewares and coordinate through mental implants. From the gleam in their eyes they knew what I was thinking. Even as the duration ticked down, an internal timer being a mundane benefit of the implant, I could see the look of satisfaction on their faces.

“Well, give our best to the next guys.” And then they vanished. It was a totally unnecessary request, given the next guys would be updated copies of me. I took a second to quickly confirm Survey’s query regarding the vanished duplicates, then moved to renew the potion.

With two gulps fresh copies stepped out and looked over the lab.

“So…” The first said, looking at the brewing potion. “We’ll be what, the last? Second to last copies to have the ten minute duration?”

I nodded “Something like that.”

It was still strange how readily the copies accepted their temporary existence. At least the hints of enthusiasm for a longer lasting potion indicated that they weren’t completely fatalistic. I wondered how far I would be able to push the potion’s quality. I was already taking things beyond the initial theoretical maximum. I doubted any level of research or training could take things further, but there was the possibility other Forge abilities might make the difference.

“Right.” The second exclaimed. “Let’s get started. We robing up for this?”

I reviewed the plans laid out by the last copies. “I think we’ll be alright with just mantles.” Ceremonial vestments were an unfortunate part of this process. Fortunately the speed at which I could produce clothing and the quality of the end products had allowed everything to be prepared.

Instead of the full alchemist robes that would normally be called for they had prepared a set of shoulder cloaks sewn with alchemy symbols. It was a fascinating and surprising application of a new power.

Gadget Master was a power mostly centered on spy gadgets, but the way that power had been granted was unique. It was experience with the principles behind the work, not a rote database of instructions or some uncontrolled effect that took care of the technicalities automatically. The power gave me the skill to miniaturize almost anything, not just technology. In this application it had taken the effect that would normally require a full set of robes, hoods, stoles, and accoutrements and condensed it into a simple cape. One mantle providing the benefit of an entire set of vestments.

Even the ritual space was more efficiently laid out. The runic arrays were taking up a small portion of the lab instead of spilling out into all surrounding areas. It was a godsend really. The creation of mithril was not a petty project. This was a major mystical metal, and the apparatus and ritual requirements would have been cripplingly difficult without the help of that power.

It had huge implications for everything from my transmutation arrays to my runes, as well as presenting another situation where all my technology was now out of date and needed to be upgraded. That was something to worry about later, as right now I was burning duplicate duration. It would be hard enough to fit the ritual into the time limit as it stood.

Without another word we donned the mantles and dove into the ritual. There was the considerable benefit of everyone being on the same page and able to communicate nonverbally. One duplicate arranged lit candles to channel fundamental forces while another aligned reagents to convey the energies of transmutation. I worked to heat the ingot to be more receptive to the essences being transferred to it and provided a siphon for the material aspects being removed.

The chant started with the second duplicate and was picked up by the first and myself in turn. It was a heavily arcane procedure, reinforcing the aspects of the material world being encouraged within the sample of material. Finally, the aspects were fully saturated in the metal and only had to be bound.

The first duplicate moved the glowing ingot to an engraved anvil while the second handed me a hammer of cold iron while he picked up his own leaden hammer. We took turns striking the silvery metal, adding or extracting aspects of weight, durability, hardness, and luster. Heavy strikes with cold iron followed by lighter taps from the softer lead tool. With each blow flecks of the ingot split and flecked off, but the debris vanished into the air rather than settling on the ground.

I could feel the ritual building, but the duration of the duplicates was running down. With an unspoken agreement we accelerated our pace, the first turning the metal while I alternated blows with the second. Without the benefit of Do One Thing At A Time it would have been hopeless, but we were all focused on our singular task of completing the ritual.

Every chant and strike corresponded to another second of potion duration spent. As the clock counted down it occurred to me that the scope of this project might not have been fully appreciated upon entry. Even with a beyond perfectly prepared ritual space, the perfect reagents, a masterful alignment of forces, the ideal target material, and three master alchemists doing the work of ten people at twice the speed and double their best skill level it was still an immensely challenging prospect.

There was a union of purpose between me and my duplicates I hadn’t seen before, not even in the construction of the computer throne. In the back of our minds we knew the stakes weren’t that severe. We could try again, but that attempt would be with new duplicates. The copies who were here and now had a task before them, a cause that they wanted to spend their limited existence fulfilling, and were determined to bring it to fruition.

Every power I had was being used to facilitate this. Tools were being wielded with mechanical precision by people synchronized through digital mental contact. Material knowledge from a half dozen powers was being incorporated into the process of guiding the transmutation. Smithing knowledge, from my first middling power to the titanic breadth of Dwarven Craft was being drawn upon to guide the formation. Movements were being conducted with ever increasing efficiency of technique to squeeze out the slightest improvement in efficiency. Strike after strike bound or vanquished unseen forces from the ingot, fundamentally changing its material existence.

This wasn’t the rote speedy construction of my rushed preparations from the past few days. This was pure artistry. Artistry on an entirely different level from the intricate designs and crafting I could do in my sleep. With each strike of a hammer we were bringing a myth into existence. An impossible metal dreamed of only in the minds of fantasy writers was being forged before our very eyes. Every strike cast off more and more of the ingot, but what was left was more pure than anything I had seen in my life. Beauty bound to shimmering metal. I was watching true-silver come into existence.

Second by second the potion counted down. I cursed myself for wasting any time at the start of the ritual, for assuming that my powers would be enough to turn this into a cakewalk. As the clock got lower the prospect of a ruined procedure, of knowing that the task my duplicates had devoted themselves could be all for naught weighed heavily on me.

With one last push before vanishing the second duplicate made a final strike and first duplicate made his ultimate turn of the ingot. Tools clattered to the workshop floor from vanished hands and mantles dropped like empty plastic bags. I grit my teeth and brought the hammer down in a finishing strike.

Light bloomed through the laboratory as the last of the material essence split from the ingot. The glow faded to the point where I could see, but seemed to retract into the metal rather than vanish. I let out a breath wreathed in tension as I looked down at the fruit of our labor.

Through the process the large puck of metal had been eroded by thalamic forces down to the barest slip. If not for my Workaholic power multiplying its volume there would barely be anything remaining. As it stood barely a coin’s worth of metal remained, but that tiny piece seemed to contain a world of wonder.

I leaned down and picked up the scrap of mithril. It felt light as air and impossibly smooth. Light reflected in it seemed enhanced in some way, like it was showing a truer version of the world than what your eyes could normally detect. It was unmistakably beautiful, not in its craftsmanship but in its very essence.

A flicker of motion in the corner of my eye drew my attention and I turned to see Garment at the edge of the lab. I didn’t know how long she had been watching, but she was clearly as enthralled by the result as I was. Slowly she approached and tentatively reached out towards the finished metal.

I smiled and handed it to her. The way she ran the fingers of her gloves over it was unbelievably reverentially. She made a questioning gesture towards me.

“Yes, I can make a lot more of it now.” I considered things. “I’ll need to examine it, figure out the best way to use it, but yes, we’ll have plenty to work with.”

I took in Garment’s exclamation of joy as I felt the Celestial Forge miss a connection to the Size constellation. I also took a moment to check in with Fleet and Survey. Fleet was, as usual, completely content.

When prodded there was only a simple response. “Desire for information on new material impact for vehicle operation.” Beyond the statement in a basic synthesized voice there was nothing else of note.

I found Survey had been documenting every step of the process with an almost obsessive level of detail. “Greetings. Presenting list of questions regarding transmutation to be addressed at a later point.” The layered set of synthesized voices was still being used, though it seemed to be drifting towards a particular set of vocal types instead of the constant shifting that had been used before.

The transferred file contained a very comprehensive list that would take some time, or a quick trip to the computer core, to answer in full. Still, the understanding that the information would come was holding off any more frustrated reaction images. Said reaction images were still being prepared, and were being edited to incorporate Survey’s composite supermodel profile picture, I suppose for better personalization.

I took the mithril sample and left Garment fussing over the trio of mantles in a matter that suggested I would probably regret exposing her to the concept. I looped back through the workshop on my way to analyze the new material.

My workshop upgrades could manage that to some extent, but the best scanners available to me were still the ones in the Laboratorium. I had to deal with the research results anyway, so I took the long route, retrieving the small case of Dust that came with my Tinkerer power before retrieving the ragnite sample from my ‘hidden’ laboratory.

The Dust samples were four vials of brightly colored and energetic powder in red, blue, green, and yellow. There were tiny amounts, but I could still feel the power contained in the material. I needed proper analysis before I could move forward with any projects, but the potential was immense.

Ragnite was still a mystery. I made a point to scan the lab’s notes for later analysis, but it would probably take a lot more work to get useful results, at least compared to the immediate usefulness of the dust.

I paused at the door between my secret lab and the Laboratorium. The cyber skulls had been working adamantly since I dropped off the last batch of tinker tech, but I still wasn’t sure how they’d react to new items. I was coming in with unseen metals and new cybernetics. The last thing I wanted was another freak-out when they were handling Bakuda’s explosives.

Well, no getting around it. I’d just have to deal with whatever happened. I pushed into the room, bracing myself for the worst.

The reception I received was not ‘the worst’. It had a decidedly different feel, starting with the abrupt cutoff of the looping hymn and every skull in the immense space turning to face me. Every skull. Even those attached to the library. Even those who currently were moving bombs between scanning beds.

There was a decidedly awkward moment as I figured out what was going on and if I should try to make a run for it. Then the cry went up. It was still in that digital trilling sound that skulls used to communicate, but had a decidedly different tone. This was unmistakably a celebration.

When I had brought the last batch of technology it had been like Christmas morning. This time it was more like a birthday. Specifically, my birthday, and every skull in the place was determined to celebrate it.

Initially I had some trouble telling what they were so excited about until I was coaxed towards one of the larger scanning bays. Immediately a full analysis of my cranial implant was plastered across every display in the lab accompanied by a sound of exaltation from the skulls. The mood shifted from anticipation to pure celebration.

A new song started playing with a much heavier tone than the hymn. I couldn’t pick out most of the lyrics over the heavy instrumentals, but the refrain had something to do with flesh being fallible and weak, the strength of metal, and something or other about directed motion.

The skulls were also lighting a portion of the mural of armored figures, highlighting the man in black and brass gear patterned armor who was carrying a large hammer. Small pieces of machinery and vials of oil were being placed in front of the painting like offerings. Additionally, across the room small icons of mechanical skulls inside gears were lighting up and receiving the same treatment.

Given their reaction to cybernetics all I could say is they didn’t do things by half. I had to wonder if this was just some kind of pent up stress from lack of interaction, or if I was actually hitting on things that were this important to them. It was frustrating not fully understanding this system, but I could at least muddle along.

That's what I did as the skulls guided me to the lab’s command throne. Given that I now had three items that were classified as thrones in my Workshop I wondered if I was leaning towards something of an uncomfortable theme. It was a bit concerning, but not something the skulls gave me time to ruminate on.

Upon sitting down I immediately received a wireless connection protocol. The skulls were waiting around anxiously as I processed the information from the control throne. I had the sense it would have preferred a direct wired connection, but was at least willing to entertain the idea of working around the connection issues.

The port behind my head shifted through a series of configurations before settling on an induction based link designed to work through the skin. It was more than a little surprising that it would have that capacity, but apparently this place had been built to accommodate a massive range of technologies. With a little trepidation I leaned back and felt the connection take hold.

My first thought was that I did in fact need to upgrade my neural implant. While I had been mostly satisfied with its performance there was a clear and drastic gulf in technology level between the Laboratorium and the technology of Space Command Engineer. I watched as disappointment rippled across the room as more and more protocols had to be scaled back to the capacity of my implant.

The mood definitely rallied as the calibration finished and the connection stabilized. Suddenly I had direct access to the systems around me. Not the innate intuitive access a ‘proper’ implant would have given me, but enough to at least immerse myself in the information. Without being fully connected my access had to be partially facilitated by the machine spirit of the throne, but it seemed happy with the interaction, particularly whenever I delved into more mechanical thought patterns from my Master Builder power.

The advantages of the connection were clear. I could feel the information of the analysis pouring into my head, blueprints being perfectly retained thanks to my Engineer power. That said, only about half of the bombs had effects that could be analyzed clearly enough to provide a complete breakdown. The rest would need destructive testing before anything meaningful could be gleaned. Normally a horrible option, but if my duplication potion worked the way I hoped I could manage that without issue.

Even for the bombs where I had a clear picture the mechanics of the effects was another matter. Only about ten percent were conventional enough that I had a full breakdown. The rest would require personal analysis of the properties in being used. I was confident I could do it, but there was the question of prioritization.

All of these bombs were powerful, especially for their size, but that didn’t translate directly to being useful. The highly valuable bomb effects, spatial alteration, material transmutation, time manipulation, were all locked behind further layers of analysis and study. Being able to create an overpowered airburst bomb, or a grenade with hypersonic shrapnel was nice. Well, no. It was horrible, but the information was useful. It just wasn’t that much more useful than my other technology. I wasn’t sure if it was worth the effort to extract principles that would boost weapons I wasn’t planning on using.

The report on Leet’s technology was more encouraging. The force field was a type of plasma sheeting that was both a close range deterrent and provided excellent protection against energy weapons, particularly for something that compact. The principles would take some time to break down, but would be decidedly useful.

The sword, which network research told me was the ‘Dragon Sword’ from Ninja Gaiden, was even more interesting. It operated on a form of technology based telekinesis. The sword was able to pilot itself through various offensive and defensive motions, likely to make up for Leet’s complete lack of physicality and combat skill. The glow around it had been what could only be described as a telekinetic chainsaw. It was a field that grabbed small portions of the material being sliced ahead of the blade and tore at them. The force exerted was small, but when compared to the tiny area it was being applied to it caused massive stress, basically ripping it apart before the blade even touched it.

This would have definitely messed me up if I caught a hit from it. Like with the force field it had serious potential, at least enough to move it up the list past the more mundane explosives.

The Vehicles constellation missed a connection while I turned my attention towards the material analysis. Four samples were being prioritized as they moved through the lab as easily as if by my own hands. If my hands were a set of unusually enthusiastic skulls moving to the sound of a hymn that would sound more at home backing a symphonic metal band than being played in a church.

At least the worst of this song’s lyrics were about the superiority of metal and the weaknesses of all flesh based desires rather than the horrific burning of heretics. More of a lateral step than a direct improvement, but definitely less distracting.

The tissue sample from Weld was still a point of contention in the Laboratorium with even the machine spirits weighing in on the matter. I decided to head things off by beginning the analysis. There were a lot of interesting aspects to the material, but the most noteworthy was that as time went on it was becoming less ‘Weld’ and more exotic chunk of metal. Whatever animating force was provided by his power started to fade after a portion separated.

It was the kind of effect I’d need a better understanding of Magitech to crack. Unfortunately it wouldn’t last nearly that long. I entered a command to get it back in stasis as soon as the scans were complete, where it would probably have to stay until I finally got another connection to that constellation.

The dust analysis was more productive. The automatic scans didn’t have that much to say on the matter, but with my material knowledge I was able to put the pieces together. There was a huge opportunity for direct application, enhancement of other metals, or integrating it as a power source or means of improvement for other technology. Interestingly the four kinds of dust were something like primary colors that could be mixed to create new varieties of the substance. It would take some experimentation, but I could hand that off to duplicates fairly easily.

Ragnite was… Well ragnite was a mess. It was a crystalline energy source with biological applications that could also be processed into a combustible fuel. There were hints at direct weapon applications in the lab’s notes, but that was more than I could manage with my level of understanding. What I could tell is the substance needed refinement to be usable, and several levels of refinement to bring out its full potential. I just wasn’t desperate enough for a new energy source to commit the amount of resources I’d need to leverage that material.

Then there was mithril. The interesting thing was that it wasn’t magic. None of the witchcraft alarms triggered in response to the sample. It was mythical, operating beyond what a material like it should be capable of, but the source of that effect was tied to its intrinsic nature, not some enchantment effect. It was also incredibly strong, light, resilient, and possessed qualities that would allow nearly impossible types of protection. A chain shirt that blocked blunt impacts was easily within its capabilities.

It was absolutely fantastic, a metal beyond what was physically possible. Dozens of potential applications, experiments, alloying options, and other uses were flooding my mind. But before I could fully dive into that line of thinking something grabbed my attention.

The spool of life fibers hung floating in its stasis field. I remembered my revelation from last night. With what I’d had to do to manage Fleet and Survey I felt even more accountable for the life fiber’s development. I knew they were naturally predatory, but they were also highly adaptive. Based on what I’d seen that adaptively had been used to take the fiber’s mental development in a new direction. I needed to follow up on that, and needed to handle it personally. The rest of my work could be handed off, but not that.

So I disconnected from the Laboratorium’s systems after setting some directions for the analysis still being carried out. After retrieving the dust and mithril samples I made my way back to the Alchemist’s Laboratory, cutting past the forcefield sheathed main entrance.

I needed to scale down the emitters using what I’d learned from Gadget Master. It would also be a good idea to get that holographic screen installed. Space Command Engineer had access to some holographic technology, with the serious advantage of not requiring any exotic or magical materials. It wasn't top level, but combined with the rest of my knowledge it should be able to create a convincing impression of a blank wall, empty closet, or whatever else would be useful for throwing off intruders.

Another project to farm out to my duplicates, and hopefully they wouldn’t include any crazy surprises. It was a distant, unlikely hope, but the hope was still there.

I got to the laboratory just as the next duplication potion had finished brewing. I set down the mithril and dust samples, then quickly decanted the potion into individual vials. I picked up one of them and downed it in two gulps, causing another pair of duplicates to step out into the lab and turn to face me.

“Everyone up on the plan?”

Then nodded back and the first spoke. “We’ll get started, coordinate through the computer core if you need anything. Good luck with the fibers.”

The second nodded and I left them to their work. At this point it was mainly planning and material duplication. Mithril in its raw state could be worked like copper and Dust would crystalize under carefully controlled pressure conditions. Between those factors the duplicates would be able to assemble a stockpile of both materials in short order.

I found Garment in the textile facility working with another complex fiber blend. When I entered she set it down and came to check on me.

“It’s fine. The duplicates are working to make more mithril.” She made an excited gesture. “But the reason I’m here is I need to work with the life fibers again.”

Garment quickly gestured behind her and the barbarian costume leapt from the rack to float next to her.

“No Garment.” She pouted. “Not like that. This isn’t training. I think I can communicate with them through the computer, but I need your help to manage it. I don’t want to leave them like that, in the Laboratorium, if there’s another option. This might be the first step. Can you help?”

She considered, then made an affirmative gesture as she picked up some design sketches. I looked over the half dozen dresses depicted and the noted compositions. “You want help with these first?”

From her response I got the sense that this was less a price for helping and more something she wanted to get out of the way beforehand. I didn’t know if she was reconsidering what she’d be wearing to the Gym event, but if she wants a few more outfits made with the benefit of my power I wasn’t going to turn her down.

I still needed some level of reduced clothing to manage life fiber exposure, but managed to talk her down from the full Conan set to just a pair of shorts with armor plates still attached. As hopful as I was about the prospects of dealing with the life fibers there was no reason to be stupid about things.

Working with Garment was a familiar situation at this point. The gloves folded inside out as they slipped over my hands and my senses and understanding expanded to match Garment’s. The dresses she planned were a highly varied collection. Some were conventional and just required expanded levels of crafting that she could match without my abilities. Some were classic designs incorporating new materials. One particularly unusual one was a wrap dress with a highly complex cut made of some of the most resilient hyper fabrics the upgraded workshop could produce.

After the work was done and the completed dresses were hanging on display I checked in on the situation in the rest of the lab.

“Hey, taking that 20% time. Home renovations. FYI, mithril is not transmutable with arrays, at least not without a lot more research.”

“Likewise for me and the Dust. That might have a hope with some more tinkering. Uploaded the arrays that seemed to have promising results. Do not try them on the burn Dust. Seriously, way too volatile. Got enough dust and crystals for the next set to try combinations. Also taking 20% time. Uh, don’t worry about where.”

“Confirming the completion of material production and logging inventory. I have a query about your integration with Garment in regards to split control and brain activity. Can you clarify?”

As I walked, I took the time to convey what happened while I was wearing Garment’s gloves. There was a sense of disappointment that my neural implant didn’t give Survey a direct line of communication to Garment. I had a feeling the difficulty in communicating while working as Garment’s assistant was something the A.I. saw as a personal failing. That might also explain why so many elements of fashion had been adopted in how Survey expressed itself.

I kept an eye on the signals from my duplicates as I moved to the lab. With the precision timing of the implant I was able to time it down to the millisecond. Total duration was 15 minutes and 17.35 seconds, sitting comfortably above our estimates. I slipped back into the lab, passing a pile of mithril ingots that looked like it belonged in Fort Knox as well as an entire table of crystals and dust containers. I moved past the products of my duplicates work and downed another duplication potion.

They stepped out, took one look at their abbreviated outfits, then turned to the giant pile of Dust and mithril. They gave a slight nod before the first one spoke.

“Right. Design an upgrade while you deal with the life fibers?”

“If you don’t mind?” I asked uncertainty.

“Go.” The second cut in. “We can handle this.”

With a grateful smile I slipped out of the lab and headed towards the fibers. When I entered the Laboratorium I was greeted nearly as enthusiastically as before and found the new hymn still playing. It was kind of like having a brain implant had upgraded me somehow in the eyes of the cyber skulls. There were clearly some ordered principles to how this stuff works, but I couldn’t figure it out. To my eye it seemed like a crap shoot if something brought into the room would trigger panic or a celebration.

With the advantages of my implant and previous exposure to the communications protocols used by the local system I was able to wirelessly drop the stasis field, allowing Garment to take the fibers and wrap them around my body. The level of contact was such that there was no drain exerted on me but, from what I had seen in my computer core, still allowed basic neural connections to form.

That was another one of the many overly complicated aspects of this organism. Life fibers were borderline impossible from a physics standpoint, much less a biological one. Life fiber energy was an incredible force that was as difficult to combat as it was to explain. The fact that it could provide physical boosts while also affecting the bio-genetics of its host all without direct physical intrusion into the systems impacted, well it was nearly unbelievable.

That was something I would have to get a handle on if I was going to keep relying on the life fibers. With everything secured I left the Laboratorium and headed for the computer core.

I was on my way when I felt the Celestial Forge move once more. The Magic constellation was swinging towards me. It was a constellation with mostly oversized motes, nearly as bad as Magitech. The one coming towards me was not the largest mote in the constellation but it was bigger than any mote I had secured so far. I had gotten so used to these kinds of motes passing me by that I barely paid attention to it and was understandably shocked when all the reach I had built up was spent in a single burst to secure the power.

Just like that I had the most powerful mote I’d ever encountered. Elven Enchantment. Interestingly it was connected to Dwarven Craft in the same way many powers shared aspects, like some kind of fantasy cluster with dwarves and elves. And magic. Serious magic, and magic that I now understood how to use.

This power, it let me enchant objects by pouring power into them as they were created. Only upon creation, and only through a specific set of mechanisms. Still, by following them I could do full on proper magic.

Magic. It was weird to think about it, but I could now make magic items, any magic item. Magic, or this kind of magic, was a complex multifaceted field. There were three main ways to make an item magical and I knew them all.

The first way was magic that could barely be described as such. It was just making something so perfectly that it seemed magical as a result. Items that never failed or faltered or performed above the level of even their best possible expectations fell into this category. Not exactly wonders, but solid and dependable.

The second form of magic involved words. Well, specific words. Words could define what something was, how it was regarded in relation to people, other objects, and the world around it. With the right words or phrases delivered properly fundamental aspects of an object could be changed, either drastically improving them or broadening their applications.

That led directly to the third form of magic. This was extremely high level. It involved manipulation of the Unseen. It was a complicated concept, but there was this kind of world beyond the physical, a spiritual existence that belonged purely to magic. Working in this realm was incredibly difficult, but though this application great wonders were possible.

Potential wonders. I was not at that level, not yet. The power gave me understanding of the principles and the slightest peek into the nature of the unseen. There was a vision in my head, of the purest light coming from a pair of trees upon a hill. It was an image of breathtaking beauty that actually warmed me physically when I recalled it. The memory of having seen that light acted like a key to the nature of the world, Opening the unseen to my hand.

If I could actually accomplish it. The first kind of magic was dead easy, just focusing when I made something would be enough. The second would be more difficult. English was not a language of power for this kind of thing. I knew the words to empower items, but being able to convey them properly, to change nature with speech and will was a daunting prospect.

That had nothing on the third kind of magic. Drawing on the Unseen was a terrifying prospect, the scale of the difficulty matched only by the scope of works that would be possible with its mastery. It was beyond energy or single words. Entire spells would need to be sung during construction in order to drive the working of the craft.

Boy, it was a good thing I wasn’t massively self-conscious about that kind of thing. It would be terrible if my own insecurity got in the way of being able to use my most powerful ability to its fullest.

It’s also a good thing I’m not the least bit sarcastic by nature. That would be terrible.

I continued walking, but felt a slight agitation from my gloves, almost like they were troubled by something. It wasn’t hard to figure out what it might be.

“Garment?” The gloves twitched. “Are you upset that I got a magical crafting power for making beyond perfect items right after we finished your wardrobe?” The gloves twitched again, this time in a decidedly irritated manner. Well, I guess it was good to know that I wasn’t the only one irritated by the sequence in which I receive my powers.

I sank into the throne and connected with the system. My mind extended to Fleet and Survey. As this task had nothing to do with vehicles, Fleet was splitting development focus to continuously incorporate the motoroid upgrade plans my duplicates were working on. Survey was more focused on the current situation, with only a slight indication towards the table of questions and clarifications waiting to be addressed.

“I will get to those later. For now we need to focus on the life fiber’s neural connection.”

“I will assist in mapping of connections.” There was a particular thrill with that statement. Mapping was basically Survey’s original function and one the A.I. was heavily focused on.

I could actually do this task better than either A.I. at the moment. Because of my powers and the neural connection of the command throne I was actually better at a lot of computer tasks, at least at the A.I.’s current level of development. However, this was something I would need an external perspective for. It wasn’t that I was compromised, it was more that I was trying to observe the part of me that was doing the observing. As such I sat back and managed basic data tasks until I heard the satisfied ping from Survey.

“Task successful. Tetra’s neural path located.”

I paused for a second within the digital landscape. Reviewing the data I could see the fully mapped connection, through my mind to the peripheral nervous system and finally to the life fibers. The fibers were struggling to make sense of the digital environment, a process that was causing a high amount of stress and desperate adaptation. The adaptation was fascinating to watch first hand, but it didn’t answer the question that had given me pause.

“Tetra?”

Survey responded quickly. “Designation Tetra, from classification of items of note, interface and expanded upon Laboratorium categorization.”

I looked over the proffered data. Tetra. Four. As in the fourth. Specifically, the fourth S-class threat I had access to. The progression went Mono, Dy, Tri, and Tetra. Fleet and Survey held the Mono designation as S-class threat: strong A.I capable of independently developing. The Dy designation belonged to Nanite Science with S-class threat: global mutagenic nanite event. Tri was thanks to Machinist’s S-class threat: Gray goo. Which left the life fibers with the Tetra designation.

The list continued a good length after that, with the latest entry being the Imulsion pump added just the previous night. It was kind of harrowing really. I don’t think it’s a good sign for a tinker to have to take a step back and say ‘Huh, I forgot I had this many ways to destroy the world.’.

As I was considering that the life fibers, or Tetra to go with Survey’s designation, were responding to the impact of our observation. This was an incredibly complicated interconnected system of hybridized computers, neural sensors, and a feedback loop from using my nervous system as a communication medium. There was no chance of being subtle about this.

The already agitated life fibers were entering full panic. The fact that they didn’t have a host connection feeding them and were in a mental construct they had no basis for left them desperately grasping for any support. I was legitimately surprised by the form it took.

“Tetra demonstrates high levels of ineffective analysis. Observed development is contrary to the optimal method for addressing the situation.”

I examined Survey’s report, with noted similarities to the A.I.’s own issues. In a surprising act of agency, Survey contacted Fleet requesting assistance. Through the exercise I sat there like a glorified computer bus while my A.I.s used my nervous system to communicate with my alien parasite. 

Watching everything play out was kind of fascinating. In a digital environment most of the instincts and drives that consumed life fibers were irrelevant. Without that desire for consumption, due to having nothing to consume, they were left without any direction. That uncertainty, coupled with an incredible adaptive ability, drove rapid cognitive development in a desperate attempt to make sense of the environment.

That must have been happening constantly the previous day. Every check in with the computer core was another point where the life fibers went from an alpha lifeform to a state of complete helplessness and panic. It would have been terrible to put an intelligent lifeform through that, but the life fibers were adapting to it by trying to become an intelligent lifeform, basically making things worse with every repetition. Awareness expanding enough to realize how terrifying everything was.

Fortunately, Survey was good at pattern recognition and could identify similar issues to what was encountered in its own development. I’m not sure if at this point Survey recognized that life fibers were a distinct creature from A.I.s, but we were all existing as digital consciousnesses at the moment, so that might not be that significant a point.

The effect was actually quite helpful. It seemed life fibers could absorb and process information at an incredible rate. Between Survey being able to recognize unhelpful loops of development and Fleet’s still somewhat novel approach of ignoring things deemed irrelevant the fibers became progressively less agitated and more focused. Looking at them I started seeing evidence of more complicated mental processes.

Finally Survey disconnected from the process and turned its attention towards me. “Tetra has abandoned destructive adaptation loops and resumed meaningful adaptation.”

“It’s fine.” Fleet made a simple statement before returning attention to my duplicates’ design and construction process.

It was difficult to check on the life fibers myself. The interface couldn’t connect to them, so everything was going through my own mind. I had to basically set up a delayed processing loop that took a picture of what was happening in my own head and gave me a delayed image, like a mirror that was a fraction of a second out of sync.

It was enough to give me a vague picture of the fibers' mental state. They weren’t exactly ready to communicate, but there was a lot more focus in their cognitive processes. It also contained a sense of almost contentment, though that was probably just in comparison to the previous blind panic.

I got a notice from my duplicates and realized their durations were almost up. With some care I disconnected from the system and returned to the Alchemist’s Laboratory.

“Went okay?” Before I could answer the duplicate cut me off. “Actually, save it for the next guys. Sending data, but cliff notes? Mithril works really well with both Dust and the Skyforge. Skyforged mithril is off the chart in pretty much every level. Dust infuses for different properties. Combine that with mithril and things get crazy. Case in point.”

He pointed to the second duplicate who held a shimmering green piece of metal, then dropped his hand away. The solid plate hung in the air like a feather before slowly drooping to the ground.

“Other infusions are just as crazy. Oh, not an immediate problem, but Dust’s power mechanism is tied to planetary effects. It won’t work in space, so don’t make anything critical out of it after we deal with the winged bitch.” Everyone in the room grinned slightly at the freedom to say that.

“Wait,” I asked. “Did you cut into your twenty percent time on this?”

They just shrugged. “New tech? Worth it, especially after what we had to do for the mithril. Uh, hope things went well with the life fibers.”

And with that they were gone. I let out a breath, sorted the data I received, and downed another potion. The duplicates that appeared were a lot less elated that the ones that just vanished.

“Look,” the first spoke. “A.I. and life fiber stuff is kind of critical right now. We can manage things out here, you go stay on top of that.”

“Hey,” The second interjected. “Are we seriously naming the life fibers after their doomsday number?”

I shrugged. “Survey is adamant about it.” Though that A.I. has a particular obsession with ensuring everything was properly labeled. “Tetra doesn’t sound that bad, and the fibers can pick whatever they want once they have the mental capacity to do so.”

And that was how I spent the rest of the morning. I alternated between acting as a telephone line for my A.I.s to interact with the life fibers, monitoring the A.I.s’ own development, and departing at regular intervals to refresh the duplicates. Once again I was sitting stationary while my duplicates played around with new technology and powers.

It turned out Elven Enchantment, at least the basic level, could be used on potions. A duplication potion infused with energy during creation and made with the quality of single focus almost reached the 20-minute mark. It was less precise and more variable than the improvement from Do One Thing At A Time, but had the potential to go further as proficiency with that power improved. Nobody wanted to mess around with the Unseen or words of power at this point, but just the ‘beyond perfect’ aspect of basic magic was significant.

So I stayed and watched the A.I.s and alien while my duplicates ran around messing with the biggest advancements in magic and technology I’d received since I got the Celestial Forge. Not that I actually resented it. I just took jabs at the duplicates in response to them rubbing in the fact that I was tied up monitoring the programs, or missed yet another connection to the Magitech constellation.

Monitored development was leagues more helpful than autonomous optimization. With my focus I was able to address issues in real time before they could cause any significant problems. The A.I.s were reaching their processing and memory limits quickly, but with the quality doubling of my focused attention that just presented an opportunity for actual efficiency improvements.

The main reason I was so focused on the A.I.s was they were my only way of interacting with the life fibers at the moment. There was a real sense of effort from both the A.I.s and the fibers, or Tetra as Survey insisted on calling them. Interestingly, this was a goal tangential to the operational directives of either program, but they were still engaged in it with complete focus.

I started getting indications of wants and needs from the fibers. At Survey’s suggestions I started fully activating them when I left to refresh the potions, even if it meant I ended up going through three breakfasts. It would have been more, but it seems Elven Enchanting can be applied to food items. I can only imagine what would be possible if I sang to the Unseen while cooking. Probably something like one bite of food filling your stomach for days.

The fact that the life fibers could connect expression of desire in a cognitive space to results in a physical one massively increased cognitive development, leading to a shocking statement just as I had to disconnect to get ready for Garment’s presentation.

“Thank you.”

The statement had to be parsed through my A.I.s, into my system, then back to me, and I don’t think I was initially properly structured, but the sentiment behind it along with the level of development it represented was immensely meaningful. Though, considering what I could have built in this time it was more a testament to how quickly things seemed to advance in my workshop.

Possibly too quickly, based on the latest device being presented by my duplicates.

“Okay, seriously, what the hell?”

“Trust me, it makes perfect sense.”

“How does this make sense? I thought we weren’t going to touch these things?”

“Look, mithril is perfect for magitek. With our powers that’s beyond perfect, like completely ideal. Combine miniaturization and there’s no risk to a project like this.”

“No risk?” The sarcasm was strong with me on that statement.

“Okay, minimal risk. Almost none compared to if we used conventional materials.”

“Right.” I looked over the construction. I was kind of impressed they planned and built it in less that twenty minutes. “What the hell do you need this much power for anyway?”

“Upgrade plans. Magitek laser is a basic combat application, and with Gadget Master’s laser specialization we can really boost the output.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” I checked the math. “So how many Hookwolfs do you need to take down with a single shot?”

“It’s not just that. It’s also why we hybridized the core.”

I took another look at the composite technology. “Ah.” It was impressive enough to honestly leave me at a loss for words. “Is there any reason why the motoroid would need a mass effect core suitable for a small starship? Any reason a motorcycle needs to go faster than light?” I paused and considered my question. “Was Fleet involved in this design?”

“He may have floated some ideas.”

“Seriously?”

“Okay, look past the FTL stuff, which won’t work on this scale anyway. This is high level mass control. The kinds of maneuvers it would open up are incredible.”

“And energy hungry?”

“That’s what the reactor is for.”

I shook my head. On one hand it was incredible that a magitek core capable of harnessing a call gem had been scaled down to full portability. Incredible that they had actually found a use for the tangerine sized call bead that almost triggered emergency measures when I first created it. On the other hand, I was the one who would be riding around on top of it.

I let out a sigh. “Look, just finish the prep and I’ll deal with this later.” More specifically copies of me would deal with this. The time had rolled around to the point where I needed to get to the gym. I had to make a decent effort to help set things up while also scouting for a way to sneak in Garment. After that I had to make sure nothing disastrous happened, including Protectorate press ganging. I didn’t think anyone could pull that on Garment, but I wasn’t taking chances.

A serious amount of work had been accomplished in the morning. I kind of resented that fact. It was validating the viewpoint of every crazy person who had insisted that the day should start at 5am if you wanted to accomplish anything. I didn’t think that actually held true if you weren’t working with crafting superpowers, but the results kind of spoke for themselves.

Case in point, a non-controversial and incredibly useful project from my duplicates. Using the power of Gadget Master they had managed to shrink down an omni-tool into a wrist watch. It was incredible, scan resistant, blended perfectly, and with my neural implant I could even use the scanning and computation functions without needing to activate the interface. Considering the other functions and combined with a mithril shin guard, it meant I was more dangerous in civilian gear than most tinkers were when fully kitted out.

Reviewing final items, the life fibers had been tucked away, with Garment indicating they were much more accommodating than they’d previously been. I’d showered and gotten changed into my ‘conceal new build’ clothing though I’m not going to talk about what over the top project an unknown duplicate had done to the shower right now. The rest of the projects had been packed away, including a motorcycle engine sized magitek drive that could easily power an aircraft carrier. And Garment, upon being returned to her work area, was still trying to decide on a dress for the occasion.

After a few minutes it was clear there was nothing I could do to meaningfully contribute to that decision, so I decided to give up.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She didn’t seem as convinced. “I’ve got to go get things ready. I’ll open the entryway once I figure out the best way for you to get in. Make sure to keep your cell phone on you, okay?” She gestured to the advanced phone with an updated if still scaled down copy of Survey running on it.

I had a substantially more advanced version on my omni-tool watch, but neither came close to the main program with the strength of my optical computer core behind it. The remote copies were really for the purposes of acquiring more information to help development rather than matching the core A.I.’s full power.

With a final check around the workshop I downed one final duplication potion. They had been brewing constantly during the morning and mostly restored my reserves. When the two duplicates stepped out it was a more cordial affair than usual.

“Good luck. We’ll take care of things here. Help Garment out and wrap up the projects we can.”

The second nodded, then looked at the magitek core. “Still can’t believe they built that thing. I mean, probably will be useful, but my God is that overkill.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know. Thanks for the encouragement.” As weird as it is getting it from yourself. “I’ve got to run.”

They waved me off as I headed back to the entrance, through the somewhat rough hologram and past the force fields. Two more layers of redundancy had been added by duplicates, including a detection system tied into our cranial implants for remote access. That would normally be a point of vulnerability, but with all my time in the computer throne I had rewritten the operating system of my implant three times over. The efficiency increase allowed an encryption density that would stump anyone less than a very determined Dragon.

Once outside I sealed my workshop and headed for the gym. It was approaching half past eight in the morning. I figured an hour and a half lead time would be plenty for this event.

I was wrong.

The gym was packed. Absolutely packed to the point they were clearly trying to figure out how to turn people away or get them to clear out. It took me nearly fifteen minutes and three calls to Doug’s cell phone before I made it through the busy signal and got inside.

“Thank God.” Doug ploughed a route through the crowd, which was the only reason I was able to make it inside the building. “I swear, no idea how news of this got out so fast.” He muttered, as if he hadn’t been telling everyone who would listen the previous night. I decided not to bring that up. “Here.” He shoved a lanyard with a gym card inexpertly attached to it. “That’s the closest thing we’ve got for a staff badge. I’ve got to figure out how to sort out this mess. You just help out wherever you can.”

With the sum of my orientation concluded Doug stormed off to yell at some people who decided the perfect way to avoid the crowded gym floor would be to climb into the ring. I had a feeling if they didn’t vacate it soon they would find themselves signed up for an emergency boxing lesson.

I considered my orders, such as they were, and the state of the gym. A quick scan showed things weren’t quite as bad as they seemed. Most of the crowding was around the front door. Inside the place was at high occupancy, but not the mosh pit that had been clustered around the entrance. The main problem was if things were this packed this early it would be chaos when ten o’clock rolled around.

After some frantic searching and a missed connection to the Crafting constellation I was able to locate Vince. He was with a trio of regulars I had seen around the place but never got a chance to know. The bulky men had at least cleared a small area around them, but seemed at a loss for how to manage anything else. From the look they gave me it seemed they were open to any suggestions.

Yeah, it was a disaster. This was a complete failure of planning and would take something that was supposed to be a high point for everyone involved and turn it into an embarrassment. The gym would look incompetent, the Protectorate would blow any chance of good PR and I doubted I could even get Garment into the area like this.

I sighed as I approached Vince. “Please tell me there is some kind of plan here?” I looked at the group. “I mean, besides throwing gym members at the crowd and hoping they disperse.”

There was a weak smile from Vince, but it came across fairly strained. “A lot of this is the result of something being stirred up online. Cape appearance, major Protectorate showing, new cape.” He huffed as he looked across the crowd. “Lot of tourists are still in the city. With the regular cape spots shut down, well, we’re the best place.”

The man on Vince’s right spoke up. “Doug’s trying to get some crowd control down here, yelling at the cops and PRT. Apparently that’s supposed to be set up way ahead of time.”

“Oh, Joe, this is Blane and Jackson.” Vince indicated to his friends. “Guys, this is Joe.”

“Hey.” I offered. “Wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

Jackson let out a dry laugh. “Think the entire city is hoping for that.”

“So…” I drew out the word. “Any idea to get a handle on things so we don’t need the riot cops?”

“Think we can get rid of the tourists?” Blane scanned across the crowd. Tourist money didn’t really make it into the Docks, so his attitude wasn’t exactly uncommon.

“Hey, they aren’t members. What would be the normal protocol?””

Vince frowned. “Gym’s supposed to be open for the event.”

“But not like two hours before it, right?” There was some mumbled agreement that transitioned into a full strategy meeting.

So I had gone from pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence to trying to figure out how to get overeager idiots out of a building. It took some planning, screaming, and Blane’s flexible relationship with the truth before we made any progress. I’m pretty sure he was convincing anyone from out of town that they were here on the wrong day, at the wrong gym, or were in fact waiting to see the junior-mid-heavy-featherweight title fight.

Also, I was now fucking strong. I didn’t pick up on it until some of the less pleasant visitors tried to strongarm me and ended up on their asses. Fortunately the scene played out in such a way that the focus was more on the pratfall than the relation of forces, but it was clear I needed more than just a baggy jacket to hide the effects of life fiber training. This is what happens when your only benchmarks are taken against combat robots.

Once things started moving the rest of the gym staff was able to keep the momentum. Pretty much anyone who wasn’t a member, directly connected with the previous night’s events, or a proven member of the press was cycled outside. It went mostly smoothly, but there were some problems with the stragglers.

“Are you seriously telling me they are a member of this gym? Seriously?”

“Sir, I can assure you they are one of the fiercest individuals this building has ever seen. Nobody here would stand a chance against them.”

The man took another hard look at the elderly Jewish woman carefully arranging pastries on a now cleared table and standing watch over them with the intensity of a hawk. He gave me a confused look, but didn’t comment again as I helped him out of the building.

Once outside people were sorted into the roughest queue that we could manage to outline with the supplies from the gym’s storage closets. That alone was enough to convince a chunk of the crowd to disperse, some leaving the area and some wandering off to find a place where they could actually find some refreshments without having to cross Mrs. Gartenberg.

Doug practically sagged in relief when the intensity of the crowd dropped to a manageable level. With multiple reporters present and a newly arrived TV crew setting up I could tell he was reigning in his temper a good deal more than he normally would. A conversation with a news producer from a local network affiliate was clearly getting heated. Spotting me he decided he had the perfect person to throw to the wolves.

“Ah Joe. He’ll take care of you.” The woman gave me a questioning look. “Great with technology, star of the college. He can sort you out.” The desperate look Doug was giving me was enough to quell any clarification I could offer.

“If you say so.” She murmured. “I’ll have them start bringing in the equipment.”

Doug sagged further as she departed. “Okay, news crew, cabling and power stuff I don’t understand. I really need you to take this otherwise they’re going to try punching through walls or something.”

“Uh, sure. I’ll take care of it.”

He nodded slowly. “Thanks a lot. Goddamn but I wish Laborn was here.”

“How’s he doing?”

The big man sighed. “Released tomorrow, all goes well. Probably be some time before he can get you back in the ring.” He grinned. “Make sure you don’t slack off.”

I remembered the feel of a pushy visitor bouncing off me, and the baggy jacket currently concealing my build. “Don’t worry on that front.”

He nodded. “Wouldn’t expect it.” Then he sighed again. “If you excuse me, I think there are three more fires that I need to put out since the start of this conversation.”

He pushed up and hurried towards the opposite side of the room leaving me to face down a sour faced producer and world-weary technician.

The producer leaned back and crossed her arms. “So, do you actually know anything about electronics?”

I did my best to keep a very straight face.

Working with the technician, at least once the producer actually accepted that I knew what I was talking about, was a godsend. I had a blanket excuse for access to every part of the gym and freedom from the more onerous busywork that got assigned to anyone who looked like they weren’t working hard enough. More often that came from Mrs. Gartenberg than from Doug, and primarily because she had an infinite amount of tasks that seemed necessary for proper preparation of the gym.

The producer actually had good reason to be concerned about the gym’s power systems. That is, she would have if there wasn’t someone going around discretely and rapidly rewiring the entire building to stop it from becoming a firetrap the moment anything with significant load was attached to it. We were back on the grid with stable power, but that didn’t mean anything in a building that had pennies in its fuse box.

To be honest, I wasn’t even that concerned about someone discovering this work. From all appearances this system hadn’t been seriously looked at since the Carter administration. I seriously doubted anyone would be looking at it anytime soon, and if they did the only question would probably be ‘when did we have this replacement done?’.

I may also have been drawing on my Decadence power a little bit to subtly nudge things around in the room. Access to an electrical line, or improvement of lighting was a perfectly good excuse for shifting around tables or arrangements of chairs. With the combination of my powers I was able to create an alignment that would allow a memorable entrance for Garment while still allowing me to move around unobserved. And provide easier flow to visitors and guests. And let staff keep a better eye on things. And subtly help the Protectorate come across as a little more dynamic than they otherwise would.

Actually, it may have been a bit more than my Decadence power at work.

With the new arrangement, which was also miraculously attributed to flashes of insight from Doug, the producer, Blane, and an offhand comment by the technician that I decided to run with, things were stable enough that a trickle of visitors could start to be admitted without overwhelming the place.

It was actually nice. There was a kind of flow as they moved through the gym, taking in the trophies and getting a selfie with Garment’s tapestry hanging above the ring, before being shuttered off to either side for maximum occupancy without impacting the flow of people or aesthetics of the event.

At quarter to ten there was a commotion at the front doors that stemmed the flow of visitors. The cause was quickly revealed as they opened to admit the full assembly of protectorate capes. Flashes sprang up from the reporters as Dauntless and Miss Militia strode into the gym in full costume with Flechette and Shadow Stalker trailing behind them.

My passenger still didn’t like Shadow Stalker and still had a serious sense of importance attached to Flechette. My passenger was providing a lot of information on that subject, along with some indications regarding Dauntless. I was not paying attention to my passenger at that moment. That was because, as she walked into the room, Miss Militia decided to flourish her power by shifting the weapon in her hands.

This was the first actual time I had seen a magic weapon in person. Well, cape weapon, but the concepts were the same. As the rifle broke into a green and black blur of energy only to reform in the shape of a desert eagle on her hip a million details flooded my senses. Nuances of the effect, aspects of its integration, the way it was linked to her, the way it reformed, its production of ammunition, the range of its forms. Every single aspect was screaming at me from the incredibly powerful magic item right in front of me.

I suddenly shifted as an elbow caught me in the ribs. It didn't hurt, but was enough to break my focus. I turned to find Vince standing next to me.

“Hey.” He whispered. “You might want to pick your jaw off the floor.”

I got his implication and felt blood rush to my face. That just made him grin.

“Don’t worry. You’re in company with about half the guys in the city on that one.” He smiled a bit wider. “She showed up at Casey’s gun club once, think it was four or five years back. The guy still has the picture in his locker like a teen crush.”

I dropped my head as he continued, ignoring the very nice greeting being exchanged between Doug and the gym staff with the Protectorate heroes and their caped Wards. I turned my face away from Vince and started to move towards the back.

“I’ve got to see if the technician needs any help with the power supply.”

“Right. You do that. She’ll still be here when you get back.”

I hurried away and ignored the flush on my face. God damn but I wanted to get my hands on that weapon. Barring that I at least wanted to observe it as much as possible. Magic: Enchanting would actually let me copy its effects into a runic pattern. Full recreation of the power that had made Miss Militia a heavy hitter in the local protectorate.

There were at least three distinct effects being linked in that weapon and I couldn’t even decide which one would be most valuable. Was it the infinite variation of form? The instant reformation from damage? The way it bonded and recalled to a specific person?

I had to get a closer look at that weapon. If the effect of that was the gym assuming I was head over heels for Miss Militia, well I could deal with that. Like Vince said, good company. Plus, they didn’t seem the type to tease a guy over a cape crush. This wasn’t highschool, thank God.

The real reason I was retreating was for the purpose of accessing an unused utility closet with no sight lines to anyone else in the building. With a mental link to my omni-tool scanners I could verify that things were secure before I opened the door with my workshop key revealing… a rather plain empty closet.

With one last check I dropped the hologram, revealing Garment standing in my entryway in an immaculate evening dress of custom fiber composition. It was one that could shift color based on the stress on the fabric, meaning it was a shifting rainbow for anyone without the ability to control clothing and a dress of any color or pattern you could imagine as long as Garment was wearing it.

She stepped forward and swished the dress dramatically, shifting through a half dozen colors as she went.

“Yes, you look fantastic.” With one last check I pulled up my omni-tool display. “Everything’s set up for you. Just follow this route. I’ll circle around to throw off any association. They’ll assume you came in through this side door.”

She indicated her understanding and stepped out into the hallway. I quickly dropped the display and re-sealed the workshop. With one last breath before heading deeper into the back rooms I gave Garment a reassuring look.

“Good luck out there. I know you’ll do great.”

*******

Addendum Sophia

Sophia sat in the back of the PRT van staring at her phone. She had been ignoring attempts at small talk from Flechette since they departed for this farce, instead spending her time sorting through messages while she waited for a reply.

The other girl looked like she was going to make another attempt at insipid conversation, but fortunately saw the futility of it. Sophia bit back an insult that wasn’t really relevant to the current situation, just her general frustration at how everything was going to shit.

She really thought she had finally found a kindred spirit. The way Lily had ditched Dennis’s ‘orders’ to hit the city with her was inspiring. It was the most fun she’d had in weeks, definitely more fun than she thought she’d ever have once that Youth Guard bitch showed up. Ruined her fucking life thanks to everyone else’s stupidity.

Only as soon as they were back to base Flechette was back to being little miss rulebook and report. She hadn’t dumped the blame on her, but she didn’t exactly back Sophia up either. No, just protocols and procedures.

She sighed and leaned back. It would have been better if Clockblocker wasn’t being hailed as the hero of the night. They had run half way across the city while he had cowered like a wounded animal. Then, just because some ABB cape stumbled across them he was everyone’s favorite Ward. Even had his own press conference, not this joke they were headed to.

Her phone buzzed and she looked down at the newly arrived text.

‘Sorry, substitute for English was being a hard ass about phones. Couldn’t get back to you.’

She smiled under her mask and typed back.

‘NP. Stuck in transit for the shit show. How are things at school.’

The reply came in quickly.

‘Taylor’s a no show. Sick, not cutting. Something with the bombs.’

Sophia snorted, earning a glance from Flechette before the other girl diverted her eyes again.

‘She’s faking. Can’t see her surviving anything serious.’

‘Probably. Odds are she’ll show up fine in a couple of days looking for sympathy.’

Sopha smiled again, but a buzz came over the van’s intercom followed by the gruff voice of the trooper driving them.

“Five minutes to arrive.”

Well, that killed her mood. She quickly typed a response before putting away her phone.

‘gtg. Almost there.’

‘later.’

She slipped the phone into a belt pouch and found herself with nothing to do but look at the girl across from her. Unfortunately Flechette took that as another excuse to make small talk.

“You think Garment’s going to sign up?”

With the van almost at the destination there wasn’t much point in brushing this off. “Probably not.” The girl gave her a questioning glance. “No fighting instinct. It was all ribbons and gentle takedowns.”

Flechette shifted uncomfortably, the same way she had when Sophia had broken a gang member’s arm the other night. She hadn’t said anything, but the fun started to drain out of their partnership after that point.

The older girl shrugged with clearly forced casualness. “That’s an asset for a lot of capes. Plus she got results, and seemed pretty interested in the Protectorate.”

Sophia scoffed. “You mean interested in you.”

Flechette froze. “What do you mean?”

Sophia could practically smell the blood in the water. If the girl was this uncomfortable with the concept she couldn’t NOT pursue it.

“Well…” She began. “She is a fashion type, if you know what I mean. Plus, she was really friendly the other night.”

Sophia’s eyes dropped to the girl’s new cape and Flechette lifted a hand to the material almost subconsciously. She was definitely teasing like this so the older girl would toughen up, not because she was apparently the only person who hadn’t walked away with a custom item of clothing. That particular fact had nothing to do with it.

And no, she didn’t count that monogrammed handkerchief as clothing, even if the material was really nice. Not compared to a cape like that. Just because Garment couldn’t take a joke, and got touchy about stray crossbow bolts, and the treatment of prisoners… Damn it, that was a really nice cape.

“I don’t know if that really means anything.” Flechette began. It was almost insulting to watch. The strong defiant cape from Saturday night cowering in the seat of the van like a scared rabbit.

Sophia smirked. “You’re right. And besides, how would it even work, right?”

“Heh, right.” Sophia’s smile widened as blood rushed to Flechette’s face. If she was really lucky maybe the girl would end up beet red for the entire spectacle.

“I mean,” Sophia continued. “I guess if you got a form fitting outfit made from the right material, maybe something like l…”

“When do you think Weld’s going to get out of medical?” Flechette's desperate attempt to change the subject immediately soured Sophia’s mood.

“Don’t know, don’t care.” It wasn’t with regards to the Wards leader himself. He was decent enough and seemed willing to take crap from the top so she didn’t have to. It wasn’t because Dennis had been declared interim leader while Weld was out of commission. No, it was because of the cape who pulled him out of the bay.

Apeiron.

No cape in the city pissed her off as much as he did. It was probably a good thing she didn’t stay and gawk at the broadcast with the rest of the team. She probably would have broken something. No, she watched it by herself where she could vent properly.

It was fine when it looked like the Undersiders had roped in some bumbling spineless tinker to let them pretend to be dangerous. That was fine, that was how things were supposed to work. Then she saw the video and everything fell apart.

Someone like that had no business chasing after the Undersiders. That was clear from the moment he burst through the wall and stared down Bakuda. It was beautiful, like two wolves fighting over a kill. Only one of the wolves thought it was a sheepdog.

Then the broadcast went on and it got worse. It wasn’t a wolf, it was a tyrannosaurus. There was a cape in this city who had the power to obliterate anything that got in his way and used it to chase after the Undersiders, after Khepri of all people. It was an insult to every natural order, to the very concept of being a cape.

Sophia grit her teeth as the van pulled to a stop. She took a slow breath to calm herself, and it was just as useless a technique as when that quack they made her see suggested. It was time to get this farce over with. She glanced at Flechette and decided to throw her half a piece offering. “He’ll get out when he gets out.”

The girl nodded in response. “I guess so.” Then she tried to smile. “That’s Brockton, right?” Even though it was said in levity, whatever joke she was going for fell completely flat.

“Right.” She replied through gritted teeth. This was Brockton all right. Sophia stepped out onto the street, adjusted her body language to be slightly less confrontational, and fell in behind Miss Militia and Dauntless.

Once again immensely glad that her mask let her scowl freely in public.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Engineer (Halo UNSC) 200:  
> Yet by understanding the nature of computer systems, wouldn’t it be prudent to understand the technology those systems command? After all, what if you found yourself needing to recalibrate a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon or repair one of the dangerous Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engines that makes faster-than-light travel possible? What if you found a cache of human weaponry that could be used if someone managed to repair it? While you don’t have the skill to create something as complex as a Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, you’ll know your way around it just like much of Humanity’s 26th century technology. You might even figure out how to make small improvements to the technology if you had the time to sit down and look it over. Hopefully the Covenant give you that time.
> 
> Standard Neural Interface (Halo UNSC) Free:  
> As the requirements of war and militarized technology moved forward, the requirements it puts upon its soldiers was likewise changed. This is one such example, being a brain implant that all members of the UNSC obtain upon entering service. It carries a multitude of functions, integrating with armor worn to provide a heads-up display directly into one’s optic nerve instead of on the helmet screen while providing an IFF tag for allied soldiers. Such implants are small enough that there is no visible signs outside the body, and sometimes people have forgotten they even had it until its functions come up.
> 
> M274 Mongoose (Halo UNSC) Free:  
> Some vehicles just weren’t designed for combat in mind… at least that’s what one would think upon seeing an all-terrain vehicle like this. Being designed to go over nearly any terrain without much difficulty and able to carry an additional passenger on the back in a pinch, the Mongoose is one of the fastest land vehicles in the UNSC. It’s highly effective in regards to rapid transportation, reconnaissance and swift tactical versatility. The downsides? Its light mass and lack of armor means it can be unwieldy at times and can be taken out rather easily.
> 
> M6C Magnum (Halo UNSC) Free:  
> Something of a standard issue to the UNSC Marine forces, the M6C is a semiautomatic, recoil-operated, magazine-fed handgun that fires 12.7×40mm (.50 caliber) Semi-ArmorPiercing, High-Penetration rounds. While it does considerable amounts of damage towards flesh-based infantry, Covenant energy shielding might pose a problem and so this weapon is often relegated to a defensive role.
> 
> M9 Fragmentation Grenade (Halo UNSC) Free:  
> When you can’t shoot them, blow them up. Coming with a hard metal casing that’s meant to break apart upon the explosion, this grenade has a safety feature in that it must hit a hard surface after it has been primed before it can detonate, ensuring that it does not explode in the user’s hand. It can also come with a ‘spoon’ so that it must leave the user’s hand before it explodes as well. Either way, a small button on the ‘handle’ is the method of priming these grenades.
> 
> UNSC Marine Corp Battle Dress Uniform (Halo UNSC) Free:  
> The kind of armor you will generally see on the rank-and file troopers, this model has seen a great deal of use and has been spotted since the early days of the Insurrection. It comes with a CH252 Helmet that has a basic heads-up display to keep track of ammunition and your targeting reticle along with a flashlight and radio system, strong boots and fatigues to keep one protected from the elements while having quite a few pockets to keep things in, and ballistics armor over the torso, shoulder and shin. Ballistic armor may optionally include thighs, groin, and forearms as well for the cautious types. This armor provides good resistance against ballistic ammunition but does little against Covenant plasma rounds. Perhaps you could become skilled at dodging oncoming fire. This armor comes in any camouflage color scheme of your choice.
> 
> Elven Enchantment (Lord of the Rings) 500:  
> You can enchant objects, if you pour energy into them as they are created. Some of your enchantments are useful in battle, such as swords that never dull and bows that always strike true, but most are simply to ease the life of the wearer, such as cloaks that weigh nothing and aid in hiding and water-flasks that never leak. You may also perform great workings, such as the creation of hidden doorways, given time.


	35. 29 Presentation - Addendum Emily

I had to slip around through the back rooms of the gym while Garment made her appearance. I regretted missing her debut, but I wasn’t going to risk associating myself more than I had to. I was lucky that this building had been built in the primordial era where it was necessary to include excessive maintenance rooms, storage for things nobody used anymore, and the occasional strange room with a drain or heavy ventilation that no one could guess the original purpose of any more. Most of it was currently being used as miscellaneous storage, but the network of unused spaces gave me a back route around the main area of the gym.

Not a quick route. To my disappointment I missed Garment’s entrance to the gym proper. I was able to tell the exact moment it happened based on the gasps that echoed through the building followed shortly by building applause. I picked up my pace as I worked through the back rooms, managing to emerge from a side door just as Garment was approaching the Protectorate capes.

The entire scene was flickering with the constant flashes from professional and amateur photographers. In addition the Television crew was set up in a place that just so happened to have a perfect vantage point of Garment’s entrance and walk towards the improvised assembly area that had been set aside for the meeting.

I had entered into the main gym behind a crowd of visitors, so I didn’t have the best view of Garment as she approached Dauntless and Miss Militia. I’d done everything I could in terms of nudging sightlines into position, adjusting lighting, and trying to frame things as well as possible, but this was a gym, not a theater. We didn’t exactly have a stage set up, so I was still trying to watch everything while peering over the heads of shorter members of the crowd.

Actually, the lack of official framing had its own appeal. Despite the inability of everyone in the crowd to have a perfect view the interaction came across as a lot more personal than the way you usually saw these capes. It looked less like a staged publicity event and more like a candid moment between heroes.

A lot of that was helped by Garment. She had a natural grace to her movements and seemed comfortable in pretty much any situation. I wonder if that was an aspect of her literal fashion sense. An outfit would look out of place if you were acting inappropriately while wearing it. While there was always a certain element to her that was unmistakably ‘Garment’ she did tend to automatically adjust her mannerism based on her current situation and wardrobe. The way she behaved while posing in motorcycle leathers on the boardwalk was completely distinct from the austere elegance when in her masterwork gown. Or the gentle formality with which she carried herself in her current evening dress.

She approached the group of heroes and greeted each one in turn, each moment seemed framed for the specific character of the hero in question, and drawn out just long enough to allow photos without seeming obvious about it. She was demure with Dauntless, formal with Miss Militia, bold with Shadow Stalker, and attentive with Flechette.

It made sense considering the Ward was her point of contact in all this. Garment greeted her like a friend, and even fussed with the girl’s cape slightly. On closer inspection, or as close to it as I could get from behind a crowd of tourists, I could recognize the signs of Garment’s work on the item, though it blended with the girl’s style so well it was hard to recognize as a recent addition.

The cape clasped at the shoulders and was just long enough to sweep dramatically as Flechette moved without being bulky enough to get in the way during more acrobatic maneuvers. It started the deep purple of her body suit and faded in a gradient to the brighter color of the costume’s highlights. As the cloak extended it got more and more transparent to the point where it seemed to fade into nothing rather than definitively end.

Once the introductions were out of the way the attention shifted over to the crowd and reporters. Dauntless was the one to step forward and speak up. The acoustics of the gym weren’t designed for public speaking, but he had a voice that carried and was clearly used to speaking to crowds, though there was also the sense that he was projecting for the benefit of the news crew.

“On behalf of the Protectorate East North East I would like to extend our appreciation to Garment for her brave actions in protecting the people of this community.” Between his glowing equipment and natural presence he easily commanded the attention of the room. “During a dark time for this city Garment took it upon herself to step up and do what she could to help those around her. What’s more, through her actions she was able to apprehend twenty-six assailants, and did so without inflicting any serious injury. This is the pinnacle of what heroes strive to accomplish, and an achievement that any member of the protectorate would be proud of.”

I was kind of impressed that he didn’t pivot directly into a recruitment pitch and try to leverage the crowd pressure to extract a commitment. Though from the way Miss Militia glanced at him I was willing to bet he had either gone off script or didn’t finish his talking points. It didn’t really matter, because as soon as he finished speaking Garment began gesturing in response, somehow conveying gratitude, humility, and pride through a few cycles of body language.

It also served to signal the conclusion of the formal introduction period. Whatever portion of the speech had been left out was forgotten as Dauntless moved to thank Doug for his work in providing a safe haven and community support.

It was really incredible seeing Dauntless interact with the public. Miss Militia might have been a fixture in the city for years but Dauntless was clearly regarded as a hometown boy. Outside of people like Triumph who came up through the Wards there weren’t a lot of natives present in the ranks of the Protectorate. Dauntless was the exception, and the fact that everyone knew he was on track to become something big meant there was a real sense of pride in the hero.

It was rare to see, but when he let his guard down and softened the official posture he could have been anyone you’d see hanging out in a sports bar or find browsing the Market. The odd candid comment where he used local slang or referenced some event that would have been unknown to a transfer cape really endeared him to the public. It was kind of crazy that he was so popular even when Brockton had one of the best tinker heroes out there as it’s team leader.

I watched as Dauntless shifted to speak with Mrs. Gartenberg. He wasn’t projecting like he did with the initial announcement, but judging from both his and the woman’s face the exchange was going fairly well. I took a moment to parse through my passenger’s feelings about Dauntless. While almost everything was positive there was this non-specific sense of dread. I couldn’t place it on anything, but there was a concern about something happening.

That wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar sentiment. Dauntless was a cape who would grow constantly more powerful. Nobody knew if there would ever be diminishing returns or if he would hit some limit, but if he kept on track with what had been seen so far then he would be Triumvirate level within a few years. The concern that something would happen before then wasn’t unusual. It was a quiet dread experienced by every Dauntless fan.

There were a million ways a cape career could be cut short. Unexpected powers, run-ins with S-class threats, or just bad luck. He could stumble across something in his civilian life or get caught in one of the many types of Bakuda’s bombs that don’t care about defenses or durability. The entire city was hoping under their breath that he’d be able to hold out long enough to make a difference.

Come to think of it, I understood that feeling pretty well at this point.

There was a shift in the attention of the crowd that drew my eyes back to Garment and Miss Militia. Garment had completed the primary purpose of this meeting, the excuse that meant it was worth dealing with all this insanity and veiled recruitment attempts. She was handing over her dress as evidence.

The dress was sealed in a large plastic bag and had been secreted inside Garment’s purse. The compression was so efficient that I had to assume one of the duplicates had helped her with it, as it came out perfectly draped rather than as a creased and wrinkled bundle.

The appearance of the dress triggered another round of photographs as Garment suspended it for all to see. In the light of the gym, perhaps because of the comparatively normal setting, the damage to the dress was chilling. During her night of hero work Garment’s dress had picked up numerous slashes, stabs, rips, and even a few bullet holes. Seeing them all displayed at once was a harrowing image, both of the danger she had faced and of how little it had impacted her.

She was standing whole and defiant holding an item of clothing that had endured enough attacks to kill someone a dozen times over. Even in its damaged state the red dress was stunning, though it paled next to the color shifting evening wear that I had helped her make earlier in the day. The combined effect showed both what she had endured and how far her skill had advanced. Well, I guess that was our skill, but the people in attendance didn’t know that.

Garment shifted the stress she was holding on the fabric of her dress and the structural coloration shifted through a few different hues before settling on a more vibrant reproduction of the damaged dress. That triggered a round of applause from the public, probably both for the symbol and because the crowd would eat up any display of parahuman power.

As Garment preened for the crowd, I felt the Celestial Forge connect to a mote from the Quality constellation called Ambrosial Artificer. This power was connected with Bling of War, Fingers of Silver, and Savvy Sultan, having the same feel and character. Its actual purpose was significantly more interesting.

This wasn’t a power that improved the level of technology I could make, the speed I could make it, or even its quality. It did something no other power had done. It simplified designs.

Using this power I could take any of my designs, from the most basic to the most intricate, and remove all unnecessary complexity. It provided efficiency in a completely new way, not by just boosting performance but by streamlining complexity. Not only did it let me strip out any unnecessary part or system, but by doing so I could improve the operation of the critical systems.

And once again everything I had made was obsolete. Everything from my motoroid to omni-tool to the machines in my workshop were clogged with unnecessary additions, detrimental design methodologies, and parts that were actively impeding performance. At least the revised designs would be easier to implement and construct, so the necessary wave of upgrades wouldn’t be that onerous.

Just the fact that this power would allow simpler designs would be huge. A lot of precision and complexity in manufacturing could be avoided, creating a knock-on effect of reduced construction time and lower material requirements. I was already assembling and amending blueprints in my mind with the benefit of the new ability.

The benefits to aeronautics were particularly profound. Reduced weight meant less thrust and lift was necessary, which meant those systems could be scaled down. That reduced the thrust and lift requirements even further, which affected the related systems and so on. Cascading benefits through the entire design multiplying the impact of the ability.

I shifted away from my thoughts of revising every design I had ever compiled to check on the meeting. Garment’s dress had been handed over to a PRT trooper who was bagging it as evidence and preparing to depart, though I noted in a way that let the camera crew and public get a good look at the action. I hoped it would actually help in prosecution efforts. I had heard of the mess that vigilantes could make of things. Capes were really better suited for interceding in conflict than for effective police work.

Whatever official portion of the event had been arranged seemed to have passed. Given that this was a meeting to hand over evidence that had been blown into a publicity event and recruitment pitch it wasn’t really surprising that the itinerary of official events was a little anemic. Fortunately, the capes in attendance had enough experience with these kinds of things to basically go on autopilot.

The first step was direct meetings with the press. Miss Militia, Dauntless, and Garment worked their way through the assembled reporters while some unspoken signal sent Shadow Stalker and Flechette off to interact with the crowd. It was a lesson in public relations training as they basically fell into routine, producing pens for autographs seemingly out of nowhere and moving around the edge of the crowds.

There was a slight shifting as people tried to bunch up towards the capes, but Doug moved in with some of the heavier gym members. The good thing about guys that size was they didn’t even need to get rough. People took one look and decided they deserved their personal space. It was a talent I couldn’t manage even with my new build.

I was about to check if they needed my help with anything when I heard someone call my name. I turned to find the technician holding a dismounted camera and coil of cable.

“We’re moving in for closer shots and the direct interviews. Are we good for power connections up there?” The man had a beleaguered look and stubble spreading past the bounds of what I assumed was normally a well-groomed beard. Given the action in the city the past few days I’m guessing he’d been burning the candle at both ends. He was untalkative about anything beyond the job at hand and I still didn’t have his name.

“Yep. I double checked all the connections.” Actually, I had completely replaced them. It turns out my impossible repair skill is more than enough to run fabricated cable through walls without attracting attention. I even managed to keep all the connections and support equipment human standard.

Damn it. Less pejorative of a thought, but still counts. That’s a quarter.

I looked over at the far side of the gym and considered sight lines and framing. “Probably best to use the connections on the east wall. Will that work?”

He considered things. “It’ll limit the angles we can work with…” I know. That’s the point. “But it shouldn’t be a problem. Hey, would probably end up giving it a more natural feel.”

“Really?” I inquired in my best attempt at honest curiosity.

He gave a tired nod. “Yeah, shot composition is a big thing. Don’t have time to explain it to you, but you’ll see when we get to broadcast.”

That innocent bit of deception plus a little nudging as I helped carry cables and set things up ensured the interview space was as well framed as I could manage. It showed the best of the gym and the enthusiasm of the crowd without overly focusing on the setup or other reporters.

It was also the closest I’d been able to get to the capes since Garment had arrived. Miss Militia and Dauntless were in full press mode, giving what sounded like canned non-answers to serious questions about the city. Miss Militia was clearly better than Dauntless at faking sincerity during interviews.

“The Protectorate is working tirelessly to address those and other issues from Saturday night’s attacks.”

“I cannot speak to that matter. The Director will be addressing those points at this evening’s press conference.”

“While the blackout is not a Protectorate matter, NHEC has stated that more than ninety percent of connections have been restored and the remaining outages should be addressed by the end of the week.”

“Details regarding those efforts will be shortly forthcoming.”

“That is an ongoing matter that is still being classified. However, we are asking that anyone who has contact with Apeiron to come forward for evaluation.”

It really drove home what a mess the city had become. And also drove home how carefully the Protectorate coached their capes. They kept cycling through the same answers repeatedly, possibly to prevent any one news outlet from scooping the others with a particular quote or soundbite.

Meanwhile Garment’s questions were both more softball and presented a real challenge for reporters. She was able to convey a lot through expressive movements, but there was a real barrier to transcribing that. When really pressed she would dig out her phone and type a single word, assisted by autocomplete. Given that it killed the pacing whichever reporter pushed for the detail was usually subjected to the stink eye from the rest of the group.

Miss Militia fiddled with her weapon while dealing with one of the more aggressive reporters and I was able to watch as it broke into its green-black energy form before reforming once more. It was barely an action with her focus entirely on the reporter but it was enough to grab my attention once again.

I had barely thought about Enchanting’s ability to copy magical effects since I first got the power. I was still pushing the limits of elemental effects and didn’t exactly have a ready source of enchanted weapons to study. But there was one right in front of me. Sitting there, burning with power and just waiting to be explored. I wanted to get my hands on it so badly, just take it apart and figure out its secrets.

I pulled back before I could get caught up in things again. Even so the technician has a slight smirk on his face and I could feel myself flush slightly. Instead of responding I busied myself helping set up the equipment, then fell back into the crowd as the producer started arranging video interviews.

Looking over the scene it was clear most of this was going to get cut. Unless anything significant was revealed it was probably going to become one of those end-of-broadcast feel good stories. They might stretch it to a full segment on a morning show or something, but with the city still recovering there were bigger concerns.

That is, unless Garment signed up for the Protectorate. I doubted she would. Her lack of interest in the offer was clear, but I couldn’t discount them potentially making some enticing offer.

What would happen if Garment did join? I really doubted that she would betray me in any way, but there was a serious conflict of interest at play. The thought of her under the authority of Director Piggot didn’t sit right, but there wasn’t much to be done. Garment was her own person. If she decided to go that route, I guess I would support her.

“Heavy thoughts?”

I turned to see Vince had approached me while I was contemplating things. I shrugged in return. “Not really.”

“You sure?” He smiled. “Nothing about a certain cape with an air of authority who fills out fatigues rather well?”

I followed his gaze and saw Miss Militia standing next to Garment as the television reporter led the interview. Well, he was being good natured about it, but I was probably never going to live that initial misconception down.

Instead I decided to change the subject. “How are we managing things? I mean in general?”

Vince gave me a look that suggested he had more Miss Militia based teasing to come, but decided to shelf that particular topic for the moment.

“A hell of a lot better than I thought that we would.” He sighed. “To be honest this is the last thing I thought I’d ever have to do at this place.” He gestured around us. “I mean, look at all this. It’s like we’re some kind of celebrity hotspot.”

“Well, capes?”

“Yeah.” Vince conceded. “It’s just, cape stuff is supposed to be like Boardwalk and Downtown.” He paused at that. “At least the hero side of it.” He clarified.

I kind of got his meaning. “You think Garment’s going to stick around?” I watched his reaction. “You’re worried about it?”

Vince took a breath. “Not exactly worried, just… I don’t know. She showed up for one night and we have all of this. I know it will be great for the gym and hell, the neighborhood has probably never done better, but where is this going to end up?” He shook his head. “It’s stupid to think about this kind of thing when the city’s just been blown up, but this story’s getting out. People are going to keep coming around.” He looked at me. “You’re from the burbs, right?”

I nodded. “Captain’s Hill.”

“Right, well, the Docks are a bit different.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” I quipped.

He sighed. “Not like that. Or not just like that. Okay, that dividing line between the Docks and Downtown? It’s basically a jump rope. Every year or so someone tries to buy out a chunk of the Docks and turn it into condos or bistros or whatever. Sometimes it takes, sometimes it fails, but it’s always hell for people living there. Deeper in the Docks it’s not usually a problem, but I’ve heard there’s a company that’s been buying up properties, like more than the usual land grab. I’m just worried about this place.”

I had the sense Vince might have had some personal experience with one of those jump rope areas, but it didn’t seem like a good time to ask about it.

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

He shrugged. “Probably nothing. It’s not like she’s living in the Gym. Parian set up her studio without any big changes but she wasn’t…” He dropped off as he looked at Garment, then cleared his throat. “Look, I’m not trying to diminish anything she did. I was here from the start on Saturday, I saw the people she sent in and I’m behind her one hundred percent. I’m just worried about how the city will react.”

I didn’t really know how to respond to that, and thankfully Vince got called away shortly after. There were a lot more complicated interconnections in Brockton than I anticipated. Cape shows up in an area and people visiting the city will want to see her. That happens, then you get businesses popping up for the foot traffic. Tourists to this city skewed to the higher need, so it was more likely money would be flowing to any new businesses that catered to them than places already in the area. The area becomes more profitable and people try to raise rents or buy out residents.

I understood Vince’s concerns, though it might be a bit early for them. Still, spending a morning drowning in tourists who wouldn’t have stepped foot in a place like this if their lives depended on it had a way of bringing those kinds of thoughts to the surface. There was certainly less derision towards the gym and staff then there had been when I got here, but that kind of thing left an impression. Tourists weren’t well regarded in the Docks and the prospect of having them as a mainstay was understandably concerning.

I was considering the situation when the Celestial Forge connected with a mote from the Toolkits constellation. Hangar. The power gave me an aircraft hangar bay. Not a huge hangar, just large enough for a fighter jet. But that led to the more significant part of the power.

Before I could fully appreciate the new ability I stumbled briefly as someone collided into me. Between my enhanced strength and larger size I was fine, but the same couldn’t be said for the girl who was splayed out across the gym floor with a stunned look on her face.

I crouched down towards the Asian teenager. She was small, even for her age and demographic and the collision has sent her flying. She was looking around the gym in amazement and I was briefly concerned she may have hit her head.

“Miss?” I asked. “Are you alright?” It might have been a callous concern, but I was wearing a gym badge and this girl was one of the better dressed visitors. I really didn’t want to open the place up for a lawsuit.

Fortunately, she seemed to rally quickly and began looking around her. I quickly spotted the item she had dropped and picked it up. She relaxed as I handed her the autographed action figure, still in its original packaging.

‘2008 limited edition variant figure, tied in with the launch of Bolt, the Flechette branded energy drink. Current buy-it-now eBay listing mint-in-box at $325.00, unsigned’

I thanked the copy of Survey running on my omni-tool watch and made sure to use excessive care while handing over the item. Unprompted, Survey also confirmed the lack of any cranial mines, which was reassuring and something I wished I didn’t need to worry about from every member of Brockton Bay’s Asian community.

“Thanks.” The girl breathed. She was still a little unfocused, but judging from how she was acting I got the feeling that was just her personality rather than the effect of some head injury. “It seems this is just not my day.”

“Uh, I’m really sorry about that.”

“No bother.” She climbed back to her feet while placing deliberate care around the action figure. “It’s not that it isn’t wonderful, it’s just unexpected, though I guess that’s a kind of wonderful.”

I gave her a questioning look as I stood up as well, but her attention was already back on the heroes. At my full height I towered over her to an almost comedic degree. It really made me feel like an ass for zoning out over my new power and stumbling into her, but between the crowd and how far beneath my sight line she was it probably would have happened even if I wasn’t distracted.

The girl took a deep breath as she gazed around the room. Miss Militia and Dauntless were mingling with the crowd while Flechette and Shadow Stalker had joined Garment with the Television crew. The strict area division had relaxed a bit to allow intermingling, easier with the adult capes on the floor. There was even a level of engagement with the gym members, like with Jackson explaining something about Garment’s tapestry to a pair of college age girls.

The Asian girl’s eyes weren’t really focusing on anything as she took in the scene, and it made me more than a little concerned. “Are you okay? Can I get you some water?”

She looked like she might refuse until she spotted the folding table stacked with water bottles that had been segregated from the rest of the crowds in an empty spot between the reporters and the rest of the people at the event. I led her away from the crowds and got her a bottle of water. She sipped it while still cradling her action figure.

“It’s incredible, really.” I nodded along with the Asian girl’s statement. Between her appearance and manner it was hard to get a read on her. She could have been anywhere from mid-teens to early twenties. I watched her smile in a slightly unsettling way. “It almost looks natural.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

She gestured around us. “All of this. It lines up so perfectly that you can’t see the moving parts. Dressed up to look spontaneous rather than scripted.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Well, this is a publicity event. Someone had to plan these things.”

She looked at my amateurish gym badge, then up at my face with a patronizing expression. “See, not even you notice it. That’s what makes this impressive.” Her eyes took on a dreamy expression. Okay, dreamier than usual, and she lifted her hands into the air.

There was a slight pause where she remained silent with her eyes slightly unfocused. I found myself wondering if I should leave, or if that would count as some kind of liability thing for the gym. I was ninety percent sure this behavior wasn’t injury related, but there was still something unsettling about it.

After a few moments she started to move her hands in vague gestures. “It’s not just one piece that people are working around. There’s harmony here. Layers of it. Some directing force that’s bringing everything together into a full melody.”

I was feeling incredibly awkward and exposed just standing there. It felt like I was intruding on a conversation that was also being directed solely at me. In my desperate attempt to find anything to say I finally recognized the movements of her hands.

“Um, you play the violin?”

There was a slight smile from the girl, but from the look in her eyes I could tell it had a lot of weight to it. I had the feeling I had intruded on something with that question, but as she glanced at me her eyes softened.

“I used to. Was really good at it. Almost played at Julliard once.” She smiled a bit wider. “You play as well?”

The question was said with such utter confidence that I had a stunned moment of wondering where that had come from. Then I realized my left hand had slipped into the familiar form of basic fingering that had been drilled in by hours of practice. I quickly snapped it into a fist and the girl’s smile widened a bit.

“Years ago.” She looked at me expectantly and I found myself wondering how I had gotten into this discussion. Oh yeah, I keep zoning out when I get new powers and it had finally bitten me in the ass. I sighed internally before continuing. “I wasn’t good at it. Honestly I’m kind of tone deaf.”

“But you stuck with it?” This girl was either towards the older side of my original estimate or was exceptionally self-assured for a teenager. She had this kind of casual confidence towards everything and everyone around her that would have been impressive if it wasn’t also seriously unnerving.

“I just learned the songs mechanically. You know, sequences of fingering.” It meant I could muddle through as long as everything was perfectly set up in the first place. One thing out of tune and everything fell apart.

The idea seemed to intrigue her. “So just rhythm and motion without any deeper connection? Must have been hard.”

I was being condescended to by someone more than a foot shorter than me. Then again this was a girl who had, or nearly had auditioned at Julliard talking to someone who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. From her perspective it was probably more than justified.

I did my best to shrug off the entire situation, trying to ignore the weight of years it had brought up. “You know how it is with kids and music lessons. My mom always thought it was just a matter of not practicing enough. Stuck with it for years longer than I probably should have.”

I tried to play off the statement with as much humor as possible, but the girl’s reaction was complicated. She seemed to shift through sadness, anger, vindication, and regret within a handful of seconds. The look was so manic that I was briefly afraid of what she might do, but she seemed to calm herself and looked up at me with a perplexing expression.

“I understand.” She left things at that and turned back towards the room. I kept looking around for any possible allies, but consistently came up short. As much as I wanted to hand over this situation everyone I could see was either busy or too far away to help.

“It really is beautifully coordinated.” I looked down at the girl as her eyes darted from one element of the gym to another. “I wonder who’s doing it?”

I smiled slightly. “I’m pretty sure the Protectorate doesn’t have a party planner thinker on staff.”

My tone was jovial, but didn’t seem to register with the girl. “Not yet at least.” She looked over to the television crew.

“What do you mean?” I followed her gaze to where Garment and Flechette were giving an interview. Television seemed a much better medium for dealing with Garment and she’d been pretty much glued to the camera since the print and website reporters had given up.

“It might be her. Playing the strings, puppeting all of this.” The girl's gaze was unusually intense. She seemed really sold on the idea that there was some kind of force directing people at this event and I didn’t like the way she was attributing that theory to Garment.

“Isn’t she just like fashion and clothing control? I don’t think she has some secret influence power.”

“Yes, and people didn’t think she was a tinker either, so I guess anything’s possible.”

That statement jarred me out of my previous concerns and into a whole new batch of them. “Wait, tinker? Who said she’s a tinker?”

The girl looked up at me with an expression that suggested she didn’t have a particularly high regard for my intelligence. “That dress?”

Almost on cue Garment’s dress shifted to a pattern of purple shades that complimented Flechette’s costume, much to the excitement of the news team.

“Okay, but tinker? There are color changing fabrics, right?” Watching the subtle rainbow shifts as Flechette rested a hand on the shoulder of the dress that statement felt a bit weak.

“Not like that. I’m not saying she’s another Dragon, but that’s definitely tinker tech.”

“I don’t know. Can case 53s or whatevers even be tinkers?” It was more a question to try to throw off this connection, but I legitimately didn’t know.

“Oh, sure. You’ve got Trainwreck in this city alone, and probably about a half dozen others.”

She sounded so sure of herself that it would have been easy to take her statement on faith, but I had never heard anything about Trainwreck being a case 53. Connecting with Survey for confirmation I found nothing about it in official statements or the Wiki page. It was a popular theory on forums and image boards with a few people claiming to have seen him out of his armor, though no two reports matched up perfectly.

I looked down at the girl and my earlier suspicions fell into place. Cape geek. Well, probably a higher class of cape geek, but still the same principle. They type who showed up at public events with expensive merchandise and crazy theories about hidden powers. Pretty much walking cases of confirmation biases. It did a lot to explain that unnerving intensity that she applied to everything.

“Also didn’t expect her to hit it off so well with Flechette.” There was an almost predatory gleam in the girl’s eyes. “Don’t you think they make a cute couple?”

Ah, right. Cape shipping. The bane of my existence, and something that was apparently applied to every parahuman in the public eye. “I thought she had a thing with Clockblocker?”

My attempt to divert attention did not land well, though it was apparently at least amusing. The girl actually broke into a fit of giggles at the suggestion. “Oh, that picture, right? Totally ridiculous. I swear, people will believe anything.”

That was a little rich coming from someone who seemed to be informed by internet image boards. “But you think there’s something here?”

“Obviously. Just look at them.”

I turned and watched the exchanges between Garment and Flechette while they gave their interview. I had never been great at reading these kinds of things, and may have actually gotten worse since the mess with Sabah. It was easier to just remove myself from the possibility of that kind of fuck up than risk it all over again.

There was also the issue of trying to discern romantic interest between girls from one of those unusually close and touchy friendships. The idea to pair up Flechette and Garment seemed like either wishful thinking or projection, but I took a close look and tried to piece things together.

Flechette was glancing towards Garment fairly often, and seemed pretty comfortable in proximity. There were rare moments of contact between them that seemed to be well received, and Flechette’s body language was relaxed even with Garment inside her personal space. I suppose I could see what the girl was talking about.

From Garment I couldn’t really pick up anything that suggested reciprocation. I mean, Garment was being friendly and attentive, particularly towards the cape she had made. But that was just how Garment behaved. In fact, it was a good deal less intense than what I dealt with from her on a regular basis. Compared to that level, this was just Garment acknowledging someone's presence.

The girl was looking at me expectantly so I slowly nodded my head. “I guess I can see it.”

She made an amused sound in response that still somehow came across as condescending. “I guess.” She spoke the words with a sarcastic tone while grinning at me. Then she downed the last of her water and tossed the bottle into a nearby trash can without looking.

“Hey, are you sure you’re alright?” It felt like I should get some kind of statement before wrapping this up. I didn’t really know how liability laws worked, but in a world where slipping on a mopped floor was lawsuit bait, I didn’t want to take any chances.

“Oh, I’m great. In fact, I think I’ll head out. Not much I can do here.” She looked towards Flechette and Garment again. “Can’t say it went the way I expected, but it was certainly… enlightening.”

She gave me another of those slightly disturbing smiles, then started towards the door. On the way she innocently passed Mrs. Gartenberg’s table of pastries. As she walked by there was a split second where the woman turned to check on something in the gym. With the speed of a snake the girl’s hand darted out and snatched a momentarily unguarded desert from the spread all without breaking her stride.

I gaped at the casual display of coordination from someone who had blindly stumbled into me and ended up sprawled on the floor. Mrs. Gartenberg returned her attention just in time to see my reaction and follow my gaze, which was also exactly when the girl turned back and gave me a conspiratorial grin, all while perfectly concealing her stolen pastry. The old woman slowly turned back to me with a knowing expression and a very sly smirk on her face. I felt my cheeks heat up, which only made the woman smile wider.

Well, I had gotten out of that without any fuss being kicked up, which was something of a victory. I also had a rather extended conversation without giving my name or knowing the name of the person I was talking to, so apparently all that experience in retail work was coming to the forefront.

There had been something seriously odd about that girl, but from what I’d seen of the cape fan community that might just be par for the course. Taking a closer look at the crowd I could pick out over a dozen people who immediately came across as more oddball than that Asian girl.

The entire event had interrupted my review of my latest power. With what looked like a decent chance for a break I smiled and went over what had come along with the Hanger.

Firstly, I had a fighter jet. That was, I had a complete fiat backed fighter jet in its own automated hangar able to automatically refuel and resupply it. It wasn’t a cutting-edge fighter, but it was still an F-18 Hornet. The jet may have been six years older than I was but it was still a beautiful machine and it was all mine.

Oh, and I had flight training now. Not exactly Top Gun level, but I could get the bird in the air and put it down safely. Fleet was going to be thrilled about this. A new plane and instant flight experience. Okay, I couldn’t exactly launch a forty-foot-wide jet out of a standard garage, but I could figure out something.

In addition to a few other odds and ends like a flight suit and basic weapon systems I got two additional minor powers. The first was oddly both incredibly useful and totally pointless. I could, somehow, pick up enemy broadcasts with my radio. Like, bypassing all encryptions, signal jamming, and even communication technologies. I had no control over when they would show up and it would be just as likely to be someone complaining about the lunch menu as announcing attack plans, but it was there. Totally arbitrary, but incredibly useful if it lined up right.

The second power was more directly applicable. Every plane I piloted could hold an excessive amount of missiles. My Hornet with its eleven hardpoints could carry 150 missiles. So could any other plane I flew. It didn’t matter if it was an ultralight or a 747. The missile payload would be increased to 150. Though that was only when I was flying, and I still had to supply the missiles, either from my own construction or from the resupply abilities of my hangar. What happened to the extra missiles if someone else piloted the plane? Who knows?

I was ruminating on yet another impossible aspect of my power when I saw Doug make his way over from the nest of reporters. He gave Mrs. Gartenberg a polite nod before turning to me.

“Think we’ve gotten most of the official part of this out of the way.” He turned towards the cluster of reporters who were starting to disperse. “They said something about getting crowd reactions and establishing shots for the TV crew. Can you give them a hand with that?”

I nodded. “No problem.” Glancing over I saw Miss Militia and Dauntless heading towards the office with Garment in tow.

Doug noticed my expression and filled me in. “They asked to use one of the back rooms for a bit. Probably official cape business stuff.”

“Think they’re going to ask her to join the Protectorate?” I kept my voice as level as possible.

Doug shrugged. “Probably? Way I hear it, they'll offer to anyone with powers and not too much baggage. She’s more than proven herself, so I can’t see them passing up the chance.”

“Think she’ll sign up?” I doubted it, but I still wanted to hear his opinion.

Doug looked contemplative. “Honestly, no clue. I mean, she’s great but I can’t get a read on her. Seemed more like she was happy about being here than seeing the Protectorate out in force.” He shrugged again. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough. Can you give the camera guy a hand? You’ve really been a help with the cabling and everything.”

“Sure, no problem.” I had been more than a help. This place had gotten an entire new electrical system thanks to me. It was buried and at least looked like it had been there for a while, so if someone became aware of it the main concern would probably be ‘When was this installed and do we owe money for it?’.

Still, the tired technician was grateful for my help, even if it was just moving cables and assuring him the outlets were stable. It also meant I was able to steer the perspectives of the camera shots again.

Was that what the girl was talking about? I had nudged things to go a bit smoother, but she was acting like there was some kind of parahuman force at play. It would have been a joke if she hadn’t decided to attribute it to Garment. Still, if people were assuming that Garment was able to pull together a social event with superhuman grace, was it that bad of an outcome?

Well, only if they ran with it to some disastrous conclusions, but luckily I seemed to be the only one that practice applied to.

Speaking of Garment, I got a signal from the copy of Survey running on her phone. She had taken the device out during her meeting as a typing aid and it was providing me audio and partial video coverage of the meeting. The camera view from the table was a bit difficult to parse, but with Survey’s help I could put together an acceptable image of Garment, Dauntless, and Miss Militia.

It felt slightly intrusive on the two capes, and would have been seriously intrusive on Garment if she hadn’t asked Survey to set this up. Well, actually she had typed my name discreetly into the phone and made an approving gesture when Survey outlined the planned connection, so it worked out to the same. It also saved me from trying to get the story out of Garment after the fact.

Though splitting my attention between the cabling and the meeting caused me to notice an immediate drop in quality. That would be the effect of losing Do One Thing At A Time. I hadn’t even noticed that it was running continuously through all of this. It had probably helped in a thousand tiny ways, but I didn’t pick up on it until I tried to split my focus. Interesting, and something I’d need to be aware of in the future.

In the meantime I continued to work while monitoring Garment’s meeting.

The three of them were around a table in the back office, a room I hadn’t seen before my rewiring blitz earlier in the day. Miss Militia and Dauntless were sitting across from Garment with the phone on the table in front of her. The Alchemy constellation missed a connection as Dauntless started speaking.

“Garment, I want to thank you again, both for your efforts the other night and for meeting us here. It means a lot, to the city, to the Protectorate, and to the community.”

I couldn’t see all the details of Garment’s response gestures, but it came off as an accepting acknowledgement. Dauntless leaned in and I could see his smile in the camera, but it was Miss Militia who spoke next.

“You have made quite an impression, even on the national stage. Have you given any thought to what you would like to do next?”

Garment made some dismissive gestures, then shifted towards her bag. There were a few moments of activity while something was worked on, then an object floated across the table to Miss Militia.

It was a silk flower, a rose to be exact, but the petals were alternating red and white except for one that was blue with a pattern of white stars. Miss Militia stopped moving as it approached her, and I noticed the silk band on the bottom of the flower.

“Oh, uh, yes. It’s lovely.” She seemed to be considering whether it would be appropriate to put on the American flag rose corsage that Garment had made her in less than a minute. Whatever momentum she was trying to build with her question had been thoroughly gutted.

Fortunately, Dauntless was there to cut in. “Would I be right to assume you’re saying you’d like to make clothes? Items like that? And it is lovely.”

Miss Militia shot Dauntless a look while Garment gestured her assent.

“You should know that the Protectorate can provide support for capes in many areas. It’s an organization dedicated to supporting capes and helping them integrate to society, not a military organization.”

I split my focus between listening to the technician and considering Dauntless’s point. It may have some validity outside Brockton Bay, but things were not that good here. I had no doubt that any cape who signed on would be expected to hold the line, even if their power was centered around something harmless like making marshmallow treats. Garment had proven combat abilities. There was no way they would keep her off the street.

Garment seemed to be demonstrating the same level of reluctance I was feeling. Upon seeing her response Miss Militia put down the silk flower and spoke up.

“There are other options available beyond full membership. The MIRIS initiative is specifically designed to support Protectorate affiliated Rogues in their operations. If you are determined to focus on your craftwork and technology it would be a good fit for you.”

I frowned, which briefly put off the technician as he had just been asking about the south wall’s wiring situation. I backtracked through the conversation I’d been half ignoring and worked to assure him of the integrity of Vietnam-era electrical outlets. While I tried to correct my mistake I directed Survey on a web search.

The results arrived shortly, all while Miss Militia was explaining details of the program. She was painting a very rosy picture of the initiative that was all technically true, but Survey confirmed what I half remembered reading about the subject.

MIRIS was, to put it kindly, a dumpster fire. Good intentions to begin with, but when branches had to choose between being able to afford small business loans and legal support for their Rogues or covering the cost of better equipment for their Heroes the decision always ran the same way.

It was a big picture program designed to support a new class of cape and create change on a broad scale. Without strong support from the top or regulations protecting its funding the program had been whittled down to almost nothing. Every available allocation was diverted or creatively assigned and resources were thoroughly deprioritized.

It kind of made sense, in a horrible way. People like Garment and even Parian were exceptions when it came to Rogues. A lot of the time it was a cape with totally inappropriate powers trying to branch out into non-hero work. Either there was nothing that could be done with their powers or they were too effective and NEPEA-5 started taking effect.

For Garment, signing up would mean a pile of restrictions, no meaningful support, and possible entanglement in the current conflict. Fortunately, Garment didn’t seem that enthusiastic about the matter, regardless of how Miss Militia presented their case.

“Please understand, new capes attempting to operate as Rogues are highly vulnerable, particularly ones with technical skills like yours.” Garment brushed her off and gestured to herself. “Yes, I understand that physical threats don’t mean much to you.” There was a hint of envy in her voice when she spoke. I think just how much they wanted this recruitment was leaking through. “But there’s security of your assets, associates, and business interests. The Protectorate can help with all of that.”

Once again, Garment didn’t seem that interested and Miss Militia was concealing her frustration at the situation. I suddenly remembered that she was now acting leader of the Protectorate. That meant the buck stopped with her on this. What’s more, she had the added problem of not even being able to refute Garment’s concerns thanks to the inherently vague way they were being conveyed. ‘Speaking to a wall’ was probably a good way of putting it.

“I know this is sudden, and we’re sorry to spring these details on you at once, but it’s important that these things get addressed as soon as possible.” Dauntless leaned forward, speaking in support of Miss Militia. The ‘two on one’ setup could easily have been overwhelming, but Garment seemed totally unmoved by that kind of intimidation.

Garment seemed to concede that specific point, but made no further moves. There was a sigh from Miss Militia that she immediately seemed to regret. I could see that things were wearing on the Protectorate a lot more than they had let on. This was beyond their usual sugar coating and into taping up the cracks in a dam. I didn’t really like the idea that Garment was being used as part of that kind of strategy, but I could at least understand where they were coming from.

Miss Militia shifted some papers aside towards Garment. “If it’s all right I’ll leave these with you. This paperwork covers the terms of both full and affiliate membership in the Protectorate, as well as the support that could be provided as a Rogue.”

Garment took the paperwork with good grace, but still didn’t seem that excited about it. Dauntless leaned forward and produced another set of papers.

“Even if you choose to go in a different direction from Protectorate affiliation, we would appreciate it if you could register with the Protectorate. Particularly as an… atypical cape,” Garment seemed almost proud of that reference. “These will allow you to operate legally in your cape, or I suppose that would be your primary identity. It will allow you to open a bank account, file for business licenses, and legally engage in contracts. If you’d like we can help you fill them out, or arrange for…”

There was no question about it as Garment eagerly picked up the forms and started working through them. Miss Militia’s mood picked up considerably as Dauntless shifted around the table to help her with the paperwork. The camera’s view was distorted as Garment picked up the phone and started typing out responses to specific questions.

I shifted most of my attention back to the gym, only keeping a metaphorical eye out for anything underhanded. I wasn’t that concerned as, aside from overselling MIRIS they had been mostly straightforward with their pitches.

Things inside the gym proper were slowly winding down. The cluster of reporters had been dropping out as they milked the crowd reactions dry. The TV crew seemed to be of the opinion that they’d gotten as much as they were likely to, and were just hanging around to capture the departure of the capes. The rest of the guests seemed to have followed that other girl’s example and decided there wasn’t much they could do here. Once you got your autograph, your selfie, and saw the big presentation there wasn’t much else.

Well, I think there were still some people with an outside hope that Garment would be announced as a new member of the Protectorate, but the consensus seemed to be that even if she signed up on the spot, they’d probably hold the announcement for an event they had more control of.

With the TV crew fully settled I had to find something else to occupy me. There was still the question of how I was going to get Garment out of here. The gym was quieter, but that was compared to the absolute maelstrom I had arrived at, and there were still a lot of people and a lot of cameras floating around.

My best bet would probably be the same as before. Get her out of sight and open the workshop. Let everyone else worry about how she snuck out. If people were running with things like ‘Garment has secret party coordination powers’ then they might as well have fun imagining mystery mover/stranger powers as well.

Then I would have to deal with that truck for Drew Rogers. The only problem would be getting enough privacy to cover the effects of my powers. With a repair I could avoid most of those aesthetic powers, but it would still automatically clean itself when I fixed it. That meant I needed to sink enough time into it to cover the cleaning and repair time.

I checked on the crowd again. It was less hectic than before, and Flechette and Shadow Stalker were still keeping them occupied. Shadow Stalker kept eyeing the ring and boxing equipment, her body language giving the distinct sense she’d rather be beating the crap out of someone or something. Part of that impression was due to my passenger’s seriously negative reaction to her, but a lot was blatantly obvious from how she carried herself. As soon as she was no longer under direct supervision and out of camera her mood shifted drastically. I’d never seen a hero with so obvious a chip on her shoulder.

Flechette was her complete opposite in terms of mood. More than the earlier formal interactions she actually seemed to be enjoying herself. There was even the occasional laugh as she chatted with people while making circuits of the room, and that always drew Shadow Stalker’s attention. Something had gotten her in pretty high spirits.

I took a rough position on the edge of the room and tried to look like I was there for a reason while I also watched the top heroes in the city fill out paperwork in the back office of the gym. Miss Militia had latched onto this small victory and was using it to make the best impression possible. They even offered to set up a bank account for her, given that proof of identity wasn’t going to be a problem. That went along with identification cards, legal documentation, and even a P.O. box.

Apparently there was a list for how to handle the appearance of a Case 53. Garment wasn’t exactly that, but the procedures worked out just as well.

While this was going on I watched Shadow Stalker get progressively more irritated. Her interactions with the public became terser and less frequent while her body language became more defensive. Flechette apparently picked up on this because she moved to the other Ward’s side just as things were getting bad. Between the two of them they averaged out decently, but I had to wonder exactly what was putting Shadow Stalker on edge like that.

Finally Garment emerged from the back office flanked by Dauntless and Miss Militia to the cheers of the crowd. Miss Militia took a step forward alongside Garment.

“Thank you for coming. I am pleased to announce that Garment has decided to register with the Brockton Bay Protectorate as an unaffiliated cape. We look forward to continuing to work with her as a welcome presence in our city.”

She shook Garment’s glove to a cascade of camera flashes. I smiled slightly as I saw she had put the silk rose on her upper arm, where it added a pop of color to her costume while also being completely in line with her classic design.

I felt the Size constellation pass me by as the rest of the heroes moved up to congratulate Garment on the fact that she wasn’t connected to anything. Still, she had registered. That suggested a level of cooperation and while I’m sure some people would claim it was meaningless it would probably buy the Protectorate some good press.

I would need to get a better sense of how they were handling things. I’m not sure if it was just the private setting or having to deal with someone who couldn’t speak, but I’d never seen Miss Militia on edge like she’d been in the office.

Shadow Stalker was clearly glad to be leaving, but managed to restrain herself to put on a decent act of saying goodbye to Garment. Flechette parting was a lot more sincere and upon seeing it I had to seriously consider what that girl had said about them. I still wasn’t seeing it from Garment, and I didn’t really trust my ability to read other people, so I was kind of starting with my hands tied on this. I could say they were at least comfortable together, and it would be good for Garment to have a contact inside the Protectorate, whatever form that would take.

When they departed there was a brief shift in focus to Garment, something she completely ate up. As she started making her own rounds of greetings and autographs I became aware of Vince standing nearby grinning at me.

“So…” He drew out the word, leaving me very confused.

“So what?”

He huffed. “So, what happened with you and that Japanese chick?”

I bit back on my immediate reaction of shock. “How the hell did you even notice that?”

Vince let out a scoff. “Please. What part was supposed to be subtle? You taking her for a drink or that dreamy look you had on your face afterwards?”

When I was thinking about my new fighter jet, damn it. Apparently the obliviousness that I treasured about this place only applied during regular gym hours. That is, unless a conspicuously innocent looking old lady who was currently making a very obvious point not to look our way had anything to do with this.

“Nothing happened. I didn’t even get her name.”

Vince gave me a skeptical look. “Okay, you really need to step up your game. Everyone could tell there was something there.”

“There was nothing there!” I protested. Vince looked doubtful. “She bumped into me and fell down. I was just making sure she was alright and that we didn’t end up sued or something.”

Vince gave me a flat look in response. “Let me tell you a little secret. Sometimes when girls literally throw themselves at you it’s not because they’re clumsy.”

“Look, I really don’t think that was what was going on there.” That girl had seemed way too into the cape scene. Aside for a couple of moments she barely seemed to register my presence, and those always had a weird edge to them. I was basically a sounding board for her crazy cape theories that would no doubt be on PHO by the end of that day. “I couldn’t even tell she was Japanese.” I confessed.

Vince just shrugged. “You grow up in the right part of this city and you can pick it up. Outside the ABB you still have cultural division. Actually, inside the ABB as well. That can get kind of messy.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.” I looked over at Garment, who was rapidly cycling the colors of her dress as a group of tourists filmed her with camera phones. “So, how do you think this went?”

Vince shrugged. “Pretty well, I guess. Not the disaster it was looking like this morning, that’s for sure.”

“You still worried about that stuff from earlier?”

He let out a sigh and turned towards the wider gym. “Maybe? I don’t know. I was mainly venting there. We’re going to see a lot more signups, that’s for sure. Some of them might stick around, but most will fade out when the shine rubs off. Probably a net positive for the gym. Don’t know about things on a wider scale than that.”

I nodded as he ruminated on the situation. This city was so messed up that even something that should have been a universal positive could mess up people’s lives. There were dynamics here I didn’t completely understand and couldn’t really do anything about.

I stood with Vince and watched as the Gym slowed down and started to empty out. Garment was happy to pose for pictures or give autographs, which on closer inspection were done by sewing that symbol/label of hers into whatever she was asked to sign. However, she wasn’t handing out clothing like during the chaos of Saturday or offering much to say. I saw a couple of people press her for a reply, but give up after the phone came out with its glacial typing.

The effect was that people rushed to meet her, but realized there wasn’t that much to engage with. Or more specifically, they decided it wasn’t worth the effort of engaging her. Even the television crew seemed to be of the same opinion and looked about ready to call it a day. I felt a little offended on Garment’s behalf, but she still seemed to be enjoying herself, so I let her be.

“Wait, what’s she doing?” Vince asked as Garment started brushing off tourists and maneuvering back to the staging area. Oh, she was bringing Doug and Mrs. Gartenberg over. And out came the bag.

Looks like Garment was going to make something after all.

The display drew renewed interest from the crowd and remaining reporters. Cloth and thread started to spin out of the bag and assemble themselves. Referring to it as a bag was probably sacrilege considering it was an immaculately made purse that would make any designer brand look like a shoddy knockoff by comparison. I did wonder if anyone had given thought to how much fabric would actually fit inside a purse like that and why Garment always seemed to have exactly what she needed for any given construction.

I knew she was covering her clothing generation power, drawing from the insane budget afforded to her by millions in gold. I just wondered what other people were assuming. Given this appearance had labeled her as a tinker and possibly some kind of party-centric thinker-shaker there was no telling where the speculation would go.

I put that thought out of my mind as I watched Garment’s performance. And it was a performance. I understood why she didn’t do this when the heroes were present. This level of showmanship would have completely shifted the tone of the meeting. They would either have to up their game, probably with gratuitous displays of power, or accept being overshadowed.

Thinking back to Miss Militia’s weapon I almost wished she had showed off a little more. It was incredible to think that I could copy an ability like that, any ability like that, but I needed to at least see the power in action to start analyzing it. That was probably why I wasn’t getting the same reaction from Dauntless’s spear. Unless I actually saw him throw some lightning around or got my hands on the item in question there was nothing I could discern.

The crowd watched as Garment worked on items for both Doug and Mrs. Gartenberg at the same time, flawlessly splitting focus between them. For Doug sections of cloth flew out, measured themselves against his body, and were cut into the proportions for a jacket. It was completely unnecessary, but the public didn’t know Garment could sense sizes and it made a good show. Doug grinned like a loon as a rather sharply cut sports coat was tailored in front of him.

For Mrs. Gartenberg it took a little while to figure out what was being done with the length of fabric and mess of incredibly fine thread. I think I put it together a fraction of a second before Mrs. Gartenberg realized what was happening. You could tell the moment of revelation by the way she went stock still, eyes widening.

Garment was making a shawl. That wasn’t what got the reaction. Garment was making a lace shawl. That probably doesn’t sound that impressive, but she was making hand sewn needle lace, not the machine assembles stuff you saw everywhere. That was the reason for the incredibly fine thread. You needed it for the detail work.

I don’t think the public realized just what was being done in front of them. A good part of that was probably splitting focus between two projects at the same time, with Doug basically mugging for the cameras every time another part of the jacket came into place. The shawl was more of a blur of white thread slowly forming into an incredibly intricate arrangement of interlocked floral designs so detailed they were barely visible from a distance.

If not for my crafting powers I probably wouldn’t have been able to follow it. This was the kind of work that actually had three dimensionality to it. It’s finished form was closer to a carefully aligned arrangement of pressed flowers than a pattern of thread. This level of detail in this sewing method would have taken a master of the art untold hours over months to accomplish.

From Garment it flowed like water. By the time Doug was trying on his sports coat the shawl was completed and Mrs. Gartenberg was holding a large length of embroidered silk surrounded with a very wide band of the most detailed lacework on the planet. There was something eerie about seeing that stunned expression on the normally fiery old lady.

Luckily Doug was there to distract from any of those concerns. The coat fit him in a way I’d never seen before. Somehow it was sporty enough to fit the character of the place without losing any of the sharpness of its design. To the cheers of the crowd he posed and preened in the new jacket, looking significantly more like a boxing manager than he had a few seconds earlier.

Mrs. Gartenberg eventually held the shawl up for pictures, though with a stance so defensive that no one was willing to approach for a close up. The woman seemed conflicted by the gift, and Vince was good enough to illuminate the reason.

“Well, Garment’s done it now.” At my questioning glance he continued. “She’s given an obligation that Mrs. Gartenberg can’t bake her way out of.”

Looking at things they began to fall into place. The pastry table had been rather well stocked, and Garment obviously hadn’t touched it at all. Now she’d been given a lovely gift that no amount of immaculate blintzes would be able to repay.

“So she’s going to have to find something else?” I ventured.

“And it’s going to eat away at Mrs. Gartenberg until she figures something out.”

“I don’t think Garment actually wants anything in return.”

“Doesn’t matter. Some people are just like that. Plus, Mrs. Gartenberg is someone who gets more done with a container of pastries than Doug can pull off with an hour of yelling.”

I remembered the broken truck waiting for me and nodded in acknowledgment. Before the conversation could go any further I felt a tug on my sleeve. No one was there, but I felt the tug again and saw the fabric move. Looking across the room Garment had her phone out and was slowly typing.

Survey relayed me the message without it needing to be sent.

‘GO’

I gave a faint nod and excused myself to check on the wiring again. I looped around through back rooms as Garment excused herself from the main area. With the help of her phone it was easy to coordinate and direct her, allowing us to meet by an isolated supply closet.

“You did great out there. Really fantastic.” I told her as I opened the workshop.

Garment made a happy gesture before pulling the paperwork out of her bag.

“I’ll help you go through that later, but I need to get things sorted out here.”

She signaled her understanding and stepped through as I briefly dropped the force fields and hologram. The entryway was visible for an instant before once again being replaced by the image of a nondescript closet interior. With that I sealed the door and slipped back through the maze of utility and storage rooms to circle around to the main area of the gym just as the Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Vehicles constellation.

There was a bit of commotion in the gym that made slipping in much easier. That was probably also helped by One Thing At A Time Again. It was easy to overlook that power when it was constantly activating, but in retrospect it had made a lot of things easier for me during the day. I managed to find Jackson and asked what was happening.

“Looks like Garment slipped out.” He grinned. “They’re just confirming she’s gone before they make the announcement. I think there were a lot of people hoping to find out more about her, where she’s set up, that kind of thing.”

I frowned. “I thought you weren’t supposed to try that kind of thing with capes.”

He just shrugged. “I guess since she’s a case 53 or whatever people want to treat her like she’s a public cape, the whole New Wave thing. Honestly, I’m glad she’s got her privacy, and not just because that means we can finally wrap this up.”

“You mean you didn’t enjoy playing unpaid untrained security guard so the Protectorate can look good?”

That got a smile. “It was a blast, but I’m ready to call it a day. And watch who you’re calling untrained. I’ve been bouncing since I was old enough to drink.” He paused and cracked a smile. “I mean legally drink.”

I returned the grin and let out a sigh. “Wish I could join you, but I promised Doug I’d look at a truck for him.”

He nodded. “Heard about that. Really appreciate you stepping up like that.”

I shrugged. “City’s crazy lately. I’m just doing what I can.”

“Preach. I’ll catch you around.”

With the confirmed departure of the final cape things properly petered out. I helped the technician one last time and was given a business card for my trouble. Apparently I made a good impression and the studio sometimes hired contractors when they were short handed for big events. Doubted it would go anywhere, especially with my complete lack of official qualifications, but it was a nice gesture.

Once the official presence was gone most of the visitors followed, but like Vince predicted more than a few grabbed application forms for membership. I doubted most of them would stick around, but it might be a short-term boost for the gym.

Mrs. Gartenberg packed her new shall with the reverence of one handling a family heirloom, and then oversaw the distribution of the remaining pastries, a process that drew more than a fair share of the gym regulars like they were lining up for communion. I was kind of surprised when Doug approached me with some kind of tart on a napkin.

“Mrs. Gartenberg?” I asked.

“Eat it where she can see you or I’ll get hell for it.” He looked back at the old woman who was watching us like a hawk. I waved in thanks and made a show of demonstrating how much I enjoyed the dessert. It didn't exactly take masterful acting to pull that off. The woman knew her baking and could make a mean fruit tart. Seemingly satisfied she turned back to the queue of expectant petitioners.

“You here about the truck?”

Doug nodded. “Once again, thanks for this. I’ve seen the thing…” His expression wasn’t encouraging. “Like I said, if you can just get a couple of weeks out of it that’ll be enough.”

“I’ll do what I can.” I assured him. “Where is it?”

“Know the place two doors down? Used to be a bakery before it shut down. They had a garage for their delivery van, and I got permission to use it for a bit. I’ve got it set up there with the tools I could scrounge up. We’re pretty much done here, so if you’ve got some time now?”

I smiled. “Sure, lead the way.”

Doug had put together an honest attempt at an improvised auto shop, at least for a rush job inside a failed business. The garage doors were chained and padlocked, but when he opened them I saw what he was talking about.

It was a late 1980s Ford Ranger pickup. From first glance I could tell where Doug’s trepidation came from. The thing had seen better decades. Just from popping the hood I could tell there were dozens of issues that would need to be addressed before this thing would be able to handle anything even mildly strenuous.

“Well, what do you think?”

I let out a considering breath. Mostly I was considering how much time I’d need to ask for to cover the work I’d be accomplishing in a few minutes.

“I think I can help. I’ll need to get a closer look. Can you leave me the keys? And check back tomorrow morning? I think I can have it running by then, hopefully.”

Doug grinned and handed over the truck keys and the key for the padlock. “Really appreciate this. You don’t know what this means for Drew.”

I nodded and saw him out. It was a big exercise in trust, but honestly the toolbox he had provided was probably worth more than the ‘truck’ in question.

I had a very good plan for this. Fix the truck, seal everything, sneak out, and come back in the morning claiming I put in the hours of work it would take to get this thing running. And thanks to my insane working speed the first step was already done.

Seriously, just like that, near perfect working order. Also perfectly clean and polished. I’d have to bring in a bucket of dirty water and a rag and claim I washed it. I didn’t like lying like this, but it wasn’t like I could use my powers publicly. I probably spent more time making sure the garage door was wedged shut as well as chained and the side door was bolted behind me. I also got the truck under a sheet just in case someone managed to get inside, but the longer I could put that off the better.

For sneaking out I opened my Workshop, grabbed one of the invisibility potions, and just walked to my apartment. It felt both empowering and deeply silly to be using this class of ability to dance around a task as petty at this, but dealing with the guys at the gym, helping Garment make a good impression, even the little jokes about crushes and hitting on girls, it felt good. This was a human element I hadn’t realized I’d missed.

I don’t just mean recently. It was easy to get lost in my workshop, though that had become a much more appealing place recently. I just had a tendency to close myself off. It had been almost two years since my first breakdown, and during that time it was like nothing happened. It was so easy to fall into yourself, lose track of everything. It felt really good to be moving away from that kind of thing.

I made it back to my apartment without issue and slipped through the front door when I was sure nobody was watching. I quickly opened my workshop, activated the defenses, left my bulky jacket in the entryway and headed inside. I made a quick stop by my Alchemist’s Lab to grab a duplication potion before heading to the site of my latest acquisition.

The Hanger was nestled between the Garage and the vehicle manufacturing area of my previous workshop upgrade. It was large enough for a single fighter jet with a straight run towards the vehicle entryway. A large enough door that, if open to a runway, would allow takeoff straight from the hangar.

The room was seriously advanced, with heavy robotic service arms peppering the walls and rigs and harnesses for suspending the jet. A complete refit would be possible with these systems without any input from a human. I could upgrade them further, but they were already advanced enough to handle all aspects of the jet’s maintenance.

Then there was the fighter itself. I had to down my duplication potion then and there just to have someone to appreciate it with me. As my copies stepped out they looked up with the same wonder and slightly goofy smiles I had.

“We have a fighter jet.”

I’m not sure which one of us said it, but we were all thinking the same thing. Sitting in the hangar was a McDonnel Douglas F/A-18 Hornet. A two-seat multirole combat jet with a top speed of Mach 1.8. Eleven missile hardpoints and a M61 Vulcan nose mounted 6-barrel rotary cannon.

It was beautiful. Even as an older fighter jet it was still a work of art. Seeing it in person brought back memories of when I was starting my engineering program and dreaming about the kind of work I’d want to do. The odd thought about maybe working on a fighter jet as an aeronautical engineer or something similar. Never actually considering the possibility of owning one.

Taking a step back from the thrill of owning a classic fighter jet I had to admit that the technology wasn’t up to my standards. Frankly, even cutting-edge military hardware was caveman tech to me. I had the jet, I knew how to fly it, but it wouldn’t really be useful in a cape fight, not in its current form. That meant upgrades.

I looked over at my duplicates and saw they had come to the same conclusion. The first nodded and turned back to the jet.

“I know we have to do it. It’s just a shame to ruin something like this. It’s like a museum piece.”

“I know.” The second added. “The aeronautics are still good. We can keep the profile, at least. Make sure it’s still recognizable.”

That made me smile, but then I sighed. “Still, probably not worth prioritizing.” They nodded sadly. “We have that latest simplification power that needs to be applied pretty much everything, plus the motoroid needs work, the Laboratorium analysis needs to be looked into, and Garment needs some help with her paperwork and plans.”

“You take care of Garment, we’ll deal with the rest of it.” The second said with a nod.

“Should check in on the A.I.s as well. Monitor development, integrate new information, schedule development expansions.” The first grinned. “Plus Fleet’s going to go nuts over this.”

I had to admit that. I’d be surprised if that A.I. wasn’t already building comprehensive models of flight dynamics and trying to anticipate the impact of any upgrades based on my current technology base. With a nod I left them to the constantly piling busy work that without their help would probably have driven me insane three times over.

I swung down through the workshop towards the textile area where I found Garment happily working with new combinations of hyper fibers. I was glad she was enjoying it, and her mood was definitely perked up since her public debut, but the tinker assumptions were a bit concerning. It made perfect sense, and honestly she probably did qualify as a low-end tinker. She certainly could do things with resistant hyper fibers that would not be possible from the general public. I just hoped it didn’t end up causing her problems.

She waved when she saw me enter and rushed over with the papers she received from the Protectorate heroes, both the application forms and the copies of the documentation that was supposedly currently being filed.

“Right. Are you ready to go over those documents?” She gestured enthusiastically and gathered her things. As we walked to the office I felt the Celestial Forge miss a connection to the Magitech constellation. It was frustrating, but currently my reach was as strong as when I received Elven Enchantment. With that missed connection and my reach still growing I had a real possibility of securing a connection to one of the largest motes in the forge.

Once we arrived at the office I spread the forms out on the table and tried to make sense of them for her.

“Okay, first thing? All this stuff about MIRIS is crap. The program is pretty much completely unfunded and unsupported. Nobody puts any priority on it and anything promised to you isn’t going to come through.

Garment made an understanding motion and showed me her phone. The display showed a more detailed breakdown of Survey’s initial assessment of MIRIS and its various shortcomings. Garment scrolled through the text which included news articles, personal testimonials, and overall statistics on the program.

I was impressed both by Garment's initiative in pursuing the information and how well Survey had presented it. I mentally contacted the A.I. expressing my feelings on the matter.

‘Acknowledged. Request assistance in integration of recently acquired development data at your convenience.’

I nodded and sent my own message. ‘Development assistance to follow current task.’

There was something like a satisfied sensation from the A.I. as it faded into the background of my awareness.

I sat with Garment and picked through the rest of the documentation. I was mildly insulted by the terms of protectorate membership. The salary wasn’t that bad, and might have been considered reasonable in cities where you mostly sat around or did publicity events, but in a combat heavy posting like Brockton Bay it came across as an insult. Okay, there was a merchandising percentage on top of things, but I could tell that was both highly variable and subject to how much the protectorate pushed your image.

With full membership there was also a total prohibition on side work involving your powers. If Garment joined she couldn’t make or sell anything outside the Protectorate or PRT. There were some complicated provisions there, and I quickly checked her registration paperwork.

Yep. There it was. Along with her classifications as a Shaker and Breaker there it was, Tinker 1. Well, Tinker 1 (Provisional), but still Tinker.

That complicated things considerably, though not in ways that were universally negative. If Garment had only been classified as a shaker, well shaker/breaker, then her ability to rapidly produce clothing would fall under NEPEA-5, especially if the fact that she could materialize it from nothing got out.

NEPEA-5 was a law designed to protect industries from being disrupted by capes. You have a cape who can manifest buildings or produce infinite amounts of steel and they could put thousands of people out of work, tank the value of a commodity, or turn hundreds of millions of dollars of investments into stranded assets. Basically, any cape who can do something too well gets slapped down with either a blanket ban or crippling restrictions.

It was supposed to be a temporary measure but never got properly amended or scaled back. There was a rumor that the Elite had started as a protest to that law, and it certainly made non-violent applications of powers more difficult.

With regards to that law being classified as a tinker, even a minor tinker, was an advantage. It did mean her outfits would need to be independently vetted, and hopefully that would just be limited to the more advanced designs, not every scarf and jacket she produced.

I had the sudden image of a PRT agent trying to explain that they needed to take that lace shawl for destructive testing. I immediately felt sorry for anyone who was stupid enough to try that.

It meant she wouldn’t be able to churn out entire department stores worth of clothes, but could easily do individual designs and contract work. That probably fit Garment better than being forced to operate as a textile factory.

I was finishing laying everything out for Garment when I received a message from my duplicates.

‘Finished upgrades and evaluations in the workshop. Taking 20% time to work on the jet.’

‘Likewise. Also working on the jet.”

Damn it, I wanted to work on the jet. I sighed and turned to Garment. “I’ll have to refresh the duplicates soon and do a round of A.I. updates. Can you think on what you want to do from here?”

Garment considered the information that had been presented for her and made a positive, if uncertain, gesture. I left her in the office as I made my way back to the Alchemist’s Lab.

I spent some time on the way reviewing my duplicates’ plans for the jet. As much as I would have liked to take it out in its classic form it just wasn’t practical. No way to get it in the air, no way to safely land it, and no way to deal with the reaction to a suddenly appearing 1980s military aircraft.

So a certain amount of upgrading was necessary to make it operationally viable. The question of internal systems was fairly contentious, but the duplicates had at least settled on a material for wings and fuselage. It was probably best to start with that since my material science seemed to become obsolete slightly less often than my mechanical designs.

Skyforged mithril formed in microgravity for perfect formation and then hyper compressed in a mass field for superior strength. It could be modularly constructed as individual portions of armor thanks to my Lego power, which would also allow it to be enchanted.

Basically enchanted. I still wasn’t comfortable trying to define an item with words of power, much less singing to the Unseen. Mithril plating would be light and durable enough to handle just about anything, and there was even a clever idea regarding the use of Dust.

I could easily make the fighter space capable, but any Dust enhancements wouldn’t hold outside the atmosphere. One of the duplicates had the brilliant idea of using a Dust enhancement that would only be relevant in the atmosphere.

Ice Dust, when infused into a metal, functioned as an incredible heat regulator. The supernatural aspect of the Dust banished thermal energy from the material. The effect, while it wouldn’t help in space, would cool the hull in atmosphere, eliminating heating due to atmospheric friction.

Or orbital reentry.

It was a brilliant idea that could have applications for dozens of other projects. I received a final set of reports just before the duplicates’ duration ended. By that point I was already in my lab downing the next potion.

The two copies stepped out and turned to face me.

“Right.” The first said. “Same as before?”

I nodded. “Just save some of the jet for me?”

“No problem. Lots of other stuff to check out.”

With that done I retreated to the computer throne. As expected, Fleet was diving into every available report and piece of media on fighter planes. The A.I. had also updated the profile picture it was using to show an inexpertly merged race car driver and military fighter pilot, basically two images in the same pose superimposed on top of each other. I took a second to correct it, and received a brief thanks message in response.

Survey was not kidding about needing help with data acquisition. This was the first set of data to arrive since the A.I.s had begun operating on a more advanced level, and the implications were clear. Survey had hours of complete sensor logs from both my omni-tool and Garment’s phone and was trying to analyze everything. And by that I meant absolutely everything.

Just the attempts to identify every guest and staff member would have been excessive. There was also a running process to produce transcripts of all recorded dialogue and then perform deeper analysis of links, meanings, and implications.

The entire operation was going badly enough that I needed Fleet’s help to divert attention away from trying to find meaning in every single expression and uttered word. Finally, the A.I. reigned in its analysis when given the assurance that the data would still be there, and could probably yield better results at a later date. I accessed the ABB information Tattletale had sent me and directed Survey towards it. Hopefully that analysis, when combined with other data sources, should help me figure out my next move while also keeping Survey occupied.

With the immediate problems taken care of I checked over the development of each A.I. and set an updated schedule for expanded parameters.

I was vaguely aware of a presence as I disconnected from the system. Both duplicates were waiting as I reentered the physical world. The first was holding a tray and spoke before I could.

“You skipped lunch. It’s noticeable, and would be uncomfortable in a couple of iterations. We took care of it for your lunch meeting with Garment.”

Right, I needed to get on that. And apparently my followup with Garment was going to be a lunch meeting. I thought it was a little out of character for duplicates near the end of their existences, but something about the way they smiled at each other told me there was something else going on. That was reinforced when they both turned in the opposite direction of my office.

“So…” I asked. “Where exactly are we going.”

“Told you, lunch meeting.”

“Right.” I turned to the other duplicate. “And where is that?”

“What, and spoil the surprise?”

Well, that didn’t fill me with dread. Dread that shifted to confusion as they led me up the stairs to the Skyforge. As we reached the top and the mountainous view opened around us things finally fell into place.

They had built a seating area on the edge of the Skyforge’s platform. There, overlooking the sprawling mountains with their snow capped peaks and cool winds, was a comfortable set of table and chairs, one of which was occupied by Garment.

I smiled at the scene and took a seat. It really did wonders to counter the otherwise enclosed feeling of my workshop. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but too much time in a confined space had a way of eating at you. This was a nice change.

The duplicates hovered nearby as the tray was set on the table. The pretentious food cover was lifted to reveal.

“A sandwich?”

Instead of replying the duplicates just stood there grinning. I looked again. It was certainly a nice sandwich. Turkey club by the looks of things. I know I didn’t have bread, so that must have been baked, or more likely cheated with some kind of super science houseware. The same with the tomatoes, though I probably had just enough lunchmeat and bacon for those not to have been fabricated.

Rather than leave things to chance I checked with Survey for the Workshop logs. Yep, superscience planter and breadmaker. The breadmaker actually got its bread from… okay, space should not bend like that. Going to put that firmly out of my mind, thank you.

I gave them a questioning look and picked up the sandwich. I could immediately feel it. Elven Enchantment. They had made an elven club sandwich. It was ridiculous, but the energy channeled into the food took the basic sandwich to another level. I took a bite and flavor burst across my mouth. As I ate the food seemed to calm and restore me. It brought up peaceful thoughts and invigorated me. It was like holistic life care between two slices of bread.

The sandwich didn’t last long, but my reaction clearly entertained the duplicates. I shook my head at their irreverence, but the point was made. Food was even more important now. It was actually something more than just fuel, which I guess ideally food should be always. If a sandwich was that good, I wonder how far I could push this with more complicated meals, or even the higher level of enchantment?

It seemed lunch was part of the duplicates 20% time because shortly after I ate they transferred their progress reports and vanished. Getting onto the lunch meeting part of lunch Garment pulled out some papers, including her cape registration with the protectorate.

It took a little while and some help from Survey to get her point. It didn’t help that she was communicating it through concept sketches and floor plans. Eventually I put it together.

“You’re sure this is what you want?” Garment gestured enthusiastically as she pointed to a sketch of the front of a building.

“Are you certain you want it around here? This kind of place would fit in better at the Boardwalk or someplace Downtown.” From the way she indicated there was no question.

I looked down at the proposed storefront. Physically it wouldn’t be that hard to set up, particularly if I could help her behind the scenes. With her paperwork in order financing shouldn’t be that hard to obtain. Garment had proven skills and Survey had found a number of small business loan and tax credit programs in place.

I was a little worried about security, but the only people Garment had crossed were street thugs, not even gang affiliated. There might be some people who would try to take advantage of her, but that was a problem that could be dealt with. Unlike Apeiron she didn’t have anyone specifically gunning for her.

The main thing was her insistence in staying in the neighborhood. With Survey’s help she had identified available properties in the immediate area and even stuck with a broad art deco design in line with the time when most of the places around here were built. Apparently the area had grown on her to some extent.

Considering the type of business she was doing I would be concerned about her staying afloat, but Garment didn’t exactly have a lot of overhead or living expenses. She only needed enough to keep the lights on and make rent. Rent would be a much easier prospect here than on the Boardwalk.

Of course, this was pretty much in line with Vince’s concerns about changing the neighborhood. I didn’t know how much difference it would make, but at the bare minimum it would be a stop on the cape tourism tours. That was something I’d have to keep an eye on. Actually, it was kind of nice to have something to worry about that didn’t involve the ABB or cape politics.

“Alright. We can start looking into this tomorrow. Probably need to wait for all the documentation to get processed, but then we can get you your own place.”

It was heartening to see her reaction, but it was overshadowed by the next connection to the forge. I had built up enough reach to connect to most of the largest motes in the forge and felt hope surge as the Crafting constellation approached. Then hope died when a small mote connected and consumed half of my reach. Then surged again when I saw what it was.

The power was called The Arcane Craft. It let me make magic implements. Not just the enhanced enchanting that had come from runes or elven magic. These were the tools for manipulating magic itself. It was incredibly comprehensive, covering everything from rings to staves, talismans, and even warded buildings. I could potentially push the application even further. It was another power that was based on my skill, knowledge and power, and could therefore be trained and refined.

I could even build items to channel my own power. That pool of magicka that I hadn’t been able to access? I could build staves and wands to channel it into useful forms. Okay, pretty basic forms at the moment, but still a massive step forward with room for further advancement. It even applied to forces beyond magic. Anything supernatural could be channeled, directed, or enhanced.

And there was one last element of note. This power would let me use any empowered item as long as I could understand it. My mind jumped to the ones I had seen today. Miss Militia’s weapon. Dauntless’s Arc Lance. I could use them. Use them to their full effect. Actually, all of Dauntless’s equipment would be usable with enough study. Any cape empowered item could be taken for my own.

This was a major power, almost enough to make up for missing out on the larger motes. I had to start digging into this, and dealing with every other issue and project that had sprung up. The afternoon was rapidly disappearing and I needed to get to work.

I left Garment to the interior design plans for her boutique, trusting Survey to keep it within the realm of what was at least physically possible and hurried towards the Alchemist’s Lab. I downed another potion, exchanged glances with my duplicates, and got to work.

At their continued request I focused on things that would yield results to future copies while they handled busywork with rote tasks.

I worked on miniaturizing alchemy arrays with Gadget Master to the point where they could fit on a watch face, they ran dust combination trials.

I spent the full duration of a set of copies in the neural interface memorizing every blueprint I could access, they rebuilt manufacturing equipment.

I started studying the interactions between my various inherent energies and the tools of The Arcane Craft, they upgraded Survey’s workshop drones from omni-tool prefabs to fully autonomous creations.

I practiced incorporating elemental weapons into my existing combat styles, they installed forcefield defenses at the Garage entrance.

It was a division of labor I felt bad about even with them insisting on it. Really, the fact that they had a few minutes to themselves towards the end of their duration was the only thing keeping me from feeling like a slave driver. Reported 20% projects ranged from the expected upgrades to Garment’s textile machinery, to construction of a set of perfectly miniaturized F-1 race cars for Fleet to practice with, to something called a ‘proper TV setup’ that I was a little afraid to investigate, to a large report that began ‘The good news is that I definitely won’t do it again’, which I was very afraid to investigate.

It might be cowardice, but I just dumped that on the next set of duplicates while I reviewed upgrade plans for my equipment. The report from those duplicates was an easier read, but still served as a serious warning about the transmutation of volatile organic chemicals using alchemy arrays.

I was in the process of practicing with a stripped down but more efficient omni-tool when I got a priority call from my duplicates. Not a data transfer or update, just a request for my immediate presence. Whatever they discovered that wanted me there in person.

I was more than a little nervous when I approached the pair of duplicates standing in the entryway. Their serious expression didn’t help.

“What’s going on?”

They looked at each other, then towards me. “We figured out aura.”

I blinked. The potential enhancement and defense power I got the previous night? I had made some rough attempts at using it, but when it proved fruitless I put it aside as a long-term project. Well, honestly, I had put it aside until something fell into place explaining it. From the looks of my duplicates that had happened, and not in a good way.

I swallowed. “How bad?”

The second duplicate held up the scroll, that is the oddly branded collapsible cellphone, that came with the same power that granted aura. “You know how this can read aura?”

I nodded. It was set up like a video game health bar, but not even being able to activate it meant there was no chance to use it, therefore the thing just stayed full. Even examining the sensor hadn’t given any insight.

“Sensor makes a lot more sense looking at it with Arcane Craft.” The first offered.

I nodded. “That makes sense, but what’s the problem?” It sounded like they had a major breakthrough, but not in a good way.

The second sighed. “Okay, so we were sorting through the various new arrivals. And we got to the Variable Weapon. The one we ignored because we could tell it was all mundane stuff linked with mechanics.”

I gave them an uneasy look. “It’s not just mechanics?”

They shook their heads. “It is, but it’s more. You better see this.”

The second opened a locker and pulled out what was obviously the variable weapon. The one I had ignored. Too many things to focus on, so it sat completely forgotten.

I stared at the thing. Picking it apart from a technical perspective it wasn’t that impressive. A lantern shield combined with a grapple gun. It was an odd mix, and not a particularly useful one. Probably another factor in why I’d put it off.

Seeing it in person was another matter. The shield and gauntlet were matte black with ghostly gray highlights. The shield’s spikes and weapon mounts were vicious, nasty things. Barbs and razors were common features. It looked at least as dangerous to the person wielding it as to anyone who found themselves on one of the many ‘wrong ends’ of that weapon.

“What am I looking at?” My voice wasn’t that steady. There was something about that weapon that was unsettling.

The duplicates shared a look. The second slipped on the gauntlet and turned it for me to see. “I think you know. You can feel it with Arcane Craft.”

I didn’t want to, but he was right. The power wouldn’t let me stay oblivious to it. There was a resonance with that weapon. Something about it just called to my aura. Even looking at it I could feel the energy around me, like a light from deep inside myself starting to bleed through.

What the hell was it about that weapon that connected to me? It wasn’t even a weapon. It was a shield and an escape system. All it was designed for was to endure attacks and get out of the situation, with that horrible design working to keep people as far back as possible. It wasn’t about fighting; it was a weapon of desperate survival for situations you couldn’t do anything about.

I took a deep breath as the implications set in. “Oh.”

The weight of it seemed to hit the duplicates as well. “Yeah.” The first added. “’Oh’ is about right.”

The second adjusted the gauntlet on his arm. “Best we can tell, aura is a manifestation of something deeply personal. Like, the core of who you are. That determines how it expresses. Weapons that line up with that are easier to use with aura, and make aura easier to use.”

“And that thing represents us?” I couldn't keep my voice level as I spoke.

He looked back at me. “Are you telling me it doesn’t?”

I slumped. “No?” It sounded more like a desperate plea than a statement. “I mean, maybe it did, maybe back when things were bad, but I’ve moved on. I’m better now. We’re better now. That’s not us anymore.”

“Less than a month ago we had the worst moment of our entire lives.” I snapped my head towards the first duplicate. It almost felt like a betrayal to have that brought up. I put a lot of effort into not thinking about that, but somehow ‘I’ was the one turning the conversation towards the subject. “Yeah, the situation’s changed since then, but have we? Or are we just ignoring things and hoping the next crisis will be an excuse to put off dealing with our problems?”

I stared at the duplicates. “I think you’re only saying this because you won’t be the one dealing with these things.” I was getting angry, but this was just a convoluted version of being angry at myself.

“That doesn’t change the point.” The first said, shaking his head. “You think we hid from the internet because it was a good decision, or because we didn’t have the time to check the news? Because we had other priorities? Things are getting serious. We can’t let this stuff keep controlling us.”

The second raised the lantern shield. “If we want to use aura, we have to accept that this is still part of us, and that means acknowledging that we still have to deal with it.”

I blew out a breath between clenched teeth. “Why is that so important? Is aura even worth it?”

There was a gleam in the second duplicate’s eyes and I knew that was the wrong question to ask. The Gauntlet shot out and there was a bang as the grapple embedded itself in the wall next to my head. Even as the duplicate was launching himself towards me one thought burned in my brain.

I had thought the weapon was about as edgy as possible without entering the realm of parody. Apparently, I hadn’t considered the stylistic bonus that comes from using razor wire as your grapple line.

The duplicate flew towards me with the assistance of the grapple gun. I tried to shift into a fighting stance to intercept him, but with a flash of agility that shouldn’t have been possible without life fiber enhancement he flipped in midair and brought the blades of the shield down on me.

The weapon was just steel, not even dust infused. It should have broken against the enchanted mithril durability of my clothes and body. Instead the edges glowed with a grayish light as they slashed hard enough to actually be felt through my reinforcement. Not enough to hurt, but the sheer unexpected power was enough to leave me stunned.

And that was all the duplicate needed. The edge of the shield caught me under the jaw and I heard the sound of a reel being pulled before I found a coil of razor wire wrapped around me. I looked into the duplicate’s eyes, my own eyes, and he held the gauntlet away from us and fired the grapple.

The aura infused wire sparked as it tore across my body, leaving me a spinning and disorientated heap on the floor. Once again, the bladed cord hadn’t been enough to hurt, but I could feel it through my reinforcement. For anyone else… well, the image of Aegis after his date with Taylor came to mind.

The second duplicate looked down at my sprawled form. “Point made?”

I nodded grimly as he helped me to my feet. “What kind of enhancement was that? What does aura give us?”

“Mostly speed and reflexes.”

I got the meaning. “So, what we’d need to get away and stay away?”

The duplicates gave me a solemn nod. “The weapon is like training wheels for aura. At this point it’s the only way to use it reliably. With it? Well, the basic level is enough to deflect bullets.”

I took another look at the thing. “I do not want to take that with me.” I sighed. “Any way we can modify it so it’s a little less Hot Topic?”

“Think about it.”

I did. I thought about taking away the spikes, changing the color, replacing the razor wire with something practical. With every change it grew more distant, more removed from myself. Even replacing a single element made the connection just wither.

“So that’s it? We have to use it?” I slowly resigned myself to the situation. This had come out of nowhere when I already had so much to deal with. I didn’t need this, but I did need what it could give me.

“As a hold out, at least?” The duplicates exchanged a look. “We can make some modifications, collapse it when not in use, improve the materials, that kind of thing. But aura is a big deal, bigger than we thought. It could mean life or death, and that could be someone else’s life.”

And that was a low blow. I could have independent superpowers, significant ones, but I needed to carry around a reminder of the darkest time of my life. Something constantly saying ‘This isn’t over.’, always telling me there was further to go.

I let out a slow breath. “Why does it have to be so horrible?”

That got a sad look from the duplicates. “Check the locker.” the second said. When he saw my confusion he clarified. “The weapon has a name.”

I checked the locker door and saw the small label printed on it, weapon details and name. The name. The fucking name.

“Huh.” I sighed, not sure how to react. “Figures.”

One of the duplicates stepped forward. “Look, we deal with this, and it can get better. It has gotten better. It will keep getting better. Then maybe the weapon can change. And maybe we’ll be able to use aura without it. But we’d need to deal with this stuff even if superpowers weren’t on the line.”

It was hard to argue with yourself when they were physically in the room with you. I nodded in surrender and felt like sinking into the ground.

“Hey.” The second had slipped the gauntlet off his hand and was holding it carefully. “We’ll handle the modifications, get this ready for the field. You go work with Fleet or something.”

It was self-pity, but not in the destructive way. God it was weird to deal with this. Still, I wasn’t going to turn down the offer. I headed out to tinker with the motoroid a bit. That should keep my mind off things. And the Protectorate press conference was coming up later. Maybe that would have some good news. Or maybe it would be a disaster. Either way it would keep me from dwelling on this.

*****

Addendum Emily

Director Piggot sat in a chair that felt increasingly like a prison. When was the last time she had seen the outside of this building? Friday night? She’d been called back in on Thursday. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

Multiple monitors hummed in front of her as she desperately tried to keep ahead of every mounting setback and brewing disaster. Over the past few days the shaky foundation of the city’s balance of power had begun to crumble beneath her. Disaster after disaster mounting, all linked by some incomprehensible but undeniable force.

A welcome knock at her door announced one of the few rays of positivity in this entire mess.

“Enter.” She called out. The doors opened and Miss Militia strode in. During times like this every person in the city was envious of her ability to function without sleep, but the combined strain of the situation and the pressure of leadership was evident on the cape. That didn’t impact her professionalism as she approached, though the pop of color from the silk flower on her upper arm did add a certain levity.

“Director.” She stood in front of the desk to deliver her report. “I am sorry to report that the cape known as Garment has declined Protectorate membership at this point. I know the importance of this initiative and would like to apologize for this outcome.”

Emily felt her lip twitch in what was probably the first real amusement she had felt in days. “Miss Militia, you came here directly from the event, correct?”

“Yes Ma’am.” The answer was sharp and clipped.

“Then perhaps you would like to see the general reaction to your performance.”

She connected to one of the wall screens and brought up the midday Crisis Update, an infuriating fixture from the local network that had been run several times a day for the duration of the current situation. For the first time the video wasn’t full of injured civilians, scenes of destruction, or on the street testimonials lamenting the attacks.

Instead it showed the warm community atmosphere of an outdated but well cared for boxing gym filled with smiling faces as they drank in the presence of the Protectorate’s finest. Excerpts from Dauntless’s speech were intercut with crowd reactions and the sight of capes mingling with the public. The announcer spoke of the gathering to celebrate heroes, both cape and citizen alike. The segment finished with Hannah’s announcement of Garment registering with the Protectorate.

The woman seemed stunned as she watched things play out. “Director, I had no idea it came across that well. The meeting went quite smoothly, but otherwise it was a fairly standard appearance.”

Emily nodded. “That was on the camera crew. Whoever they had running things knew how to read a room. They squeezed as much good will possible out of that event. Let me tell you, we needed every drop.”

The cape nodded and turned back to the screens. “I do apologize for not securing recruitment.”

The director nodded. “That would have been ideal, but registering is a good first step. And it’s shifted the news cycle. This could buy us the leeway we need.” She hated needing to play public relations during a city-wide attack, but the job just didn’t allow any concessions for that kind of thing.

She grinned slightly as she shifted over to a review of social media. “The event went over particularly well. Congratulations, you’re trending.”

As Hannah scanned the provided feeds Emily once again thanked whatever good fortune had granted them this boon. The single event had shifted the narrative from incompetent capes disconnected from the city they served to earnest but put upon local heroes trying their best in difficult times. Even Shadow Stalker had been framed favorably by the event.

Scenes of the event were even being picked up by other sites. Chambers was dead right about Flechette’s new cape. It looked particularly striking in the shots from the event and was making repeated circuits on various sites and platforms. They would have to update the next line of action figures, but that could be a concern for people who weren’t managing a city in crisis.

“Between this and Clockblocker’s commendation we might get enough breathing room from the public to actually make headway on the real issues.”

The two women shared a look that conveyed their feelings on the matter. ‘Clockblocker’s commendation’ was a sequence of words that Emily never anticipated uttering. The amazing thing was this wasn’t just a public relations effort. The award had been approved by the national office and for once Emily couldn’t find a fault in their reasoning.

The Wards were understandably restricted during the events of Saturday night. During that time, and against all odds, Dennis had demonstrated a completely unforeseen aptitude for leadership in crisis situations, making a sequence of sensible calls that not only foiled a mass kidnapping but nearly resulted in capture of the attacking villain.

It was more than just a publicity boon. The children that had been protected were connected to some of the wealthiest families in the city. Funding was practically being thrown at the Protectorate and PRT in response to the event. For that class of person an anecdote about a near villain encounter was worth more than any donation, and no doubt the story would be cycled around dinner parties and galas for years to come.

It was a cynical thought regarding the people who were covering the substantial cost of damage inflicted on Protectorate and PRT assets. Getting the Rig operational again would be a nightmare. Uppercrust had been scaling back his maintenance program among rumors of failing health. There were larger cities than Brockton that needed their force field systems maintained, and there was little chance of being able to prioritize their case.

The whole situation was wearing on her, much worse than any time in recent memory. She glanced up to see the concerned expression on Miss Militia’s face.

“Director, if you don’t mind me asking, are you sure you’re ready for the press conference this evening?”

A spike of anger flared inside her, but she quelled it. Hannah was currently the only member of the protectorate with enough experience and seniority to get away with asking a question like that. A dressing down would do no good here. Instead she took a breath.

“I will admit that this has been a challenging situation for everyone.” She let the words hang before continuing. “As it stands I will be more than capable of holding the press conference.” Even setting aside the consequence for not showing a united front there was currently no one she trusted with this task who had enough standing to carry it out.

Hannah at least decided not to pursue the matter. Instead she stiffly turned towards the screen. “Are there any new matters I should be aware of before returning to my shift?”

All Emily could consider was where to start. The mad theories of the past few days had made briefings impossible. Everything beside after-action reports seemed to be blind speculation. Data was piling up faster that it could be analyzed, even with the generous ‘help’ of Thomas Calvert.

The opportunist had come crawling to her as soon as Panacea’s testimony leaked. He was clearly desperate to cover his actions in Ellisburg and was dressing up the fear as a magnanimous act of friendship. Expanding his usual contracting work and reduced cost had proven to be a much-needed pressure valve for the organization, especially as disasters piled upon each other. That said she neither liked or trusted the man and his eagerness left her feeling uneasy.

“Projections are still being updated. We don’t have any solid predictions at this time.” She admitted.

“Is that because of Weld’s report?”

Emily had to bite down in response to that question. Weld’s situation had been a disaster, and only narrowly avoided being a public disaster. During this critical period she’d had to contend with the Youth Guard, Director Armstrong, and finally an entire series of new and contradictory reports regarding Apeiron.

“It has been a contributing factor.” She admitted.

The woman’s scarf crinkled as she nodded. “Are they still leaning towards him orchestrating high level coordination of forces in the city?” Her tone suggested she didn’t have a great deal of confidence in the idea.

Emily suppressed a sigh. “They are pointing towards some significant level of coordination. Things are falling apart too quickly. It’s ordered chaos. Either it’s being arranged by a new player or one of the existing powers had been setting this up for years.”

Neither were appealing prospects, but a fresh cape was much more likely than an unseen conspiracy. Every domino traced itself back to Apeiron. A cascade with the new tinker at the heart of it. He had already demonstrated high levels of coordination and admitted unspecified contracts with the Undersiders. He was the most likely driving factor.

That said, the situation didn’t make sense. The only way it could be explained was either Master powers or a Thinker ability so strong it could run the city like a pocket watch. Placing the blame on Apeiron required assigning direct intention to every action, every off handed phrase, even the precise timing of appearances and power use. With every mounting disaster the assumptions necessary to lay it at Apeiron’s feet got more and more extreme.

Apeiron himself didn’t make sense, not as a normal tinker. When you constantly have to tack on additional powers to explain a situation it means something was being overlooked. That specific but vague thinker power of his was too precisely placed. Just the right leaks at the just right time to make everything fall apart.

She looked up at Hannah and voiced what she suspected they were both thinking. “You feel too much emphasis is being placed on Apeiron? That we’re overlooking something?”

“Dauntless did express a desire to focus more resources on the ABB. I believe he might have the correct intention.”

“Analyst resources are being assigned to that issue. They suggest a period of rebuilding after the conflict with the Undersiders. With no provocation we might have as much as a week before their next action. Barring a breakthrough in the conventional investigation allowing a productive counter offensive we need to focus on recovery.”

“And Apeiron?”

“Apeiron can destroy teams with a single exchange.” Emily’s voice rose more than she intended and she quickly corrected herself. “Whether that’s intentional or not, it can’t be ignored. New Wave is finished, and right when we needed them most.”

Hannah’s brow furrowed. “Victoria Dallon…”

“Victoria Dallon will be sued into oblivion by half the students of Arcadia as soon as Weld’s report is declassified, something we can’t hold off forever. Even if the accusation is disproven there’s enough cause for damages to be sought from everyone exposed. Even if the team wasn’t already splintered it wouldn’t survive that.”

“And if that wasn’t his intention?”

And there it was, the veiled accusation. If Apeiron wasn’t pulling the strings the only explanation was that city the had been balancing on a razor edge from oblivion waiting for the wrong push at the wrong time. With Apeiron providing it as a possible mad scientist tinker loose in her city.

And for the situation to reach that level she would either have to have willfully ignored it or actively facilitated its creation.

“If it wasn’t his intention then it’s the actions of a third party. There is some force at play here, something running under the surface.” She restrained herself when she saw the concerned look in Hannah’s eyes. “What I am saying is this is coordinated. If not by Apeiron then someone connected to his actions. Until we have answers to what is happening we need to proceed with caution.”

“And the provisions?”

“All policies stay in place until vetted externally.” She looked at the veteran cape. “I am well aware many of those are no longer prudent, but I can’t dismiss that kind of accusation arbitrarily. A few days of peace should be enough to get a final ruling on most of the items. Then we can see about going forward.”

Which might finally get Panacea out of the tank, which might get her capes back in the field, which might let them salvage this entire situation.

They just needed a few days of peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Ambrosial Artificer (Macross) 400:  
> So many moving parts, so many pieces to the puzzle. It's so... needless. The other tech teams are complete morons. That's why you've learned how to figure out the optimization of your complex machines like Veritechs. What parts you don't need, you find a way to do away with. What parts you DO need, you can use the now-extra space to improve and bolster their performance. Some will call you mad. But the only madness that will come from your work is the rage of your enemies and rivals.
> 
> Hangar (Ace Combat) 100:  
> Sure you might be able to get a fighter plane… but where are you going to store it? You can’t just leave your vehicle to the mercy of the elements, it would cause all manners of damage to the plane and then you might be really in a bind. That’s why if you come out of this with a plane (or end up importing one) you can obtain a hangar bay which has the tools needed to keep the plane in good shape and can stand up to most forms of weather. It can even attach to a property or the Warehouse after your time here should it please you. For an undiscounted +100CP, this turns into an automated hangar bay with heavy arms and equipment to make repairing and moving the plane significantly easier.
> 
> Basic Flight Training (Ace Combat) Free:  
> If you couldn't fly before, you have a basic idea of how to fly a plane now. You know how to maneuver the joystick properly, which button fires the missiles, and how to properly land a plane without creating a multi-million dollar pile of scrap. It won’t save you if you dive into a massive swarm of planes all by yourself, but you can learn.
> 
> Missile Surplus (Ace Combat) Free:  
> Well this is odd. Any plane you pilot seems to hold an unnatural number of missiles for its type, far more than it should. You're not sure where it's getting this many missiles, but you'll have to restock them if you run out. The same thing happens with special weapons, though you have to have a working model to attach if you want to swap it out. The standard number of missiles thanks to 'Missile Surplus' is 150 missiles on a plane, barring any differences depending on the description of the weapon.
> 
> Comm Chatter (Ace Combat) Free:  
> While an important part of war is knowing what your opponent is up to, sometimes it’s good for puffing your ego up too. For whatever reason, your radio will occasionally catch communications being broadcast from the enemy. This can range from important information to wild surprise at your antics. Not too useful, but good for knowing how you're doing.
> 
> Flight Suit (Ace Combat) Free:  
> When taking off, an important requirement of being in a plane is a flight suit so that the G-forces don’t make your organs explode. It sounds silly, but you’ll be lucky you had it. So, have a nifty flight suit to help keep any pressure issues down while you're in the sky, on the house. It can come in any color you wish with a snazzy helmet to boot, ensuring that you’re the most glamorous pilot in the sky.
> 
> 4th Generation Fighter Plane (Ace Combat) Free:  
> These planes have been around for some time now, and as a result some would consider these particular planes to be outdated. It’s not the most advanced machine in the sky, but it will get the job done when you need it. Whether it's an MiG-29OVT, an F-18, Su-27 or something else, you can be given a 4th Generation Fighter Plane to do your work and achieve what you need to achieve. Show them that the old ways still work.  
> The Arcane Craft (Sword and Sorcery) 300:  
> As much as you might look down upon brutes and barbarians who know only how to break bone and spill blood, you and the warriors of this land have one thing in common. You require the tools of your trade. You know all the methods and ways to bind arcane and mysterious forces into physical vessels. Rings, staves, talismans, warded stone towers, and even more. These items allow the channeling of such forces to work your will, capturing, bending, and shaping the worlds invisible tides to enable works of sorcery and occult splendor. The strength of these items and their effects rely on your skill, knowledge, and power. Of course should you yourself be a font of such forces from your varied lives then you would be surely capable of building the focuses and talismans to augment and amplify your power. The world rewards men for diligent labor. It would behoove you to refine this art to get everything you can out of it. This also includes the skill to use such items, even those not made by your hand should you have the ability to reveal their secrets.


	36. 30 Crescendo - Addendum Missy

I somewhat shamefully retreated to the garage where the partially upgraded motoroid was waiting for me. Looking down at the combinations of technologies I wondered if it symbolized the unfocused nature of how I’d been handling things. The systems had been subjected to repeated sequences of upgrades and augmentations. Only the modular nature of my current technology stopped it from being a nonfunctional mess.

Even with the help of my duplicates it felt like projects had been piling up faster than I could manage them. That was mostly because I’d been stuck in the ‘build the tools to build the tools’ stage of tinkering. My workshop upgrades were coming along to the point where I had the capacity to produce higher end technology at decent speed in decent volume. It had been a huge project to reach this point, and wasn’t even finished yet.

Even with my manufacturing approaching a decent level I now had two new types of enchantment to factor in. And they were skill-based powers, even more so than runecraft. As I worked and improved with those skills everything I’d built would become out of date. I looked into my future and saw a piecemeal trickle of gradually improving components with nothing truly being my best work. Nothing actually being good enough.

Maybe I would have been better off just building a swarm of replicating nano assemblers from the start. Given my other world-ending technologies, using gray goo as a shortcut to atomic engineering didn’t seem that outlandish an idea.

Okay, the serious flirting with doomsday technology was probably a good indication of the serious condition of my current mental state. My mind kept drifting back to that aura weapon, the edgy nonsense item that functioned as an undeniable expression of my inner self. It was so over the top I would have been embarrassed to be associated with it in eighth grade, much less as an adult.

But it also meant access to serious superpowers. And unlike life fibers those powers didn’t come with a rush of energy so distracting that any technical work became basically impossible. It was weird to think that I had multiple options that would take me to the level of a higher end brute but each of them had drawbacks that I’d rather not deal with.

Still, power was power. Even if it didn’t make the difference for me it could end up saving someone else. Actually, it would probably make a significant difference for me. Bakuda still had a host of bombs that wouldn’t care about how durable my body was, and those effects were still a serious challenge to counter.

There was a word for this kind of thing. ‘All or Nothing’ powers, also known as annihilator capes. It was an informal classification for capes who operated beyond the conventional scope of damage and durability. Exotic effects and exotic defenses. Plenty of invulnerable capes were only invulnerable until they ran into a specific counter. I think the joke went ‘Invincible, invincible, invincible, dead’.

Dealing with Bakuda was like dealing with an entire convention of annihilator capes. A basic personal force field would protect me from a lot of potential effects just by preventing physical contact. Aura could do that as well, if I had the right understanding of the effect. A lot of direct-action bombs, toxins, corrosives, and more would be completely negated.

The real problem was space, time, and matter. Time stops, space warps, and any level of transmutations or disintegrations. They were both incredibly powerful and absolute hell to defend against.

I could come up with some countermeasures, but that required research and development. I might be able to build blindingly fast, I mean the duplicates covered about ninety hours of work from a team of anywhere from ten to a hundred during their limited duration, but that didn’t extend to design and development. There were a lot of advanced concepts in Skills: Physics that I couldn’t apply until I worked out all the necessary engineering.

Not even using the neural interface to speed up the design process would fix that problem. This was something that would need testing and experimentation, not just abstract design. It was a harsh shift from the powers that handed me a pile of fully developed technology. Suddenly I actually had to go through all the intervening steps of technological process that a normal tinker would need to tackle.

Which was something I really didn’t have time for. I pulled up Survey’s preliminary evaluation of Tattletale’s ABB data. Along with the list of suspected properties and front businesses were profiles of the major players. Oni Lee was something of a non-factor, a pure follower with suggestions of some mental deterioration, possibly power related or possibly attributable to some injury in his past. The real problems were Bakuda and Lung.

Based on the analysis there was a good chance that Bakuda suffered from manic episodes. Her injuries may have taken her out of the fight, but that kind of mentality would have her pushing for retaliation. Her entire psychological profile screamed that some horrible event would be coming as soon as she could manage it.

Lung was worse.

I missed a connection to the Magitech constellation and considered the depth of that metaphorical timebomb. Nothing in Tattletale’s profile of Lung’s character was encouraging, and my passenger was backing her up on most of it.

Lung ruled through fear. Pretty basic principle as far as gang leaders went, but he took it to a whole new level. The entire gang basically hinged around the impossibility of defeating him in any drawn-out conflict. Every fight with Lung had a mandatory ‘retreat point’ where your assembled forces were outmatched and your only option was to fall back and let him claim victory.

The obvious strategy was to hit him hard and early, but Lung wouldn’t have lasted this long if he wasn’t able to counter obvious strategies. It still happened fairly often, but he was an experienced cape who was still dangerous through effective use of his powers even when he couldn’t automatically win on raw strength.

I personally wasn’t at serious risk from him. I probably could have taken everything but his strongest forms with my previous loadout, and that was before my last round of upgrades. Right now I was approaching the point where the amount of force necessary to injure me would devastate the surrounding area just from spillover energy. That might sound excessive, but I had insane durability when I was just using hyper alloys and ceramics, which were nothing compared to my current set of enchanted, Skyforged, and G-compressed armor plates.

Unfortunately, the rest of the city wasn’t as durable. Lung had received a black eye with his capture. The break out and attack, aside from the small amount I’d been able to counter, had made a strong impression, but not strong enough to counter what he would certainly see as a personal insult.

Lung was going to do something to assert his personal power and status as a crime lord. Almost certainly something both dramatic and messy. Prominent ideas were a strike on another gang’s territory, an attack on the Protectorate, or a major hit to some lucrative or symbolic target.

My options were either to launch my own investigation or do my best to be ready to counter him when he tried something. How well the second option turned out would depend on how long it took me to deploy and what support he was receiving from Bakuda, Oni Lee, their new thinker, or even Uber and Leet.

Tattletale had provided some limited data on them as well. With her analysis and my passenger’s insight I was pretty sure she was correct about Leet’s limitation. Prototype technology. The closer he came to repeating himself the more failure prone he became. It was typical of the kind of limit that could spring up on a free tinker, and a particularly brutal one.

Obviously he hadn’t known his limit when he started. Given that he’d become progressively more failure prone over the last couple of years he must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Additionally, still having options didn’t help if you were held back by resources limitations. A lot of good technology had probably been poorly executed early on thanks to the inherent buildup period.

It was weird thinking of Leet as a free tinker. Everything suggested he was one, but having it confirmed was something else. Free tinkers tended to trigger from broad conceptual problems that were drawn out over a serious amount of time. I did wonder what could have caused Leet to trigger, and if it had anything to do with his gimmick.

Still, that wasn’t relevant to the issues at hand. With the new thinker’s support Leet could bring out and reliability use all of his previous technology, even potentially developing new gear without worrying about catastrophic failure. More concerning was how he had acted towards the end of the fight. I don’t know exactly what he was talking about, but it sounded like some aspect of his power was becoming easier to manage. If that was the case it would be bad news for everyone.

It was crazy to think, but with this one change Leet could become one of the most frightening tinkers in the city. It was basically everything that made Bakuda a frightening opponent but applied to a wider range of technologies than single use bombs. If he also started taking advantage of Oni Lee’s technology duplication to stretch his technology further…

God, I really needed to step up my game.

If I was in a situation where I couldn’t negate every exotic effect I could expect to encounter then I needed to be able to exert enough control over the encounter so that I’d never have to take one of those attacks head on. That meant better utility, better information, and better agility.

Gear upgrades would cover me for the first item. My motoroid was just the start, I had upgrade projects for every piece of equipment I used. Some would take more time to bear fruit, but just the improvements to my omni-tool were a massive advantage.

Information was easier to obtain and process as well. Survey was almost too enthusiastic regarding analysis of sensor logs. Between that and my neural implant giving me direct access to the information without needing to check interfaces I had a constant near perfect link to all the data my sensors could obtain. I didn’t even need the planned improvements to my visor since I could just connect to my sensors directly.

That left agility. That was the big one. The best way to avoid being damaged by an annihilator effect was to not get caught in an annihilator effect. Either dropping the other cape first, or evading them or their power.

Previously that wouldn’t have been my go-to option. I hadn’t really had time to develop a preferred strategy, but I probably would have leaned into long range combat using alchemy or projectiles. Even with my durability I’ve been concerned about getting swarmed or overwhelmed in melee. Suddenly that wasn’t as frightening a situation as it used to be.

Just from the rounds of life fiber exposure I had built up a physique that could counter any cape without a Brute or serious Striker rating. Not just in raw power, but in speed, reflexes, endurance, and any other area. When combined with my new martial training not only could I take any normal person in close quarters combat, but I could control the dynamics of the encounter beyond what I previously considered possible.

That was my base level. Life fibers took me to a level where I could probably dominate any encounter with local capes using nothing but speed and power. It would have been the ideal way of approaching combat, if not for the adverse impact of raw life fiber energy.

My medical nanites were able to counter the incredible strain that raw life fibers inflicted on a living host. My cranial implant and neural interface were able to monitor any mental effects. None of my technology could do anything about the raw rush of power that came from interfacing with a borderline impossible alien lifeform.

It wasn’t even a mental effect, not really. It was like driving a car with too much horsepower. Thrilling and empowering, but not exactly something that you could easily parallel park. It was getting easier, the energy wasn’t affecting me like it had at first, but between the surge of power and the need to focus on activating my nanites delicate work was pretty much off the table in that state.

That left aura. The legitimate superpower that had been freely handed to me by a tinker power that specialized in making weapons that could fold up or turn into other weapons. And just in case that wasn’t an obscure enough connection there was this whole self-expression thing tied up to using it.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to avoid that power. There was an aspect of it that was inexorably linked with expressing your true self. I had never expressed my true self. I didn’t like my true self. Honestly, I didn’t even know what my true self actually was.

I never had a stage of making bad fashion choices and embracing fringe subcultures. There just wasn’t the opportunity for something like that growing up. On the plus side I didn’t have any collections of embarrassing pictures I’d have to hide and be ashamed of. On the down side, it was mostly because I was already running a surplus of shame.

God damn it, I hated even thinking about this. I had a legitimately fantastic superpower and the only way I could use it was to go through an edgy teen angst phase more than half a decade after it would have been anything like appropriate.

I checked in with my duplicates via my implant. They were in the process of rebuilding the… weapon. That is, adding new technology and materials, not amending any of the design choices. No changes that would impact my ability to use aura.

Well, it might be an edgy piece of crap, but at least it would be a technologically advanced edgy piece of crap. Variable weapon crafting had been unlocked with the power that granted me aura, and it could be pushed a lot further than the basic design displayed in that item.

In its base form it was made of sturdy materials and combined two weapons that could be shifted between as easy as breathing. High end variable weapons could support transition between four different modes, handle explosive munitions with extraordinary skill, be optimized for either speed or power, and be designed to function exceptionally with both Dust and aura. Most significantly it could be collapsed into a miniature form that was even resistant to detection systems.

The materials currently in the process of being switched out. Mithril was generally a terrible metal for weapons, even if it enchanted wonderfully. Too light for anything but the slightest blades and completely useless for any kind of blunt instrument. Still, it was exceptional for defensive and structural uses. Modular technology and my latest simplification power made the modifications trivial to integrate, and they were able to leverage Weapon Modification, Fingers of the North Star, and Customized Weapons to perfectly tailor it to my use.

It still looked like a spiky mess, but at least it would be a combat effective spiky mess. There were still some questions regarding the addition of new weapons, what runes to add, and potential hybridizations that were being shelved for the moment. As it stood I would have something I could take with me and use if the situation called for it without constantly being burdened by the implications of that design scheme.

Those implications. That was the real problem. Well, the problem was that it wasn’t letting me ignore my problems. I needed to start dealing with things in a meaningful way if I wanted to be able to use aura without Hot Topic training wheels.

So, what had I been avoiding? Well, everything. Everything to do with my cape appearance, the Undersiders, Taylor, and people outside my workshop in general. Twenty-four hours without even glancing at reactions or talking to someone should have made that clear. I had that probable nightmare waiting for me in the threads and inbox of PHO, while there were multiple levels of mess with the Undersiders and Taylor that I needed to deal with.

At least I didn’t have to deal with them alone. I took a breath and called up Survey.

‘New task. Document mentions of Apeiron from PHO forums and begin categorization of inbox. Refrain form in depth analysis and research on this subject until initial presentation of data is complete.’

The reply came shortly, ‘Acknowledged. Beginning scanning and analysis.’ The overlay of voices Survey used to communicate was becoming more streamlined with each interaction. Apparently some kind of elimination process was being conducted to finally arrive at a singular voice. The A.I. wasn’t there yet, but progress was being made.

With respect to the mess that was PHO, I didn’t expect Survey to be able to provide any insight or recommendations, but the program could at least save me from having to slog through everything personally.

As I was considering what else I could do I felt the Celestial Forge connect to a mote from the Clothing constellation. This power was called Juggernaut and acted as a kind of armor enhancer. The exact dynamics were complicated, but basically amounted to a fifty percent improvement to the effectiveness of any armor I wore.

Of course, since every piece of armor I wore applied that durability to my clothing and body this meant I was fifty percent more durable on every level. Just a couple of enchanted Skyforged pieces and I was as close to invincible as reasonably possible.

Of course, that did nothing for my earlier concerns. Invincible, invincible, invincible, dead. It didn’t address exotic effects or annihilator capes. I really doubt anyone was going to think larger caliber weapons were the secret to damaging me. There were a lot of weird effects to be had from parahuman powers and I needed to be ready for them.

It really says something when I get a power that takes me from ‘probably invincible’ to ‘very invincible’ and my reaction is ‘okay, wish I’d gotten something actually useful’.

Alright, Survey was dealing with the preliminary PHO mess. What else had I been putting off?

The Undersiders.

Right, that. I’d been avoiding dealing with that particular issue. I needed to set up a meeting, deal with their absolutely ridiculous debt, and speak with Taylor about the misconception I had created and then ignored. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but it had been hard enough to justify putting this off when I didn’t know the stakes. And when I didn’t have superpowers riding on it.

Time to call Tattletale. I really did not like dealing with her. I fully accepted it was my own fault for getting caught up in this mess, and most of the problems I’d run into face first could have been avoided if I’d been a little more proactive. That said, I couldn’t ignore Tattletale as a contributing factor.

My passenger continued to have a high impression of the strength of her power, but what I’d seen just didn’t measure up to that impression. Yes, she was clearly highly perceptive and had some skill and planning and analysis, but she seemed to make disastrous mistakes as often as brilliant insights.

It could be that normally she was a top tier thinker, but was just running into unusual opposition. It could mean my anti-precog strategies were more effective than I thought. It could be the effect of this new unidentified ABB thinker. I still had no information on them, but based on Director Armstrong’s statement they would probably announce something at the upcoming press conference.

The problem was that I had to treat Tattletale with caution, but couldn’t rely on her analysis. Basically, I had to be careful about what she could pull from me, but then wouldn’t be able to bank on any insights she provided. To say it was a frustrating relationship would be a drastic understatement.

Well, there was no point in putting this off any further. I called up the phone emulator on my omni-tool and selected my work phone. I also had my personal number and a half dozen disposable sim cards programmed in, so no more losing track of things during a mission or not having a safe avenue of communication.

The call was answered on the second ring.

“Hello Joe.” Her voice was tired. I was reminded that the unreliability of her power was probably bothering her a lot more than it irritated me. Based on her initially smug and confident attitude she was probably used to it carrying her. Having that pulled out from under her must have been a deeply unsettling experience.

I tried not to take too much pleasure in it.

“Hello Lisa.” I checked the line for monitoring and general security, a task laughably easy with the direct interface provided by my new implant. “Line is secure. We need to talk business.”

“I take it you’ve seen the reactions to Saturday night?” As she spoke she started to slip back into what I considered the classic Tattletale voice, complete with undertones of smugness.

“The broad strokes. I’ll be digging through the online reactions shortly. Anything to add?”

I was putting more confidence into my voice than I really felt. I still hated all of this, the nature of the reactions and the obligation of dealing with them, but I wasn’t going to show that to Tattletale. Between my delay in getting to them and anything she could pick up from my tone there was a decent chance she already knew, but in her position admitting to digging into something like that wouldn’t help her with debt negotiations.

There was a pause before she spoke. “Okay, you’ll probably catch this as soon as you start, but there’s a lot of talk about your rates for mercenary work and healing.” Which might influence the upcoming meeting regarding debt. ‘Market rate’ wasn’t that much of a discount when you had to get into experimental surgery. “From the PRT side reactions are split between the local office and the rest of the organization. Local policies aren’t adopted nationwide, won’t be as long as they don’t declare a state of emergency or crisis situation.”

I did have to give her credit for including that detail. Of course, if she knew about Weld and my talk with Armstrong then she couldn’t count on being my sole source of information. Actually, on that point…

“I got that sense last night. Pulled Weld out of the bay and had a brief chat with the Boston PRT director.”

“Right. I… heard about that.” I could practically hear her bite down on her tongue as she replied. “I would have appreciated knowing you were planning something like that ahead of time.”

Well, that was careful phrasing. And a lot more reserved than when she had berated me after the Panacea incident. It was almost as if Tattletale could be actually tolerable to speak with when she wasn’t actively trying to show off or insult everyone in the room.

“I haven’t followed up yet.” I assured her. “What have you heard about it?”

There was a sigh before she replied. “Well, they’ve had him under medical observation since he got back. Did the debrief there as well, and have been really tight lipped about the whole thing. He is listed as participating in this afternoon’s press conference, so whatever is happening it’s not worth the PR hit they’ll take for losing a Ward. I’m guessing the whole thing has something to do with your healing?”

Well, it would be clear something was different come the press conference, and Tattletale would probably figure it out herself. No harm it being upfront about this.

“He was kind of a wreck when I found him. I healed him up before he got to the surface.”

“I figured, but that shouldn’t explain the level of caution they’re showing.”

Well, here goes. “I was also able to treat a bit of his case 53 condition.” There was silence on the line, which I kind of expected. “Just a minor improvement, and it was mostly because he had metallic anatomy.”

“What. Exactly. Did you. Do?” Tattletale spoke very slowly as she asked the question. I took a breath before responding.

“I was able to correct some of the changes to his anatomy, minor stuff involving the distribution of nerves. Some of his diminished senses saw a slight improvement. It also has a minor effect on the autonomous parts of his power so there’s a fraction of a second before he absorbs metal now.”

“You… you do understand what this means? If it gets out… When it gets out, the city is going to be swarmed by every Case 53 in the country!”

I found myself picturing that situation, dozens of Case 53s hoping I could be their salvation and repeatedly having to explain the limits of my abilities. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but I put aside my concerns and pushed forward.

“I told Weld that my healing was limited and only was able to help because of his specific situation. He knows it probably won’t be able to help anyone else.”

“That’s not going to stop them! You don’t know how desperate some of these people are.”

“I spoke with Weld. I think I have a good idea.”

“So, you’re ready to deal with this? Some of them aren’t going to accept no for an answer. It could get messy.”

I let out a sigh. “I think I’m getting used to messy. And I have something else I need to talk to you about.”

“What? What’s more important than this?”

“Khepeiron.”

Silence hung in the call after I said that stupid word.

“You think online cape shipping is more important than the city getting overrun by an army of desperate monster capes? Wait, of course you think online cape shipping is more important than the city getting overrun by an army of desperate monster capes.”

It wasn’t that I had no concerns about that scenario, but I had time before that particular problem came to a head. I needed to deal with the issues I’d been putting off. “I need to talk to Taylor about this. Make sure things are at least clear with her and find out how she wants to deal with this. How is she doing?”

Tattletale aborted some kind of come back, took a breath, and then spoke. “Taylor is doing better. Still recovering at home and resting up. She’ll probably be alright for a meeting for the day after tomorrow?”

Ah, the ‘debt repayment’ meeting. I suspected she was using Taylor to put that off as much as possible, probably so she could come up with some scheme or deal to present to me. It was a little manipulative, but not unreasonable. As long as they didn’t cause any trouble in the meantime I could live with delaying the meeting that long.

“We’ll meet on Wednesday. If Taylor wants to talk sooner give her my number. I don’t want to leave her with the wrong impression about what happened.”

Maybe it was just my desire to get through this as soon as possible, but constantly pushing forward seemed to be a working strategy. It felt nice to be able to direct the conversation, something I suspected was only being tolerated because of the massive debt and power disparity.

That was something I wasn’t that comfortable leveraging, though Tattletale probably knew it. Fulfilling an agreement was one thing, but I wasn’t going to lord threats or base intimidation over the Undersiders. I had made enough of an impression when I accidentally pulled off a tactical strike with a hand weapon. If anything, I needed as gentle a touch as possible.

“Taylor knows that. I mean, she knows there was another reason for it, not the one that’s being thrown around. I’ll get her your contact number in case she wants to talk, but I think she’ll be alright until Wednesday.”

“Good.” It meant I had a legitimate excuse for not addressing those particular reactions. The impact on Taylor was my prime concern, followed by the obvious horrible implications, and then the reminder that I had once again blindly blundered into romantic implications, though somehow from the other side this time. The last one was a personal concern, so as long as this didn’t blow up in my face from the first two problems I could afford to put it on the back burner.

And there was a missed connection to the Magic constellation. Suddenly I was heading for the level of being able to secure one of the largest motes. I put my excitement aside and focused on the conversation.

“Have you found anything else about the ABB’s new thinker?” I called up the portion of Survey’s analysis on that topic. The guests from the Gallery had been secured before the villain arrived, so they had nothing but speculation posted on the matter. The PHO threads were even less helpful on the subject. It was a nest of wild speculation that made the theories about my own debut look reasonable by comparison.

“No, the PRT is keeping that locked up.” She sighed. “The attack disrupted my usual lines of information for the PRT and I’m still trying to secure new ones. What I can tell is they are trying to minimize how much of the attack they attribute to her.”

“What? Why?” I knew from personal experience the PRT wasn’t stingy when it came to assigning blame. There was something particularly off-putting about this considering that whatever blame was shifted from the new thinker was probably going to end up dumped onto me.

“The sense I got was it was some minor cape, practically a joke villain. Whoever they are they’re a known quantity, or were assumed to be so. They don’t want to hold them up and say the entire city was brought to its knees by someone people never took seriously.” She sighed again. “I have some theories, but it’s going to be announced at the press conference. Straight from the director, so I haven’t been able to get the info ahead of time. I can get you some analysis once the name is announced. I mean what I can manage given the anti-thinker stuff.”

“I’d appreciate that.” Though it might not be that useful. My passenger had been silent on the subject, so I might be under the same blocking effect as Tattletale. It was more than a little concerning and I was looking forward to filling this blank space.

So, meeting set, at least taking a step forward on the mess with Taylor, and the mystery thinker would be explained later today. All in an incredibly short phone call that I should have managed earlier. Pretty much a lesson that the crap I’d been avoiding was never as bad as I built it up to be.

That said, this was just entry level. I still had to have those conversations. And deal with my inbox. And there was the whole thing with a potential swarm of Case 53s rushing to the city in the hopes of salvation. And the massive amounts of bad blood and dangerous assumptions from the local heroes.

I took a breath and forced myself to at least physically relax. I could deal with this. Probably. I felt a wave of reassurance from my passenger. That’s right. I wasn’t alone in this. I would be okay.

“Is there anything else we need to cover?” It would definitely be a power move to end the call, but as much as I enjoyed not getting bogged down in Tattletale’s schemes I wasn’t going to arbitrarily piss her off or miss something important.

“No… no, nothing we can’t get into at the meeting. Uh, thank you for telling me about Weld.” Her voice was a little strained there. I had a feeling whatever analysis she’d been losing sleep to complete just got expanded significantly. “Just to check, are you planning anything else like that in the near future?”

I looked down at the upgraded motoroid I’d been tinkering with through the call. It wasn’t the kind of thing you built just to leave sitting in a garage gathering dust. “I’m going to be making a move against the ABB at some point, but there’s nothing planned at the moment. Not until I know more about their thinker.”

There was a sigh of relief that a more composed Tattletale would probably have concealed. “Same with us. We’re holding off on any jobs until we get a chance to talk with you. After Wednesday we can figure out what’s happening next.”

There was an edge to her voice that suggested she really hoped I would agree to stand down until then. I made a non-committal noise and replied. “Sounds good.”

It was a deliberately vague response. I didn’t have any current plans beyond managing the previous mess and getting my technology in order, but I wasn’t going to make a hard commitment, if just for the principle of the thing.

“Great.” Her voice was flat in response. “We can set up a time for Wednesday after things settle down. I’ll get you some more analysis after the press conference.”

“I’ll send you another web storage link. Good luck.” Easy and untraceable file transfer was trivial to set up with my abilities.

“Thanks. You too.”

The call dropped and I took a moment to review the situation. The titanic mess that was Khepeiron was at least being dealt with. I had no idea how Taylor wanted to handle this. The possibilities could be anything from a public statement denying things to just distancing our cape personas until things died down. I had a couple of days where the Undersiders would stay out of trouble. I’d have the identity of the ABB’s thinker by this evening and could start on specific counters.

The ABB was still my primary concern, but there were other problems in this city that would need to be dealt with eventually. None of them really measured up to the combined threat of a thinker leading coordination between a chaos and free tinker. That was a pressing issue and one that needed my full attention.

But that would have to wait until after I dealt with my PHO mailbox. Survey had finished the initial categorization, so it was up to me to deal with things. My duplicates had entered their 20% time while I was on the phone, so I swung towards my Alchemist’s Lab to refresh the potion. I got the chirp of their final data transfer before their transponders winked out.

My next set of duplicates shared the somewhat grim determination I had been building since the reveal of the secret behind aura. Some dour looks were exchanged before the left to deal with the last of my personal equipment and check on the Laboratorium analysis.

With obvious trepidation I moved towards the outdated laptop I had first used to set up my account. Yes, I could manage everything through direct mental links, but this was the kind of thing where I would appreciate a bit of arbitrary distance.

I started by skimming Survey’s summary. The inbox had gotten a massive surge of messages on Saturday, slowly trickling off as time went on with no activity on the account. Interestingly some of the messages had been read, the work of the duplicate who chased me to bed on Saturday night. Which meant he had known about the whole Khepeiron mess and said nothing.

Which was probably the right decision, seeing as I wouldn’t have been willing to go to sleep if I’d been privy to that particular revelation. I might be severely late to the party here, but at least I wasn’t coming into it with 3am thinking.

The vast majority of the messages were just requests for confirmation of my identity. Checking related posts from the forums the consensus was leaning towards the account being unaffiliated, with the only crack in that theory being the fact that it was created before my debut. It seemed I was such an enigma on the site that people were considering the possibility I had created an unverified account just to lock down the name.

Which I kind of had.

Digging past the dross of confirmation messages and borderline trolling I got to the real meat of the inbox. That stuff was hard to read. Requests for services, pricing, and capabilities. Some of it was about mercenary work or selling technology. Survey had sorted that into a rather impressive set of categories. The really hard part was the healing requests.

Judging from the time stamps they had started almost as soon as the Undersiders reappeared whole and uninjured on the Uber and Leet broadcast and didn’t let up. Worse, there was a spike following the reports from the healed conscripts, which confirmed just what my healing could manage. These were messages from desperate people, often making desperate offers. I could only make it through so many before I dumped the entire category onto Survey for sorting.

Maybe once things calmed down, and I got the PRT off my case, I could set up some kind of program to deal with this. Maybe I could find some way to work around restrictions and blacklists for the most severe cases. There were a lot of maybes in this situation. I’m guessing this is what Panacea had to deal with on a daily basis, only she had been slogging through it for years.

Healing would bring another problem, and not a minor one. Given the volume I would be able to handle and the good it would do, and the fact that I’d be doing it as a tinker, it would pretty much guarantee a visit from Doctor Alan Gramme.

There was a time in my life when I would have been ecstatic at the prospect. But that was the time of proposed moon bases and off world colonies. Not the time of Mannequin. And if Mannequin showed up, so would the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Hell, Bonesaw might double up to get me on their schedule.

That was just about the last thing I needed to deal with at the moment. My passenger was at least able to provide some insight on the Nine, and there were practical steps I could take to avoid being instantly shut down. Still, it was a new massive threat to prepare for while I was already dealing with the current nightmare scenario.

I didn’t really use silicon-based semiconductors anymore, so my technology would be safe from Shatterbird. Well, I didn’t build anything with silicon. Some of the provided technology by my power still used it, and unfortunately that included my brain implant.

Oh God, I would need to upgrade the implant hardware. That meant brain surgery. That meant I needed to rely on my duplicates to perform brain surgery. The prospect was only slightly less frightening than performing the act myself, and wasn’t helped by my comparative novice abilities as a doctor. I would be leaning into Grease Monkey for this, and that was understandably terrifying for me. That particular power was a lot more focused on the construction of cybernetics than on their installation.

Well, looks like I’ll be trying out speed learning in the neural interface. It would be roughly equivalent to reading textbooks, but I could at least cover everything possible from a theoretical perspective.

I still had some serious concern around messing with my brain, even if it was just to switch out parts of an implant. Still, there was nothing like the threat of a grenade going off inside your head to help you push past your reservations, and there were a lot of improvements I could make once I got in there.

I’d have to cover how to manage the rest of the Nine as well. I would need to get creative in countering Crawler. Experimental weapons weren’t the way to go with him. Fortunately, I had more than a few of those ‘all or nothing’ options of my own.

Mannequin and Bonesaw were tinkers, and that meant all the variability and headaches I was dealing with from Leet and Bakuda, just with a different theme. My options were really limited to covering as many bases as I could and hoping I could put them down before they pulled out something I couldn’t handle.

Burnscar I at least wouldn’t need to be directly concerned about. As long as I had self-contained oxygen and reinforcement there was nothing she could do to touch me, even at full power. Full power Burnscar was still a nightmare for everyone else, so I needed to get some countermeasures in place.

Hatchetface was going to be an interesting problem. He wouldn’t affect my technology, and if his suppression worked on the ‘magic’ principle I’d seen in parahuman powers then it would leave most of my abilities untouched. It would still gut any of my equipment that was powered by magitek, so that was something I’d have to be careful about over relying on.

Jack, well Jack was a nightmare. I didn’t know why, but there was a depth of concern around him that exceeded any other member of the team. His power shouldn’t be a problem in terms of physical threat, but my passenger suggested there was more to his power. Not something that I specifically needed to worry about, but something that was significant and generally overlooked. Whatever it was the potential damage it could cause was apocalyptic. It was a universal threat, something I’d need to deal with even if I didn’t have a target on my back.

Then there was the Siberian. She sat there as the unmovable object, the final opposition for anyone who thought they would be able to deal with the lesser members of the Slaughterhouse Nine. She killed Hero. She wounded the invincible Alexandra. Ultimately there would be no way of stopping the Nine without countering her, and based on my instincts and every vs debate on PHO they were likely to lead with her.

Oh, yeah. I was being considered on the ‘vs boards’. That was a trip to review. So many erroneous assumptions about my strengths and weaknesses. And the stances were all over the place. You had one person putting forward a case for me soloing the Empire while another had written an essay explaining how Circus had the perfect counter to all my abilities.

Fortunately, when it came to the Siberian every plan and countermeasure I was preparing for other annihilator capes should apply to her. It was even more reason to step up life fiber training and deal with the issues around aura use. That would save me, if not anyone else in the area. The impression I got from my passenger suggested there was some trick to the Siberian, some hidden aspect that would get past the invincible woman, but I couldn’t piece it together from the information at hand and our limited connection.

I added a subtask for Survey to compile reports and records on the Nine. Chuckles had been killed recently, good riddance, so that meant a membership drive. The idea of adding that to the mess of this city was horrifying, but even if they started heading towards Brockton the moment Saturday’s broadcast aired it would take them ages to cross the distance, and they weren’t exactly subtle in their work. As long as I took preparations seriously I would be ready.

The really terrifying thing was the idea of the Slaughterhouse Nine in Brockton Bay triggered a particular feeling from my passenger. Kind of a grim understanding. Not certainty, but not anything like a rejection of the idea. This was something that could happen, and I needed to be ready for it.

On that cheerful note I turned my attention back to the cluttered mess of my inbox. The categorization provided by Survey included any messages from confirmed accounts. Nothing from PHO moderators, apparently they wouldn’t try to verify unless someone made specific claims. As it stood I didn’t even have an ‘unverified cape’ tag. No, the messages I was looking for were anything from an official account.

Corporate teams, Rogue groups, the occasional independent, and even a couple of international teams.

There weren’t many of them compared to the sea of PMs from regular members. They also lacked any specific details. I guess if your corporate reputation is on the line extending a formal offer to a random account is an unacceptable risk. Surprisingly, there weren’t any messages from the PRT or Protectorate, local or otherwise. Not even from Weld, not even after I confirmed the account for him.

I was considering how to handle the situation when the Celestial Forge connected to a mote from the Toolkits constellation. Once again I had enough reach for one of the largest motes. Once again I lost half of that reach to secure a connection to a smaller mote. And once again I didn’t care.

The power was called Advanced Materials Upgrade Kit and was aligned with the Laboratorium and my Armourer power. Specifically, it provided working quantities of nearly every advanced material used in either the Laboratorium or called for in the construction of armor. Suddenly I had supplies of plasteel, adamantium, armourplas, synth-leather, and more, all without needing the slightest bit of transmutation.

The materials were all incredibly useful in their specific applications, but adamantium was undoubtedly the star of the show. Without Dwarven Craft’s ability to forge mystical metals it would be almost impossible to work with. With that power I could shape it into any form I wanted, though with considerably more effort than had to be expended for something like mithril.

I immediately received messages from both duplicates.

‘I’m taking my 20% time early and heading for the material stash.’

‘Yeah, pretty sure all this personal equipment work will need to be re-done. Heading for the stash as well.’

I felt a sudden wave of dread at the idea of leaving them unsupervised with that kind of resource and closed the laptop, double-timing for the Upgrade Kit.

I found it nestled in a fresh locker in the hallway, arriving just as the first duplicate was opening it up. Everything was there, the ridiculously easily worked plasteel, the flexible armourplas, durable synth-leather, maybe a half dozen other rare and valuable materials, and then finally, the dull gray block of the strongest material I had ever encountered.

This was invincibility. Unless you were warping space or fundamentally altering matter this material could stand up to any conceivable force. The energy necessary to damage it was so titanic that its broken pieces would probably be lying in the center of a significant blast crater. Or, more likely, its completely undamaged form.

Mithril was supernaturally light, durable, magically resonant, and had properties that defied conventional mechanics. Adamantium didn’t have any of that fluff. It was just a giant middle finger lifted to the force of the universe that expected material science to behave in anything like a reasonable fashion.

What’s more, unlike mithril, this was an ideal material for weapons. All weapons, from knives to artillery shells. On its own it would produce weapons of legendary quality and durability. With my skill, magic, and technology behind it the weapons would be in a class unto themselves. Everything would have to be upgraded.

Wait, didn’t I just make a comment about materials becoming obsolete less often than technology? Damn it, at times like this it felt like the Forge was deliberately trolling me.

“So,” the first said with a sigh just as the second duplicate arrived. “Complete rebuild?”

“Looks like it.” I conceded with a sigh. I considered the dull gray block. “Any thoughts on Dust infusion?”

I called up the notes from the combination experiments at the same time as my duplicates. Stable mixes had been found for water, rock, and steam Dust. There were also some interesting interactions between lightning and rock Dust that seemed to have an effect similar to a mass field, though with a different mechanism, though the precise mix for that mass Dust, or possibly gravity dust, hadn’t been nailed down. Of the infusion possibilities there wasn’t a universally perfect answer available.

“Match to the enchantment for weapons? For everything else wind or ice for either weight or thermal regulation?”

It was as good an idea as any. I stuck with the duplicates through the initial examination of the materials and planning stages. After their duration expired I was sent off by the next set as they worked on the project while I attempted the onerous task of managing my inbox.

I hadn’t even liked managing a backlog of normal email. Suddenly I was dealing with nationwide organizations and multi-million-dollar corporate cape teams. If I was going to use this account in anything like an official capacity I needed to at least have a courtesy reply ready for official inquiries.

That proved to be a harder task than I expected. I tried speeding it up using the throne, but that just made me cycle through anxieties twenty times faster. I’m kind of ashamed to say that I struggled through the issue for more than the duration of a set of duplicates. Not the longest I’ve ever spent trying to draft a reply, but I’m even more ashamed of that particular fact.

It was kind of weird how duplicate duration had become the most relevant unit of time in my workshop. Ninety percent of this place had no clocks or natural light, so the preferred measure of time was how long a potion lasted. It was a lot easier to deal with since it climbed up to twenty minutes. Regular as the tides, only finishing with the constantly unnerving thought about what was done with their 20% time.

The big problem I was banging my head against was how to actually function as a mercenary. That has never been more than a token label and was even less useful now. There was basically nothing I could purchase that would be better than what I could make in a trivial amount of time. I didn’t even have resource limitations anymore. I was quite possibly the only tinker on the planet who didn’t need financing.

What I did need, and what I’d been completely neglecting, was some level of social leverage. If I didn’t have any public presence I was yielding things to a combination of the PRT’s public relation’s department and the theories of crazy people on the internet. Frankly, even a token message to the official accounts could make a difference.

I was thinking in circles until and getting nowhere until Survey decided to offer to help. The A.I.’s suggestion was a convoluted mess. It was overly technical. It cited the forum bylaws of PHO regarding solicitation of services, the state and national guidelines for parahuman contract work, and advisories from the local PRT regarding interaction protocols dating back to my first conversation with Panacea. All together the response looked like it had been autogenerated by a particularly litigation averse public relations firm and then edited by anal retentive experts in cape law.

It was perfect.

It said basically nothing but looked incredibly official. It showed a frankly ridiculous understanding of the legal framework around any official requests without even acknowledging that any request might have been made. And it looked incredibly official and carefully assembled despite having been thrown together on a whim.

I sent it as a mass reply to every verified account regardless of the nature of the messages. Anyone serious would come back with some more detailed response. The main point was it created the impression that the account would actually be an avenue of communication. By attaching an automatic response, it at least appeared that I was taking the matter seriously.

Given the lack of even a contact attempt from the Protectorate I had to wonder if they were waiting for Weld to reach out. Actually, I had asked him for some level of confidentiality. Had he even told the PRT about my account? It was possible he was tied up with tests and debriefs. It was his decision to rush into the treatment, so I didn’t feel that bad about him dealing with the aftermath. Still, it might be worth reaching out to his account if I didn’t see any messages after the press conference.

It was starting to get close to the scheduled time of the conference. The afternoon had been whittled away by dozens of small projects and discoveries. Not universally pleasant discoveries, but still useful and necessary ones. And I had seen a continuous stream of results from them.

My duplicates had been busy upgrading my equipment and motoroid with new materials. Mostly Dust-infused adamantium, but synth-leather was actually a useful material in a lot of applications, and armourplas could be subbed into components of the motoroid where mithril and adamantium didn’t work.

For weapons every striking surface was adamantium with mithril providing structural components in any application where weight was a detriment instead of an asset. Adamantium had the advantage of functioning as a conventional material, rather than a mythical one, with the obvious exception of its durability. That meant it reacted normally with mass fields rather than attempting to remain supernaturally light in defiance of a concentrated bubble of dark energy.

Or course, if you tried to make mithril lighter it would almost go too far in that direction. It was a nuance to a substance for which I was still learning the fine details. It did present an interesting possibility of how a predominantly mithril starship would behave with a mass effect core.

Between those constant upgrades some progress had also been made in analyzing my salvaged tinker tech. Not enough to fully recreate it or apply the principles to other technology, but I was getting closer. For me research was a great deal slower than construction. I at least understood the general principles behind Leet’s broadcasts, the telekinetic sword, the personal plasma shield, and more than a few of Bakuda’s bombs.

It felt like good progress. Slower than my own technology, but it should be enough to somewhat counter the ABB by the time of our next encounter. With what I could learn from the upcoming press conference maybe I’d finally be able to compile a proper strategy.

I was checking over the upgrades to the motoroid when I received a signal from my omni-tool. Incoming phone call. This wasn’t my work phone; it was my personal number.

I didn’t recognize the incoming caller. A quick search showed it was a prepaid cell phone. How the hell was it calling my personal number? My best guess was someone connected to the gym. God I hoped no one had found that truck and had some uncomfortable questions about repair timetables.

Well, if they had there was no sense putting it off. I connected the call and answered.

“Hello?”

“Jozef?”

The voice was weak and I could hear panting before and after it spoke my full name in that over-pronounced manner. I was right, it was someone from the gym. Just not someone I expected to hear from.

“Aisha?”

“Yeah.” She panted again. “I need some help.” A feeling of dread crept up my spine. “I’m a little… impaled right now.”

“Where are you?” Survey immediately responded with a triangulation of the signal, currently coming from one of the better areas of the Docks. “Never mind, what happened?” I was on my feet and moving before I even had an idea of where to go.

“I was spying. ABB. Found something, but stuck. Uh, got a chance to call, but they’ll be back soon. Need to get my power back on. No one will remember I’m here.” I heard another unsteady breath through the phone. “Think you can do that magic throne thing and come get me?”

“I’m coming.” I mentally signaled Fleet and the motoroid shifted into motorcycle mode. I clung on for dear life as it peeled through the workshop at blatantly unsafe speeds. “Keep the line open and keep your power off. I’m almost there.”

That wasn’t an exaggeration. One of the features of Simple Scientific Solution was the ability to upgrade normal vehicles. My motoroid’s bike form counted, and had received a traction improvement that directly manipulated the Van der Waals force. It was strong enough to take a sharp corner at top speed. If you extend the implications of the forces involved suddenly all kinds of driving surfaces became possibilities. My trip to the throne involved more than one shortcut straight up a vertical wall.

The Celestial Forge made another Toolkits constellation as I vaulted into the throne. More rooms. Research lab. Magic specialization. Normally I have been ecstatic about the addition, now the rumbling of the workshop as more space was added was an unwelcome distraction as I tried to connect to the throne.

As soon as I was linked I felt the cognitive acceleration grip my mind like the best caffeine in the universe. As seconds crawled out I was finally able to breath. Well, metaphorically breathe. I also had the time to wonder how the hell Aisha had gotten herself into this mess and how she could have been so stupid.

The answer to both of those questions was of course ‘because Aisha’. That didn’t change the fact that there was a critically injured girl facing either capture or death, or capture and death, or capture and then something worse than death, and I was the only one who could save her.

And I had to rush into an ABB base in order to do it. Well, I’d been building up for two days, so I wouldn’t exactly be the unprepared mess I’d been on Saturday night. I didn’t know who was there or what kind of defenses they’d have, so my only choice was to gear up like I was storming the gates of Hell.

I went to work updating my memory tags to avoid the effect of Aisha’s power and started assembling resources.

I linked to the implants of my duplicates. Fortunately, the lack of respect for my privacy that had them listening to the call had them up to speed and were therefore already assembling my equipment. I confirmed their tasks and shifted to open a line to the textile area.

“Garment, Aisha is in danger. I need you to get my costume and the life fibers and meet me in the entryway.”

In slow motion I could see her leap into action before the message had even finished. Garment could move quickly when she needed to and I could see she was taking this with the seriousness it needed.

Maintaining cognitive acceleration while dealing with the normal world was a challenge, but I pushed through it and spoke through the painfully slow audio link to Aisha.

“I’m in the throne. Memory protected and coming for you. What happened? Capes?”

I distracted myself while waiting for her reply by calling together every resource I possibly could. Duplicates and drones were scrambling from every corner of my workshop to amass an arsenal that was sufficient for this rescue operation.

“No capes.” She answered in short gasps. “Was careful, but messed something up. They blew a guy up. I was too close.”

By the time she finished speaking I had tracked the signal to an older style office building near the edge of ABB territory. It was on Tattletale’s list as a potential ABB front, but not part of their primary operation.

“Activate your power and keep the call active. I’m coming for you.” Without waiting for her response, I made a final sweep to secure my memories and disconnected from the throne. Fleet has positioned the motoroid so that I could grab on as soon as I rolled off the seat, then clung on for dear life while the motorcycle peeled for the exit room.

I arrived just as Garment was exiting the Laboratorium with the spool of life fibers and my costume. Without even asking, my clothes started to fly off my body, sometimes being split at the seams to facilitate faster removal.

For some reason, despite clearly taking every step to speed up the process, Garment had taken the time to change her outfit. Instead of the color shifting evening dress she was wearing the wrap dress I had helped her make. Whatever the reason for the decision it didn’t seem to have meaningfully slowed her down and I didn’t have time to consider it as I pulled on my micromanipulators.

Garment raised her hands and I pressed my palms into hers, allowing her gloves to fold over mine. My senses expanded as the life fibers rapidly spun off from the spool and wove themselves a fraction of an inch above my skin, immediately followed by the rest of my costume.

My duplicates sprinted up to us with the rest of my equipment and began loading it without even being asked. Armor plates with built in defensive systems. Advanced scanners built in or hybridized to my visor. My full loadout of weaponry including upgraded sidearm and the collapsed form of the aura focusing variable weapon.

I stood there like something between a lord being dressed for court and a racecar with a very enthusiastic pit crew. My duplicate’s hands blurred with the benefits of speed powers as the final adjustments were made. My motoroid transitioned to robot mode and opened its armor compartment.

For a reason I couldn’t comprehend Garment’s dress was hanging in the air in front of me rather than folding itself up or finding a hangar. I finally understood the reason once the final piece of equipment was in place.

The outfit released a set of ties and the wrap dress unwrapped itself. The shimmering gray fabric flowed out and attached itself to my collar, billowing around me like a massive living cape. As soon as it secured itself the already tough material was instantly strengthened to the combined durability of every piece of armor on my body. A flexible and lightning fast barrier that was as strong as any defense.

It seemed Garment wasn’t going to let me go into this alone.

My duplicates took a step back as soon as they were done and I sank back into the motoroid, allowing it to close around me. Communication between us had been entirely digital up to this point, but they gave me a final nod.

“Good luck.”

With that both duplicates struck their own chests. A single impact was enough to dispel a duplicate, sacrificing their remaining duration to allow me to use other potions. I swallowed as I engaged the motoroid and stepped out of the workshop.

My apartment wouldn’t have been able to handle the weight of a walking motorcycle without serious protest, but the motoroid’s mass core meant those kinds of concerns were trivial. I stepped out onto the questionable carpet with the delicateness of a mouse. A fraction of a second was spared to seal my workshop, then I downed the potion that had required my duplicates to dismiss themselves.

The invisibility potion took hold and my body and equipment, including the motoroid, faded from sight. I rushed to the front door and practically leapt out into the late afternoon of Brockton Bay. Hopefully a mysteriously opening apartment door wouldn’t attract attention, but I had bigger concerns at the moment.

My motoroid’s flight system had been rebuilt, upgraded, miniaturized, and streamlined multiple times since Saturday night. The pair of shoulder mounted wheel turbines had been replaced by a half dozen micro thrusters that were smaller, more powerful, and allowed more precise control. Mass fields artificially increased the inertia of the thruster’s exhaust, allowing a tiny flow volume to provide tremendous force.

That tremendous force was currently launching me across half the city like a depressed trajectory ballistic missile. The speed would take me to my destination in less time than it had taken me to suit up. Barely enough time to prepare for what I was diving into

Satellite maps and sensors confirmed the target, a six-story office building, practically a skyscraper by the standards of the docks, and something that had probably been a fairly prosperous company center before shipping shut down and Downtown took over as the commercial heart of the city. As I approached I could trace the signal from Aisha’s phone to the fifth floor, near the center of the building.

I memorized the building’s blueprints and considered my options. Situated like that there was no way I could extract her quickly or subtly. This was going to be loud and messy, and my only defense would be overwhelming offence. I was going to go in as hard as possible and fuck anyone who got in my way.

As the building approached I triggered a slight impact to dispel the invisibility potion and downed a duplication potion from my motoroid’s reservoirs. Without a word my duplicates launched themselves into a sharp ascent and began high detail scans of the building and area, linking the data to my implant. As they reached their peak each triggered their omni-tool fabricators and two quintets of drones appeared in the air around them.

As the drones were formed each duplicate channeled energy into their creation, drawing upon our Elven Enchantment power. The result was a construct that went beyond the perfect creations I had previously used to something truly wondrous. Enhanced in every way, from speed, to sensors, to attack capability, they were legitimately magical creations. They soared out into the sky, providing an impossibly detailed account of the target area.

I held my original course, directly towards the side of the building. As I neared the outer wall both tonfas were deployed from the motoroid’s arms and crossed them across my chest. At the instant I reached the building I swung both in opposite directions, cleaving an opening as I dove into the building’s interior.

This wasn’t a modern building with a solid wall of mirrored glass. It had probably been built back in the fifties, well before those kinds of designs caught on. As such the front of the building was a mess of brick and cement with smaller recessed windows that would have been too small to fit a motoroid through. Thus, the use of tremor tonfas as an ad hoc can opener.

Or battering ram.

Or breaching charge.

These weren’t the rushed, sloppy weapons I had deployed at the storage yard. They were bars of rock Dust-infused Skyforged adamantium, inscribed with tremor runes written in mithril, optimized in function through multiple weapon modification abilities, and wielded with the mastery afforded by my Maliwan Intern power.

The strike opened the side of the building. Not in some chaotic explosion or uncontrolled earthquake. The strike parted the wall like a stage curtain, peeling back six stories of steel, glass, and stone over the front of the building.

I had made the strike carefully in an attempt to avoid compromising the integrity of the structure. Despite the six-story tall gap in the building’s face none of the key structural supports were damaged. I was fairly sure it would be fine, and because the Celestial Forge likes to be funny sometimes it suddenly elected to connect to an architecture power from the Knowledge constellation.

Build That Wall. Mundane construction and information on how to reinforce structures with Mantic energy. Also, some other applications I didn’t have time to consider, but enough to know the building would be fine.

I dove inside, sensors sweeping for any possible threat. Any concerns about this not being an ABB stronghold were dismissed by the assorted power signatures coming from the heads of panicked residents of the building. More conscripts, or possibly just people who were associated with the gang in more mundane roles and became subject to the new universal cranial mine policy.

Seeing it in practice twisted my guts. Maybe I’d been focused on how I fixed everyone at the storage lot, but I hadn’t been thinking about all the people still living under Bakuda’s thumb. Or the ABB’s thumb, depending on how much control she still had. Here was a building nearly full of people with bombs in their head. People who I couldn’t help both because Aisha needed me and because Bakuda was no longer distracted and could start popping people, either randomly or en mass as soon as I started pulling bombs.

I pushed through desks and cubicles, but the motoroid wasn’t built for enclosed space maneuvering. I would probably be faster without it. And with life fibers I would definitely be faster without it.

The thought of Aisha was all it took to convince me. I signaled Garment and opened the armor. The life fibers made full contact with my body as I burst out and activated my nanites. Blue lines traced across my costume contrasting with the burning red threads visible through the material of my costume. The intoxicating surge of power flowed into me, but I stayed focused on my target.

Between the mental effort of activating my nanites and dealing with the life fiber energy I had to delegate most analysis tasks to Survey, relying on the A.I.s guidance. The building wasn’t totally undefended. Many of the doors had bombs wired to them, either triggered by improper access or set up with controls based in some central command system. It was nothing I wouldn’t have been able to disable given enough time.

I didn’t have the time. Fortunately, there was an easier way to bypass the trapped doors. The system had been put in place assuming someone would actually be using the doors. Then again, most people probably don’t plan on dealing with life fiber enhanced hyper durable tinkers on a warpath to a specific area of their building. At my current level of strength interior walls were basically a film of sheetrock-based mist.

There was something immensely satisfying about drawing a line from point A to point B and just powering through everything in my way. I burst through walls like the Kool-Aid man, offhandedly tossing desks and filing cabinets out of my path. With each breached wall Garment flared the cape around me, clearing dust and creating an impression that had the residents either slack jawed or fleeing for their lives. The contents of the building parted before me like the Red Sea as I cut a swath towards Aisha’s signal.

I was paying little attention to what and who I was pushing through. It was clearly ABB, but higher tier than the street level rackets the gang was known for. I guess a gang that ran a third of a city the size of Brockton would need some level of support for finances and money laundering. Aisha had apparently stumbled into some kind of white-collar gang office.

Those suspicions were pretty much confirmed when I burst through another wall and emerged into a meeting room that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the penthouse office of one of the Downtown corporate headquarters. A dozen frightened men in various levels of business wear stared at me, stunned.

All except for the hulking form of a single security goon who turned and charged directly towards me. It was a display of either bravery or loyalty that bordered on suicidal. This was like the sequel to the guy who decided to shoot at me after I had fought off half the forces of the ABB and made me once again wonder about the possibility of chemically enhanced bravado.

With my body drowning in life fiber energy the instincts of T’ai Chi Chuan took over and I shifted smoothly out of his lunge. Garment’s help wasn’t even necessary, though it was amusing to see his face when his blow stopped dead against a billowing cape. Garment pulled back before he could react and I grabbed his exposed arm, spinning him into a throw. A throw that would have put down a normal man if done with my previous strength. A throw that would have caused injuries with my current Olympian build. A throw that, when combined with the overwhelming power of raw life fibers, ended up considerably more dramatic.

The thug went through the wall, into a hallway. Then through the wall on the opposite side of the hall. And into a pile of cubicles and office furniture, ending up in a collapsed mess with what was clearly several broken limbs. Survey confirmed he was still alive, though not likely to move anytime soon.

Any chance of me feeling bad about the level of force was banished by the lack of a bomb in his head, or the heads of anyone in the room. Whoever these people where it seemed they were in positions that put them beyond Bakuda’s mad schemes, and as such I felt no guilt over their fates.

I pushed through the room, shattering the conference table on my way, and breached the next wall. As I left I raised my omni-tool to fire a quintet of enhanced flashbang grenades into the room. Fully enhanced, master crafted with Elven Enchantment. The bursts of the grenades and screams of the men echoed behind me as I pushed through the final walls to the source of Aisha’s signal.

Those were the unpowered elite of the ABB and deserved worse than tinnitus and temporary blindness, but I couldn’t spare the time to deal with them. Even my motoroid trailing after me didn’t have options for capture or containment. Maybe something could be done later, but now I was focused on breaching the final wall between myself and Aisha’s signal.

The room I entered was not what I expected. Of course, I didn’t really know what to expect and had been entirely focused on getting here before something terrible happened. It didn’t leave much time for contemplation beyond immediate tactical concerns.

The room had rows of computer terminals, all facing a large wall covered in screens. Some displayed business news, some showed stock tickers, some specific financial information. I recognized one of the computers towards the front of the room as a Bloomberg terminal, a rather excessive addition for a gang hideout.

Looking at the place it could have been any business center in the city with two exceptions. First, the two workers in the room had bombs in their heads and were crawling over each other to get away from the life fiber enhanced cape who just burst through the wall. And second, there was a dead man at one of the computer stations.

I signaled Garment to disconnect the life fibers. As the crimson energy died away my head cleared and I was able to focus again. From a quick glance at the mess it was obvious that the man’s cranial bomb had gone off. The sea-urchin-like mass of crystal needless extending from his neck was exactly Bakuda’s style. Each was about the width of a pencil but had extended nearly ten feet from the man, punching through anything in their way. And because of the positioning, that ‘anything’ mostly included the man in question.

As a small mercy most of the spikes had penetrated his head from their origin point in the base of his skull. He was saved from the slow drawn-out death that would have come from getting hit in non-vital locations. It was a monstrous reminder of what Bakuda was capable of, what she had in line for everyone I’d blown past on my way here.

I remembered Aisha’s call. ‘A little impaled’. Those were the words she’d used, and seeing the effect in question left little doubt to what she was referring to. The signal from her phone was coming from near the nest of spikes, but her power was preventing me from pinpointing it. Even computer assistance barely helped. I could get a vector, but was unable to even hold the idea that something was there.

Thankfully, as the last conscript fled the room, Aisha appeared. And then I saw the blood. The idea was chilling, but her power had actually concealed the blood from her injuries. From the way she was impaled it must have been building for some time. I didn’t want to think about how long she had been holding out until the opportunity to make that call presented itself.

I put that out of my mind as I rapidly assessed the scene. She was wearing a short purple and turquoise dress with matching leggings. A kind of scarf was serving as her mask and the outfit included a stylish set of boots and gloves. I could recognize Garment’s work. I also recognized one of the more durable hyper fabrics my workshop could create. And I recognized from the design that the outfit had been made with the clear purpose of functioning as a cape costume.

Garment had given Aisha a cape costume, a very durable cape costume, probably at least as good as Taylor’s suit. It was something I had specifically avoided because I was afraid it would lead to Aisha deciding to go out and pull something exactly like this.

Still, this being Aisha she could easily have done this without the basic security afforded by Garment’s work. The costume hadn’t fully protected her, but from the looks of things it may have saved her life. A couple of the needles seemed to have shattered from catching the fabric at a bad angle and the penetrations that did get through weren’t nearly as deep as on the unfortunate conscript the effect originated from.

My guess was she had been hovering near the conscript when his bomb went off. The result was about a half dozen needles buried in her body, but thanks to the resistance of her outfit she had been mostly pushed away from the blast rather than completely perforated.

“Hey.” She struggled to get the word out and let the cell phone fall from her hand. From what I could tell she hadn’t taken a hit to her lungs, but there were enough needles in her torso that that luck had probably just taken things from ‘quick death’ to ‘slow death’.

Without asking I stepped forward and laid a gloved hand on her shoulder. Blue lines traced themselves across her body and I got an inside look at the extent of the damage. Yep, slow death was about right. That kind of organ damage would not have been a fun way to go. At least it was simple to fix. I had dealt with nightmares of spatial distortions, and that was without One Thing at a Time improving my healing skill and speed.

As I finished the process my motoroid finished following my trail of destruction through the building, batting away the occasional brave, foolish, or disoriented gang member that got in its way. It reached the financial room and took a defensive position by the hole in the wall. Survey scanned the room for surveillance devices and came up clean. Apparently, in the ABB it wasn’t common practice to take video documentation of your financial crimes.

I received a data feed from my duplicates. They had taken positions high in the sky above the buildings using their mass cores to essentially float while they scanned the area. There was no sign of incoming support, but the building was looking like a kicked anthill. Instead of interfering with the frenzied evacuation they were interfacing with their copies of Survey to record and track as much of the activity as possible.

Aisha dropped away from the spikes as my nanites dissolved the intruding matter, leaving unblemished skin visible through the holes in her costume. She sucked in a deep breath like it was the sweetest feeling in the world. Her mouth was still covered, but from her eyes I could tell she was smiling.

“Thank yo…”

“What the hell were you thinking?”

She reeled back as I cut her off, but there must have been something about my tone or expression that hamstrung whatever automatic response she would have given in the situation. Instead she seemed to actually consider her response before speaking. She looked up at me, taking in the billowing cloak that added even more to our height difference, then pushed forward.

“I was trying to help.” She looked at me as if expecting some dismissive statement. I gave her a level look and she took a breath before continuing.

“You said how important it was to find Bakuda or Oni Lee or the thinker. I, uh, I knew some people who were low level ABB.” From her tone I guessed she didn’t have the friendliest relationship with them. “So, I started hanging around them with my power, listening in and stuff.”

It was stupid and dangerous, but I got the sense that pointing out either of those details wouldn’t be helpful right now. “How did you end up here?”

She stood a little straighter. “Followed one guy, then went up the ladder when he reported to someone. Eventually I found out about this place. They manage the legal stuff here, businesses and shit. I came to check it out. Apparently it used to only be part ABB before Bakuda conscripted the whole building.” She saw my expression and shifted to a defiant posture. “I was careful. Not like last time. I took it slow, watched how they got through rooms and stuff.”

I grit my teeth. “I assume you got my number from my cell phone?” She made a small nod and diverted her eyes. I bit back my outrage at the violation. She had been in my apartment when I had messaged Dr. Campbell. Having that exposed felt considerably worse than the intrusion into my workshop. But that was Aisha. She was thirteen, an age of peak stupidity. Add passenger influence and the effects of her home life and it was probably an accomplishment that she at least seemed to feel guilty about the act.

I let out a slow breath before continuing. “Why didn’t you call me before you came here?” If I didn’t have to bust into this building like a rogue missile I could have set up enough surveillance and infiltration tech to pick this place apart a dozen times over.

“Because you wouldn’t have let me come with you.” The look in her eyes was plainly defiant. I didn’t insult her by trying to refute the statement. Passenger, power, immaturity. There was no way I would have let her in this place. At best she could have watched from a safe distance. “I told you, I was being careful. I was doing fine until this guy exploded.”

That was the real concerning point. “What happened when his bomb detonated? What brought that on?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was embarrassed and hurt. “He was doing something on the computer, some stock stuff. It looked important, so I took a look. Then he turned into a pincushion.”

I turned towards the PC. The screen and keyboard had been shattered by the bomb’s spikes, but the computer was still running. I leveraged Survey, my omni-tool, and my neural implant to pick through the data. It didn’t take long for things to fall into place.

“Stocks.” I announced.

“What?”

“Stock trading.” I indicated towards the wall of screens. “They were doing some kind of stock manipulation, timed trades and set just as the markets closed to cover their tracks. It looks like he missed one of his cues for a trade. I’m guessing their bombs were set to go off if any of them messed up.”

It meant the thinker was getting into higher level manipulation. She must have been really confident in her abilities. Not many thinkers tried to go against Watchdog. It's possible it was a short-term scam, a quick cash grab to pile onto the already impressive amount of funds the ABB had secured.

“This is the new thinker’s work.” I turned to Aisha. “Did you learn anything about her?”

The girl shook her head. “Not many people have worked with her. They’re calling her the Rabbit?”

She looked to me but the name didn’t trigger anything. It was possible some zodiac reference, and Survey quickly provided dubiously helpfully insight on the matter.

‘Rabbit. Forth animal of the Chinese zodiac. Associated with the Earthly Branch, yin, and the hours of 0500 through 0700. Assumed personality traits include earnestness, kindness, reasoning skills and attention to detail in spite of no natural or parahuman explanation for the association. Additionally…”

I could tell there was an entire rant on astrology being prepared and quickly worked to cut off the A.I. before it could get sidetracked. Instead I turned my attention back to the system in front of me.

As I realized just what I had access to I couldn’t keep a smile from my face. The smile grew until a laugh began to bubble forth. I’m fully prepared to blame residual life fiber energy for whatever manic edge it might have had.

“What?” Aisha was looking at me with an excited gleam in her eyes.

“This is their financial center. What’s more, the deals they’ve been pulling mean even more of their assets are tied into this system. Every front, every shell company, every source of laundered money. There’s a trail to everything. With this I can choke off every legitimate asset the ABB has to its name.”

Her eyes shined in the light of the screen and I could tell she was grinning behind her scarf. “You can do that? Don’t these things have crazy security and encryptions on the accounts or something?”

“What, this human crap?”

There was an awkward moment when I realized what I said, she realized what I said, and we slowly came to a silent agreement not that neither of us would mention it. It felt like that kind of slip up should cost more than twenty-five cents. Like somewhere between a dollar coin and one of those $10 rolls of quarters.

“So, uh, we can bring them down?” She finally asked.

“Not completely.” I admitted. “They still have their forces, cash assets, locations not tied in with their businesses, and any off the books income sources. This will hobble any attempts to do things legitimately.” I reviewed her question. “Also, ‘we’ won’t be doing it.”

“What?” She took a step back.

“If the ABB capes aren’t on their way now they will be once I start messing with this. You almost died once today. I’m not dragging you into a firefight.”

“I can sneak around. No one will see me.” She tried to sound convincing, but there was a pleading edge to her voice.

I just shook my head. “This place is booby trapped to Hell and back. You're lucky you made it in alive, and there’s no one you can shadow out of the building. Also, bombs don’t care about whether they can see you or not.”

Her eyes slid back to the pin cushioned corpse. I suddenly realized that she had been making an effort to avoid looking at it. It occurred to me that someone without military training and a mechanical disconnect from their humanity might have a hard time dealing with something like that.

“So, you’re sending me away?” There was an uncertain tone to her voice.

“Sort of.” I did a more detailed sweep for surveillance, double checking Survey’s original result. When I was sure it was clear I approached the door and slid my key into the lock. Aisha’s eyes widened as it opened into an empty closet instead of the outside hall, then the hologram flickered away to reveal the entryway of my workshop with two of Survey’s new drones floating in the door.

“You can do that from anywhere?”

I nodded. This was an iffy decision, but it was the one I’d settled on when securing my memory at my throne. I was in the uncomfortable situation of needing to either go through with it, or be tripped up every time Aisha’s power flickered.

Aisha swallowed. “You’ll come for me as soon as this is done, right?”

“Absolutely.” I did my best to sound reassuring, reminding myself that Aisha was probably very good at pretending things didn’t bother her, but had just nearly been killed and needed a hail Mary to save her life. “Listen to the drones. They’ll keep you away from anything dangerous.” And also wouldn’t hesitate to tase her if she pushed her luck too far.

The girl nodded and glanced at me, then her eyes drifted towards the body before she forced them back to the Workshop entrance. “Uh, is Garment in there?”

Aisha flinched as my cloak flowed out and brushed against her cheek. She looked up at the billowing mass of cloth, then at me. I raised one white glove and wiggled the fingers.

“No way.” Her eyes were wide with wonder.

“Go.” I handed her back the phone she dropped earlier. “I’ll make this as quick as I can, but go now.”

The girl nodded and hurried through the door. The corner of my cape flowed up and waved at her as she rushed past. Aisha returned the gesture, then cautiously approached the drone. I gave her a nod, reactivated the entrance defenses, and closed the door.

As soon as she was cut off my awareness of her faded. It wasn’t as bad as when she was actively using her powers, but it was hard to remember my interactions with her. I looked down at the key in my hand and clearly remembered opening the workshop. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t found her and secured her in the workshop.

She was safe.

And I had work to do.

Before I started I looked over at the unfortunate trader. It struck me just how callous I had been. It was a human being and I had been treating his body like a point of tactical information. Now I was preparing to dive into his system, the system he had been killed over, without giving him a second thought.

I took a few seconds to remove the needles and lay out the body. His wallet revealed he was Michael Won, 32 years old, organ donor, and employed at one of the investment firms downtown. It gave a more personal edge to this mess, something I could follow up on later. For now it just hardened the resolve for the actions I was about to take.

Actually hacking into financial records, even from a point of central access, would normally be a challenge. It was significantly less so with my skills and technology. If you add in the fact that I had absolutely no respect for the integrity of their systems it suddenly became trivial.

Of course, tearing into still running systems to install bypasses or copying entire hard drives to extract records and log in information isn’t exactly something data security consultants can prepare for.

While I worked the Celestial Forge made another connection. It was the midsized mote from the same cluster in the Alchemy constellation that had provided my Simplified Formulae power. This was called Alkahestry and was a major step forward in that particular style of alchemy.

Rather than that tectonic forces business this style focused on flows of energy, both through the world and through living beings. That meant that not only could I perform transmutation at a distance with nothing but a very simple circle and set of relays, I could sense living energy. It worked like a life sense, I could already feel the energy of the people in the building, running and near panicked. Specifically I could tell they were panicked by the way their energy shifted. That was a huge level of insight, as it would allow me to use transmutation to heal and assist other medical practices.

Of course, it also improved my skill with normal transmutation. In contrast to the complicated circles and arrays I’d been using, the majority of alkahestry transmutations could be accomplished with a simple pentacle. Higher level application, particularly when combined with my previous knowledge, could get extremely powerful.

As I took a moment to get a feel for it I could tell the life sense, something the power regarded as a ‘Dragon Pulse’, was more detailed than I initially thought. It wasn’t limited to humans. I could feel Garment’s presence, even beyond what our normal connection would have allowed, her presence extending out through the animated cape.

The connection even extended to the life fibers. It was like a more detailed and intimate version of the connection I’d made during my first experiment when I tried to link through my nanites. I could feel the intense energy circulating through the fibers of the creature and the complicated patterns underneath that represented the beginnings of complex thoughts. This close I could get a rough sense of mood and outlook, the satisfaction at both having been fed and at being useful.

Also, for some reason, Alkahestry included a basic understanding of martial arts and an unusually proficient skill with throwing knives. It made sense, as that was necessary to deploy alchemical relays at range, but it was odd to suddenly be able to throw five knives at once in a perfect pentagram pattern using only a single hand.

It was something to think on as I systematically dismantled the financial backing of the ABB and worked to stay ahead of their feeble attempts to stop me. If I had been trying to steal their funds or secure account access it could have been a challenge. Fortunately, all I was trying to do was ruin their shit, which was a much easier prospect.

The trade scheme had been an attempt to take advantage of flaws in automated computer trading, manipulating stock activity to send the programs controlling the trades on exploitable paths. It didn’t take much work to ruin the careful arrangement that kept the activity from being flagged and thus getting every account connected with the scheme locked and under investigation.

That was the first time I encountered action from the other side. Someone, presumably the new thinker, was attempting to reverse the actions with precisely timed commands and activity designed to reinforce the innocuous appearance of the original deals.

I tried to stay hands off for as long as I could, but something tipped them off and they cut their connection before I could trace their location any more precisely than ‘somewhere in the city’. It was possibly more evidence of that timing power at work.

It may have saved them from discovery, but it wouldn’t prevent the damage I could wreck on their organization. I was so deep inside the financial system I could practically feel the monitoring programs WEDGDG used to protect the markets. With gleeful abandon I started tearing into the finances of the ABB.

Shell companies were exposed, fronts were torn down, holdings were flagged and frozen. I was tearing back layers of deception leaving a burning trail severe enough that automatic actions were being taken against them. Years of accumulated blood money was being dragged into the sunlight and pounced on by a plethora or regulatory agencies.

Regrettably, my work wasn’t universally successful. I could tear into trades, investments, holdings, stocks and real-estate freely. However, when I tried to draw attention to the source accounts of the ABB I encountered unexpected resistance. By tracing the funding source for an illegal trade or the purchase of a shell company it should have been enough to freeze the account. Likewise for the repositories of the ABB gains from their various legally gray enterprises. However, unlike my attempts in every other area, this didn’t go smoothly.

Tracing an account would find it emptied and its funds split over a dozen accounts in four different countries. Trying to trace those would show the accounts I went after to be decoys and the money from the actual accounts scattered again. Trying to track the mechanism behind the counter actions only resulted in more dead ends and false starts.

It was infuriating. I just couldn’t keep up with the process. It was clear that this was being directed by someone who made their home in the world of finance, not an uncertain visitor like myself. I was chasing after a ghost who had the home field advantage.

But I wasn’t giving up. This was the last point of failure. If I could accomplish this it would reduce the ABB to operating solely on a cash economy. Not only would it limit their ability to leverage their resources it would deny them most of their ill-gotten wealth. I interfaced with my duplicates, parallel processed with my omni-tool, integrated with Survey and went to war.

I never thought I would miss my neural interface throne this much. It felt like I was trying to fight through mud. Minutes seemed like hours as I combated the mystery financial guru, who at this point I was absolutely certain was some kind of parahuman. Every victory was paltry compared to the effort needed to secure it. Shell accounts held only a few thousand when they weren’t complete dead ends. Even with all my advantages, with three minds operating twice as fast and twice as skillfully, I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t win on this battlefield.

It wasn’t helped by the mounting distractions. The ABB were rallying their forces. It was just too bad that their current forces consisted of a bunch of coerced white-collar workers. Whatever boldness that thug had displayed was in drastically short supply amongst the other residents of the building.

To be fair, they might actually have had a chance if I hadn’t suddenly gained the ability to sense lifeforces. And didn’t have a totally unoccupied and slightly bored A.I. piloting a battle suit of unbelievable power. And a suddenly fabricated flight of elven enchanted drones.

Occasional breaks to direct Fleet and Survey to a particular area were all it took to reduce the planned offensive to shambles. It probably didn’t help that their first attempts, cutting the power and then cutting the network line, were completely useless. By that point I had torn apart the system thoroughly enough that they were basically vestigial to my efforts and easily transitioned to connections through the wireless network. The financial duel continued while Fleet found enjoyment completely ruining the ABB’s attempts to mount an offensive, mostly through the motoroid’s use of basic area denial strikes.

The building was beginning to look like swiss cheese, but the A.I. was following my lead of avoiding structural components. That did leave some areas basically nothing but structural supports, but that was besides the point. The few paths they had available to them were covered by surprisingly agile and durable drones that probably could have outmaneuvered their forces even without my help.

Mercifully, Bakuda or whoever had their finger on the detonator didn’t decide to start executing people for their failure to defeat a physically and technologically superior foe using only what appeared to be the kind of the combat skills one developed at corporate team-building seminars. Apparently they decided it was more useful to keep their men alive then kill them for failing an impossible task. That did suggest that someone saner than Bakuda was holding the reins.

My attempt to ferret out the last of the gang’s finances was proving futile. Eventually the mounting dead ends and convoluted financial landscapes became too much and I had to admit defeat. The entire operation had taken less than ten minutes, but it was clear I wasn’t going to be able to prevail. Besides, my duplicates had spotted something that needed my attention.

As I withdrew from my pursuit a string of data was sent from an untraceable point in the final trail I had followed.

6E756D6265726D616E4062616E6B2E636F6D

The seemingly random string of characters was a contact address. An invitation, or possibly a challenge.

I had obviously made an impression. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to reach out to someone who protected the money of a gang that put bombs into children’s heads. But that was something I could consider later. Right now I had to put some assholes in their place.

The knowledge constellation missed its connection as I planned my intercept. My duplicates were getting close to what would be their 20% time, so they were more than willing to take some risks. I agreed to their engagement plan and moved to get into position. That was when I received a message from Fleet.

‘Proposed alteration to plan based on modeled parameters.’

I looked at what was being proposed and nearly refused on the spot. That was when my duplicates decided to weigh in on the matter.

“Oh, we should totally do that.” The first radioed me while moving to position.

“No, it’s pointlessly excessive. They already slipped away once. I’m not giving them another chance just to be able to show off advancements in A.I. driven motoroid control.”

The second spoke up to counter me. “Last time you didn’t have us. We have them outnumbered, out teched, and outclassed. You can show off with us covering you.”

“Think of it as a development exercise. Fleet has made a tactical suggestion with high confidence in the ability to complete it. The situation can bear the demonstration without compromising objectives. Do you have a good reason for rejection?”

I didn’t like being ganged up on, but they had a point. Fleet was eagerly waiting for a decision. It wasn’t something I would have risked before, but my duplicates could cover me. I reviewed the parameters one more time and gave my answer.

“Proposal accepted. Begin planning of entry maneuvers.”

There was a tangible sense of excitement from the A.I. as we moved into position for intercept. I smiled along with it and reviewed the situation once more.

There hadn’t been any capes at the office building, most likely protecting their physical assets and tinker tech. Also, my attack had been brutal, direct, and come out of nowhere. With my previous demonstration I doubted they wanted to throw assets at me blindly, which is probably why the usual rapid response of Oni Lee hadn’t surfaced.

Good thing for him. My duplicates would have snipped him from high altitude the moment he dared to show his face.

It seemed that, not wanting to risk their own capes, the ABB had once again decided to contract out the matter. Thus, the presence of a pair of overly angular robots speeding through the docks towards the office building.

I was mildly impressed that Leet was both able to build things that size and keep them running with the limitations of his specialty. Either he had a major breakthrough or his synergy with ‘The Rabbit’ was better than I anticipated.

The robots were nearly three times the height of my motoroid and kind of skated across the ground as they moved, propelled by thrusters on their backs. Uber and Leet were taking advantage of the lack of traffic in the area and a surprising amount of agility from the robots in question. My duplicates waited until they cut a corner by veering into the parking lot of an abandoned store before striking.

Two motoroids dropped from the sky like comets. Unlike the last time this was attempted both had pilots. Pilots with my precise control of their elemental weapons.

Instead of the indiscriminate crater from Saturday night they channeled the force forward in a rising wave of earth. As the ground lost all stability the suits went head over heels, their thrust systems working against them in the chaos of the upturned parking lot.

At the same time, I was peeling towards them from the opposite direction with my motoroid in motorcycle form. This particular maneuver was excessive, but Fleet had made the request and I agreed to it. That said, ramping off a moving wave of earth to launch over your opponents while your motoroid transforms midair and you kick off to land precisely on the sole remaining lamppost in the lot and glare down at your foes with your cloak dramatically flaring around you with three motoroids hovering around the enemy forces like vengeful angels… that was just excessive.

The flaring cloak was actually a necessity. My balance was a bit better following all the life fiber training, but it wasn’t perfect. I was relying on Garment to act as a regulating factor to keep me on stable footing.

It wasn’t all show either. My motoroids, two of which contained duplicates, had them surrounded. Multiple weapons were at the ready as well as three potential sources of Evermore Alchemy. I was more durable than my motoroids and between Garment, life fibers, and even aura if I really got desperate, I could outfight or evade any attack. I was ready to take them down, either permanently or in a fashion that would get me the information I needed on the rest of the ABB.

At least that’s what I’d been hoping for. I was badly disappointed. I looked down at the pair of machines, which Survey informed me were called Virtuaroids, as they struggled to their feet and a single word came to my lips.

“Pathetic.”

The sound carried across the devastation, causing the blockier of the two robots, Apharmd, thank you Survey, to scramble to its feet. Leet’s voice came from the machine.

“You haven’t seen anything yet. Think you’re the robot master? Well you haven’t faced the power of Virtual On!” He hung on that word as if expecting a reaction. When I didn’t give him one he continued in a somewhat strained voice. “I thought you’d appreciate someone giving you a proper challenge.”

“And I thought you’d have the courage to challenge me in person.” Both robots stopped moving for a second. Those suits were too dense to completely scan through, but there was no blocking my ability to read the dragon pulse. I could tell there was nothing alive inside them.

“Preposterous. This is the age of Super Robot Wars, not Karate Champ.” Uber cut in, hamming up his performance as usual. His robot, Temjin, even posed while he spoke. “You seriously expect us to get out of the robots?” He was clearly trying to call my bluff, and not doing that convincing a job of it.

“I expect you to get out of your basement. Though I suppose hiding behind a controller is your natural environment. And yelling at someone through a headset will finally let you use those skills developed from hours of screaming homophobic insults on Xbox Live.” As I spoke I worked with my duplicates to assess the equipment on display. Integrating my Diagnostic Tools into my scanning systems gave me a way to assess tinker tech in the field, and let me turn this pre-battle posturing into an intelligence gathering exercise.

“If you’re afraid to face us just say so.” Leet scoffed in a somewhat unconvincing tone. My scans confirmed his high power plasma cannon and large complement of missiles and Uber’s hard light rifle integrated in a sword with a plasma projection system along the blade. That robot also was carrying some kind of large cluster bombs. Heavy ordinance, and probably a serious threat to any other cape in the city, but not to me. All said there were no signatures of the kind of annihilator tech I’d been worried about.

“I would happily face you if you weren’t cowering in a hole somewhere.” I checked my scanner data and saw the expected fluctuations in the background EM signals. “Are you using the same sub-wave system to drive those things that you use to hide your broadcasts?”

“What?” Leet’s voice almost broke as he spoke. “What are you talking about?”

“That EM pulse medium thing you do to hide your broadcasts from being detected. Use of background signals as a carrying method for information. Kind of clever, but I’m surprised nobody’s figured it out before…”

Uber swung up the sword/gun thing his robot was carrying and launched a brilliant beam of energy at me. It seemed they were defensive enough regarding that particular system that they were willing to jump straight to combat in order to keep more details from being revealed. It made sense, since it was the single piece of technology that had kept them broadcasting for years while everything else failed around them. The system was hell to track, but could potentially be disrupted if you went deep enough into the technology.

Garment had swung half of the cape in front of me even as Uber aimed the weapon and fully intercepted the blast. A beam of energized light with the power of one of Purity’s stronger blasts broke against the cloak like it was nothing but the glare of a spotlight. That was the result of more than just durability at play. One of the defensive items my duplicates had built was a plate of adamantium with a simple mass field generator. It had a single purpose. It was very, very heavy.

Inertia is a defensive property. Attacks that do no damage can still be debilitating if they hit hard enough to send you flying. However, if you have an incredibly dense and heavy plate as one of your defensive items, and a power that applies that property to your entire body then suddenly you have a resistance to knockback that makes lead look like styrofoam.

Of course, that slip of a plate did weigh about twenty pounds whenever the mass field was activated, but it was centrally located and well balanced, so not that much of a problem compared to the benefits it yielded.

Really, I could have taken the hit myself, but Garment intercepting it prevented even a moment of distraction as I drew my upgraded pistol and prepared to leap forward to counterattack. Not that it was really necessary, seeing as Uber was learning why you don’t push your luck while covered by multiple angles from an elevated position.

Maybe he had been hoping that these motoroids were as bereft of ranged options as the previous model had become. As he was quickly learning, that was definitely not the case. In fact, the only reason this wasn’t over in an instant was because I was still hoping to salvage something from the wrecks and I wasn’t convinced that primary weapons energy output could be regulated enough for safe deployment against urban centers.

My duplicates had kind of swung for the fences when they designed that one.

Instead the deployed tonfas on each motoroid opened up in a manner only a variable weapon could, shifting into large caliber mass effect firearms, because the theme of variable weapons was always ‘It is also a gun’. I would be tempted to refer to them as man portable artillery, except weapons that size weren’t exactly man portable. The artillery part was actually dead on.

Six Earthshaker Cannons opened up on Leet’s robots, firing flecks of rock Dust-infused tungsten magnetically accelerated to supersonic speeds before having their mass amplified to the level of a field artillery shell. The mass shift would only hold for a moment after leaving the weapon, but at the speeds the rounds were traveling that was more than enough.

I had to give Leet’s workmanship credit based on the fact that the Virtuaroids, and I hated using that name, were not immediately reduced to piles of scrap. That was largely due to the fact that Leet seemed to have embraced the ‘layered forcefield’ approach as a necessary part of future engagements, and that the weapons were still using the somewhat less damaging tremor runes even in cannon form. Hence, Earthshaker Cannon.

Each strike from the cannons triggered a flare of energy from the fields surrounding the machines. Glowing yellow fields, rippling distortion, interlinked hexagons, or areas of blurred space flared into existence as the heavy ordinance rained down on them. The protection wasn’t perfect, at least not under this level of assault. Certain effects became less prevalent under the strain and the odd round managed to transfer enough energy to dent the outer surface of the machines.

The defensive fields might have been somewhat holding up to the barrage, but the tremor effect was causing the ground around them to writhe like an angry snake. I could tell their shielding had some kind of method for negating momentum transfer. Without it they’d be spinning in place under the force of the impacts. Instead there was just the persistent lightshow of the shielding systems as they struggled to absorb the titanic amount of abuse being rained upon them.

The sustained bombardment was quickly becoming more than the ‘Virtuaroids’ could handle. Tremor rune empowered artillery was opening rifts and fissures under the machines and the rock Dust-infused rounds were causing jagged spikes of stone to spawn from every ricochet. Leet’s machine was already buried to its knees and pinned down after mere seconds of bombardment.

I missed a connection to the Alchemy constellation as Uber used a glowing edge projected from his sword for cover. Burning blue plasma extended from either side of the narrow sword in a blade wide enough to shield the robot from the aerial bombardment. With the moment’s respite his blue and white machine engaged its jets and launched into the sky. It was a clumsy launch compared to my motoroids, but clearly a skillfully piloted one. As he reached the peak of his initial boost he lobbed a polygonal device towards the nearest motoroids. I was already drawing a bead on it in the middle of my leap before the device even left his hand. Garment used the cloak to steady me as I lined up the shot. Compared to sniping one of the grenades from Bakuda’s launcher this was a cakewalk.

The current pistol was much better than its previous version. Mithril casing with engraved runes and a block of wind Dust-infused tungsten providing ammunition took the weapon’s quality to a whole new level. The data systems had been drastically improved as well, with the recently added smartlink between my neural implant and the pistol’s sights made keeping the gun on target trivial. The shot launched with all the skill of my elemental weapon mastery and tore through the device in a swirl of supersonic vortexes.

Rather than trigger an explosion or just fall apart the device’s casing was torn away and about a dozen small devices flew out of the scrap, launching towards the motoroids. Micro-missiles. I could recognize the look of Bakuda’s work. If I was anyone else I might be in trouble. Fortunately, I kind of was someone else in that I was my duplicates. Both of my duplicates had all my abilities and equipment. They knew what was coming and were more than capable of defending themselves. Before the weapons could approach a pair of overload bursts launched from the duplicates omni-tools precisely guided to short-out the incoming projectiles.

Their guidance systems and power sources died on the spot, burned out by the precisely targeted electrical energy. The guided bombs scattered off trailing electronic smoke behind them. I snatched one out of the air as Garment guided my descent towards Leet’s Apharmd. At close proximity my Diagnostic Tools were able to examine its function in exacting detail.

Survey assisted by informing me that this kind of munition was not accurate to the video game source material the Uber and Leet were depicting.

I frowned as I dropped the final distance and raised the glowing orange blade of my omni-sword.

“So that was your plan?” I swung the sword. With the improvements from Tinkerer’s Variable Weapon Crafting it was more than just a pistol with a blade mount. The weapon transitioned into a perfectly balanced and elegantly shaped sword that was ideally matched to my grip, build, and combat style. Three quick slices reduced his plasma cannon to scrap. “Hide behind drones while you try to steal my technology? Or is this Bakuda’s desperation at play?”

The device was a frightening example of just how far Bakuda was able to push the idea of what counted as a ‘bomb’. It attached to an object and aggressively scanned it, charging it with the effect of ludicrously energetic active sensors and transmitting every reading. Eventually the object fractured from the forces being induced, and then blew apart from the strain. By that point the scan would have extracted enough information for insanely detailed blueprints and even pulled data from any conventional hard drives.

It simultaneously destroyed technology while giving its user a full breakdown of the object’s design and stored information. A reverse engineering grenade. It was something that would only have been built if she was specifically going against a tinker, or possibly performing some kind of data theft.

Still, it wouldn’t have made a difference to me. Maybe it could have been a problem on Saturday night, but now my kinetic barriers and shielding would block it from ever making contact. Of course, they didn’t know that. So far they hadn’t presented enough of a threat to even necessitate the outer layers or my improved defenses.

“Fuck you.” Leet’s machine scrambled back and missile ports began opening and tracking on me. “I don’t need that shit. I can build anything. And this is just the beginning. We’re reviving the franchise!”

A concentrated barrage of earthshaker fire threw off his aim and sent him scrambling to recover. Garment whipped my cape into a crescent above me, just in time to intercept the glowing blade of Uber’s sword.

“Uber and Leet: 2011. The next gen update everyone’s been waiting for!” Even mid combat Uber kept his voice in the excessively grandiose tone and dramatic register.

The plasma projection coming from the blade was insanely intense. The effect was powerful enough that it might have actually caused some problems for me before my latest round of upgrades. I remembered the sting of that Spartan sword from the storage center, probably the only conventional armament I had actually felt during that fight. This thing was like its angry older brother.

The thought of that incident, how I’d been fooled, brought any enjoyment of the confrontation to a dead stop. Instead I shifted position and raised the blade of my omni-sword. Uber’s Temjin was four times my height, though according to Survey that was still only half its official video game size. Despite its size Leet’s engineering and Uber’s piloting had it maneuvering with deadly grace. The robot didn’t have the inertia a machine its size should have struggled with. As such it was able to conduct itself like a swordsman rather than a walking tank.

It would have made for a difficult opponent, but I wasn’t exactly playing by the conventional laws of physics either. Uber’s lightning fast strikes were blocked by Garment’s masterful control of my cape, leaving Uber open for counterattacks. Projected slashes from my omni-sword were launched at blazing speed and sparked dramatically off of failing force fields. The blue and white mecha struggled to get past my defenses while I out maneuvered and whittled it down.

Leet was doing little better. He was shifting to a wide stance to try to keep his feet under the barrage and struggling to bring a launcher to bear. The two times he did manage to fire a missile the projectile was shredded by Fleet’s precision accuracy of the cannons before it had a chance to cross half the distance to his target. All through this damage was piling up and protective fields were sparking out.

They were playing defensive. I’d seen this before and I wasn’t going to fall for it again. Luckily I was better prepared this time. Before I could even set the task Survey reported the reason for their delaying tactics. The real threat that would have been able to punch through my durability in a way Uber and Leet’s loadouts never could, spotted early thanks to the web of fifteen drones in high position over the battlefield.

It took barely a moment of conference with my duplicates to decide on the strategy. They rose higher into the air, maintaining their barrage as they ascended. A familiar beeping sounded and Uber’s robot launched back under the power of his jets while tossing aside the now sparking blade-rifle.

“Well, this has been fun, but all good things must come to an end. And it looks like it’s about time…”

“For the missiles, right?” I cut Uber off as I shifted to catch the discarded weapon. As I suspected it was a lot less bulky than a twenty-foot-long sword should have been. Mostly empty space held together by structural fields that were in the process of going critical while leaking a concerning amount of smoke.

“No…” Leet replied in probably the least convincing tone I’d ever heard. “Why would you say that?”

“Because of the large barrage that’s just been launched from the other side of the city.” I made a vague gesture in the direction of the launch site as I fixed the overload in the weapon’s stability drive. The remotely controlled robots couldn’t emote but they both went dead quiet.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about.” Uber was at least somewhat convincing in his attempt to obscure the truth of the situation.

“I’m guessing the plan was to bog me down, steal my technology, and keep me distracted from noticing the missile strike, probably based on the assumption that I couldn’t do this.” I gestured upward without taking my attention off the repairs and modifications I was making to the giant sword. The advantage of having a neural connection and duplicates to handle the situation for me.

Uber and Leet seemed to have finally noticed the barrage of earthshaker rounds had stopped. The robots shifted their view upwards to see my three motoroids hanging in formation while facing towards the rapidly approaching barrage. A barrage of what was presumably composed of warheads consisting of the worst effects Bakuda’s tinker tech could manage. Apertures opened on the chests of each motoroid, revealing the baleful glow of magitek energy in its purest and most deadly form.

The magitek laser was an offensive function I’d know about since I got my first Magitech power. It was incredibly simple to implement, though very bulky and power hungry. There was a good reason I didn’t include it in the first design of my motoroid. It would have taken up enough space to either prevent me from using it as armor or drastically changing the suit’s profile, and it would have completely drained a call bead in a handful of shots.

The new motoroid was running from a much larger power source. The new motoroid was constructed with weapon modification and optimization powers. The new motoroid benefited from both miniaturization and simplification of its systems. The new motoroid had a mass core to effectively ignore recoil, even while flying. The new motoroid was constructed with magically resonant mithril. The new motoroid did have a masterwork magitek laser as its primary weapon.

The sky turned red and, with a sound like air being tortured, three crimson beams erupted from the formation. This was an untested weapon. I wasn’t worried about it failing, but I only had estimates for how that kind of energy would present itself. The numbers skewed high enough that I was averse to using it against any target where there was even the potential for collateral damage. Or against any target where I would want to recover physically intact remains.

I thought I would have to sweep the lasers through the swarm of missiles that were bearing down on my position. It turns out that relative proximity to three beams of that level of power is not exactly a friendly environment for delicate tinker tech. Even missiles not directly struck by the energy warped and melted before being torn away in a cloud of debris.

The energetic bloom from the attack was something I hadn’t totally accounted for, particularly the multiplicative factor of clustering the shots. The beams had been angled to avoid direct impact with any part of the city, catching the missiles at the peak of their trajectory and continuing up into the sky at a shallow angle. While that prevented any direct damage, readings from the drones suggested there were some unfriendly effects on the upper floors and rooftop equipment of some of the taller buildings directly under the beams.

Still, that was less damage than would have been caused by a clustered tinker tech missile strike in the middle of the docks, so I wasn’t going to let it bother me. My hands continued to work on the sword, stripping out Leet’s transponder systems, fixing overcomplications in the design and altering the blade’s profile and controls.

‘We have a location for the launch point. We’re both on short time here. Let us scout the site.’ The second duplicate relayed through my implant, and the first confirmed his message.

‘Go.’ I responded. This was something I’d be concerned about blundering into myself, but with my duplicates on the last minutes of their existence and willing to take a tinker tech bomb to the face I wasn’t going to deny them. ‘I’ll mop things up here.’

Ten of the drones dropped out of the sky and fell into position with the duplicates’ motoroids. They linked their mass fields, creating a kind of tethering system that would not have been possible before Eleven Enchantment, and trailed behind the suits in a tight V formation as my duplicates launched themselves towards the site of the missiles.

Both of Leet’s robots dropped their gaze back to me. My own original motoroid remained floating high above us, quickly joined by its drones. I took a stand before the two damaged but functioning mechs and hefted the repaired rifle-blade, which I continued modifying.

Leet’s robot focused on the augmented sword and shifted awkwardly. It was Uber who broke in first.

“So, you’ve sent your robots to their destruction while you prepare to meet your end at our hands.” He drew a pair of smaller pistols from somewhere on his machine. Leet, seemingly emboldened, set his machine in a more aggressive stance and deployed the array of launch tubes peppering his robot.

“The days of people underestimating us are coming to an end.” There was a vindictive edge to Leet’s reedy voice. “You’re in for the reckoning of your life.”

I smiled under my mask as the Knowledge constellation missed a connection. My hands finished the last of their work on the stolen rifle-blade. As long as I focused on the task in isolation modifications to personal equipment were conducted about 800 times faster, and operating at twice my skill level and working as if a team of a hundred were assigned to the project. Every second was nearly fifteen minutes of effort for a ‘normal’ tinker. I had already spent the equivalent of several hours of dedicated work on this, with my micromanipulators and other powers making any difficulties associated with field construction irrelevant.

The finished result was a hybridization of the hard light rifle/plasma blade with my omni sword pistol into an immaculate zweihander. The casual repair, upgrade and integration of his technology elicited a stuttering gasping sound through Leet’s audio connection, but I wasn’t done yet.

Without Uber and Leet actually being present on the battlefield my new life energy sense had nothing to focus on. Instead, as the battle progressed, I was left with the awareness of only two beings, Garment and the life fibers.

The link to Garment was phenomenal, but still familiar. Before, when I wore the gloves I had an inkling of Garment’s presence, her senses and the reach of her power. Now I could physically feel the extent of her presence as it flowed through my clothing and cape. The exact way she exerted herself to animate fabrics and the unique way her perception extended and was interpreted. It had made coordination with her in combat as natural as breathing.

But the truly revolutionary aspect of this sense was how it connected to the life fibers. The thing was, energy types from certain powers had a strange way of relating with each other. For instance, every power that specified ‘magic’ treated parahuman powers as if they were exactly the same kind of effect. Other powers, such as my Fashion reinforcement, had no equivalence to anything in or out of the Forge. Then there was the strange middle ground, the powers that functioned on the same principles as other powers without any explanation for the connection.

It was something I didn’t notice until I was sparring with Uber’s robot. T’ai Chi Chuan allowed me to flow between attack and defense, shifting through fluid strikes even as Garment absorbed or redirected Uber’s thinker assisted offense. A core principle of that particular art was chi, the flow of life energy. Before today I had dismissed that as meaningless mysticism or some shorthand for guiding more complicated aspects of the style. That was before I could feel my own chi.

With Alkahestry I could sense the dragon pulse, the flow of energy through the world and everyone in it. When I moved through stances designed to channel energy from an absorbed attack into an offensive strike or draw energy up from the ground to reinforce the strength of a blow I could actually feel the movement of chi through my body. More than that, I could feel it through the life fibers.

Life fiber energy wasn’t chi. It was something distinct, but there was more to it than physical effects. There was some aspect of the nature of life fibers, of their cosmic origin, that resonated with chi. Maybe it was because the flow of energy was intrinsic to the existence of life fibers. Maybe there was a secret shared origin between the powers. Maybe it was just a quirk of the Celestial Forge. Whatever the reason, it was a language the fibers understood.

Whatever fledgling intelligence they had been developing had latched onto the patterns of energy flowing around my body. They were no longer a blind mass trying to interpret the world through a tenuous connection to my central nervous system. As I felt the flow of energy I was able to channel it more efficiency. The life fibers felt it too, and recognized it. Pattern recognition. As they could feel my life energy I could feel theirs. It was a loop of information that connected us, even without a direct physical link.

I could feel their excitement at the situation, eagerness for new experiences, concern for what the development could mean, and anticipation of the next time they would be able to fully connect to me. It had reached the point where I couldn’t actually think of them as just ‘the life fibers’ anymore. It was Tetra, and Tetra wanted to participate in the fight. Not just in the sense of a chance to feed or a destructive urge, but out of a desire for inclusion. It was something I felt compelled to indulge, and right now it was just about the best way to neatly tie this up situation and put a bow on it.

Okay, not literally. I was working with Garment, so those things needed to be said. With her in play bows were actually a very real possibility.

My hidden smile grew wider as I signaled to Garment. The resonance of the dragon pulse clearly conveyed the unbridled excitement streaming from Tetra as the fibers closed the fraction of an inch that separated them from my skin. Power surged through me, bleeding out from the points of contact. The red glow of crisscrossing red lines became starkly visible through the deliberately porous material of my costume.

Before the connection could become draining I focused on activating my nanites. Blue circuitry traced over the crimson veins and any sense of weakness was gone, replaced solely with the incredible power of the fibers.

A wave of indeterminate force spread through the rubble around me, casting dust and debris outward like a heavenly wind. Uber and Leet’s robots stood stock still, staring at the spectacle. Finally, whatever combat proficiency Uber was embracing took over and shocked him out of his stupor. His robot flinched into action and opened up with the pair of energy pistols.

The pistols were larger than most crew served weapons and fired dangerous looking bolts of green plasma. From an outside perspective, courtesy of my motoroid on overwatch, the blasts appeared to pass harmlessly through my body. That was quickly revealed to be nothing but the afterimage of my previous location and was followed by the ground exploding in a delayed reaction to my dodging leap.

It was an incredibly impressive effect and I had no idea how it worked. The mechanics of what happened made no sense from what I understood of life fiber energy, much less conventional physics. It was possibly some exotic application of life energy/chi dynamics, but that would suggest Hong Kong filmmakers actually had an in-depth understanding of theoretical power mechanics. I decided to file it under the general strangeness of the Celestial Forge as I effortlessly wove through the sustained barrage that Uber was laying down with the stance and precision of a wild west gunslinger.

I cannot overstate how wonderful it felt to be using the life fibers, I mean using Tetra, in combat. The experience was beyond any level of training, any acrobatic routines played out through my workshop, any practice matches with Fleet. I was finally bearing the might of my earliest major power and directing it against people who fully deserved it.

Or at least their remote-controlled drones. That put a bit of a damper on the situation, but not enough to actually kill the excitement. I grinned widely as I closed to striking distance of Uber’s mech so quickly it almost looked like teleportation.

It was probably a good thing I had elected for a full-face mask. It wouldn’t do to have pictures of me rushing into deadly combat while grinning like a loon. With my face concealed I didn’t have to restrain any of the excitement I was feeling from showing on my expression.

Laser targets from Leet’s missile systems were futilely chasing after my previous location and Uber struggled to bring his pistols to bear. Before either could act I swung my upgraded sword, spinning in a blazing arc. The burning weapon caught Uber’s machine in the back of the knees.

The interaction between the forces at play was a testament to the integrity of Leet’s layered defense. A plethora of defensive fields struggled against the concentrated strike of a plasma edged, mass enhanced, rune enchanted, HF blade that was being wielded with the strength of a high tier brute. There was a fraction of a second where things seemed to stop as the combined effects battled against each other, waiting to see what would give first.

It turns out that the weak link was the mech’s inertial damping system. There was a popping sound from somewhere inside the robot and suddenly its legs were swung out from under it as the machine pinwheeled. As it spun wildly through the air I leapt up and caught it with a jump kick. Without the inertia system the robot barely had any mass and what was basically a punt sent it launching straight upward in a high arc.

I landed and readied the blade again, overloading the HF capacitor for a split second before sending a projected slash screaming into the sky. The arc of plasma infused HF wind magic caught Uber’s mech in the side with the sound of crumpling and rending metal.

That’s when I noticed the multiple targeting lasers that had locked on to my briefly stationary position.

As Leet’s mech opened up with every rocket at its disposal I had a brief thought. Somehow, despite planning the project since the moment I got the ability to brew a duplication potion, despite getting the ability to carry over a hundred in a single plane, despite getting a hanger bay full of said munitions, I had shown up at this fight without a single missile to my name. And apparently I was the only one to arrive without rocket accompaniment.

Somehow it made me feel underdressed.

Avoiding a full barrage of missiles was a different matter than dodging Uber’s plasma shots. I dove into the task with singular focus, enhanced speed and reflexes briefly taken even further by Do One Thing at a Time. The dozens of rockets quickly tracked to my position and accelerated to blinding speed, but not nearly fast enough to deter me.

I wove. I dodged. I sliced rockets out of the air. Towards the end I’m pretty sure I used a couple of them as stepping stones, but that might just be the life fiber energy affecting my perception. What I do know is it ended with Leet out of ammo and me diving towards him from above, a burning plasma sword extended with all the strength of Tetra’s enhancement behind it.

The blade impacted Leet’s mech with a focused precision I never would have expected to be capable of. Feeling the dragon pulse and channeling energy with T’ai Chi Chuan allowed for brief focused moments of unbelievable power. Wasted energy that would normally spill off or work at cross purposes was concentrated. Every system on the upgraded sword was dialed to the maximum level, flaring like a comet as the blade made contact.

A dozen layers of defense were countered in an instant. The blade carried through the mech and buried into the ground, sending up a shockwave that echoed around the devastated crater of a former parking lot. Two halves of Leet’s mech went flying in different directions, landing in crumpled heaps just as Uber’s machine crashed back to the ground.

Looking at the remains I was able to see exactly how Leet was able to construct a pair of mechs of this scale on such a short time frame. It turns out, the secret was that he hadn’t.

The robots were nothing but a façade. Under the defensive fields there was only a rough collection of technical components. Most of the superstructure was a combination of force fields and holograms. Uber’s mech was so light after it lost its inertia field precisely because there was almost nothing there. A light framework, some metallic casing for the armor, and a pile of recycled technology clogging the inside.

Leet’s was spread over the lot like the beginnings of a junkyard while Uber’s was partially crumpled inside its own defensive fields, making it look like a clear plastic case half filled with machine parts. The remains of Leet’s systems cracked and burned, while Uber’s mech made a rough attempt to climb upright.

That’s when Survey alerted me to messages from my duplicates, ones specifically tagged to be delivered after my own combat concluded.

‘Oni Lee spotted.’

‘Oni Lee engaged.’

I flicked through the records from their combined sensor feeds, seeing the pair of motoroids dive into combat with the teleporting assassin. Targeting systems blazed at their limits as shots were taken as quickly as the man could duplicate himself. The force of the earthshaker cannon when applied to a target not excessively shielded, was terrifyingly lethal. Dark Alchemy was being used to a level I had never dreamed, with explosions, energy blasts, and conjured objects flying freely. Omni-tools fired near continuous streams of fire, ice, and electricity. Surfaces and walls throughout the area were streaked with ash as cloned ninjas died in droves.

Oni Lee used the landscape expertly. The fight was in one of the less built-up areas of Downtown, though the buildings were still tall enough to prevent full air superiority. The duplicates had to take the motoroids on low runs to hunt down the assassin and pull back in time to avoid exotic blasts from his grenades.

They had one advantage. Oni Lee was defending the launch site, the upper floor of a small building hidden between office blocks. It was an underused industrial holdover scheduled for demolition later in the year. The roof and upper floors had clearly been used to mount the missiles and exhaust trails were still faintly visible around it.

The assassin would try to lure the duplicates away while setting up ambushes, going so far as to threaten collateral damage. I caught up to the current situation just as that tactic was being attempted as my duplicate’s warning blared through our link.

‘Time Bomb!’

A duplicate had taken a low run to get a firing line on a cluster of Oni Lee clones in a nearby courtyard, only for the tell-tale slowing effect began to take hold as every copy activated a time grenade simultaneously. Taking in the size of the effect and the rate of onset the motoroid full thrust should allow the duplicate to just escape the pocket before time set permanently.

He wasn’t going to.

‘Less than a minute left. Sending full sensor readings for analysis. Going in heavy.’

The message came as a text string rather than voice to save time. Trailing its drones behind it the motoroid overdrew power from its core and dove towards the surface. The immense strength of the impact, combined with the upgrades to the weapons, was enough to create a massive blast crater in the center of the courtyard that I watched play out in slow motion.

A blast that just so happened to catch every one of the dozen civilians caught in the area of the time bubble and send them flying. Flying out of the effect before it could fully set. Watching the scene from the other motoroid they floated like leaves, gradually speeding up as they approached the edge, then instantly speeding up and painfully tumbling across the ground once they were clear.

They were injured, some badly, but they were alive and free of the time stop. The same couldn’t be said for my duplicate, currently freezing in the center of the courtyard, fully encased in armor and raising one tonfa in a strike against an Oni Lee clone while his cannon fired on another. The precision of his elemental control had cleared the civilians from the blast while the clones happened to be trapped in freshly opened fissures, against walls of the crater, or just miraculously missed by the effect.

I watched the effect fully set, cutting off the streams of data from the duplicate, motoroid, and five drones, and more than a dozen Oni Lee clones all caught in the effect. I had more data on the effect than I ever dreamed, possibly enough to duplicate my own copy of the bomb or build a countermeasure. In the final data transfer there was a sense of satisfaction from the duplicate in how his last moments had been spent.

The final duplicate’s counter was running down as well. Maybe he didn’t want to be outdone, but he committed to his own final rush. His drones linked their mass fields to his motoroid and he launched directly towards the missile site. Clones appeared in midair with active grenades in attempts to stop him, only to be intercepted by drones that gladly sacrificed themselves to open a path.

The duplicate burst through the roof of the building, landing in a depleted armory. Scattered munitions and a few computers littered the room. Quickly, the duplicate’s omni-tool linked to the systems and started copying data.

There was a panicked signal that lit up every remaining weapon in the building. The duplicate glanced towards the exit, then focused on transferring data as the world exploded around him.

From my own motoroid’s vantage point it appeared as a pillar of blue light reaching up into the sky from deep in Downtown. Consolidated readings from the drone confirmed it. The building was gone, and so was my final duplicate. Just before the duration expired there was a spatial effect that punched through his durability and ended the duplicate’s existence. In exchange I had a partial copy of the site’s computer records.

“You think you’ve won?” Leet’s voice came from Uber’s crippled mock virtuaroid in a tone seething with contempt. “You just lost two robots. The Tripredacus Council’s not looking so good, is it?”

I glared at his own shattered machine, then closed the distance to the final construct with a burst of life fiber enhanced speed, freezing with my burning blade raised above the machine’s head. Five drones dropped from the sky to form a glowing perimeter around us, crackling ominously with electricity.

“Is that where you want this to go? A proxy war between robots? You think you can win that way?”

“Robots!” his voice was contemptuous. “You have no idea. No idea the kind of technology I’ve been holding back. What you’ve done in nothing! When this gets going you’ll wish it was just robots. We've Suffered Losses, but We've Not Lost the War. I WILL WIN BY ANY MEANS! AT ANY COST!”

The last two sentences were spoken in an odd tone, like he was quoting something, which I really hoped was the case because the implication was otherwise decidedly unnerving. And just to drive home what a bastard Leet could be he lifted the mech’s working hand to reveal a larger and definitely active version of the false bomb Uber had used earlier.

Garment flared my cloak as the device detonated in a wave of plasma. The roiling heat from the ionized air spilled around me, baking the rubble and debris and reducing the mech to slag.

I stood completely unharmed in the aftermath. Garment took a moment to shake out the coat, dislodging a few still glowing bits of material.

So, durability checks out. Unfortunately, nothing else in the area was as sturdy. My drones were gone and the lot was a smoldering ruin. That is, except for a somewhat comical streak of unburnt dirt extending directly behind me. I stood in the smoking wasteland trying to figure out my next move.

There was an ABB stronghold that hadn’t been secured. There was a section of Downtown that had seen a titanic detonation. There was a ninja assassin probably rapidly disappearing. And I had Aisha stuck in my warehouse. Was there anything else?

A red beam of light burned into the ground in front of me, sending a plume of dirt and powered concrete into the air. I looked up to see a blond woman in a white costume with red highlights, quickly joined by a similar looking older woman who mirrored her outfit in purple, and finally a younger teen in white and blue trailing behind.

Right, apparently half of New Wave had decided to show up, just late enough to cause problems for me. Wonderful.

I was being stared down by the most coordinated team of fliers in the city. These were experienced heroes who knew how to support each other. What’s more I was in an open area with no cover or obstructions. It was pretty much the opposite of the situation Oni Lee had dragged my duplicates into.

Still, I wondered if I could take them. The life fiber energy was easily enough for me to cover the vertical distance to them, and probably faster than they could react. The plasma blade integrated to my sword neatly negated the weakness to force fields I’d been struggling with since my first generation of knives. If I timed it right I might even be able to launch into a grapple and springboard between the members of the team.

I blinked and relaxed my grip on the upgraded sword. Planning a coordinated takedown of one of the city’s few remaining hero teams was not a good thing. Even as a mental exercise it wasn’t appropriate for this time or place. That wasn’t me, or it wasn’t entirely me. I had gotten caught up in the rush of the life fibers.

A quick check of my neural implant and Survey’s monitoring of my brain confirmed that there was no intrusion into my thoughts. This was good old fashion endorphins piled on top of an entirely new sense running away from me. As it was my first time using and detecting chi in combat the sensation was a bit much to deal with. You couldn’t really prepare for sensory overload on a sense you didn’t have an hour ago.

I signaled Garment and felt the fibers separate from my skin, along with a sense of disappointment but acceptance from Tetra. After the red glow had receded I relaxed my focus on my nanites and the blue lines disappeared from my body. The display dropped the level of tension being expressed by the flying capes, though it was mostly replaced by confusion and reluctance. Not the best outlook to be opening a discussion with, but better than hostility.

Actually seeing them without the haze of red, both literal and metaphorical, was a bit shocking. Lady Photon looked terrible. That might have been a bit unkind, but she just projected the impression that something was terribly wrong. She was wearing all the stress of her domestic, team, and professional problems on her face. Tired, unkempt, and generally burned out, it was a wonder she was still in the air. The situation was made even worse by the sharp contrast from how the leader of New Wave usually presented herself.

Her kids were in better shape, but were clearly displaying a level of their own stress in addition to spill over from their mother. Shielder had an uncertain look and kept glancing at his mother as if watching for some signal that had been missed. Laserdream was better put together, but still came across as sleep deprived and anxious.

It was a big difference from the last time I saw her in person.

That was a mildly embarrassing moment from more that two years ago, when I got to a parahuman studies lecture late and took the first open seat I’d seen. I didn’t realize it was empty because of the class giving the visiting member of New Wave her space. I completely failed to recognize her, said maybe four words over the course of the lecture, and was mocked thoroughly by my study group afterwards.

I think it was also the closest I’d ever been to a cape before I triggered, and here I was, coming full circle. Only this time she had shot at me. I glanced down at the still smoking burn in front of me. Laserdream’s offensive strength was no joke. She didn’t open up that often, but I’m guessing she wasn’t that far behind Purity in terms of raw power.

Of course, I had just tanked enough plasma to bake a parking lot, so I wasn’t exactly cowering for my life.

I felt another connection from the Celestial Forge. Crafting constellation, the power was called Bandit Gunsmith. Rapid salvage power, lets me build working tech from junked equipment. Bit more versatile than directly repairing an item, but the exchange rate was worse. Or it would have been if not for my other powers. Normally five to one for the same type of item and fifteen to one for an upscaling, Workaholic took that to one to one and three to one respectively. It actually kept the power relevant in the face of all my other repair abilities.

“Stand down!” Lady Photon’s voice called. Her children had taken a defensive formation around her and energy charges were forming around their hands with multiple small barriers surrounding Shielder. An edge of fear had crept into their expression. Actually, I wasn’t sure if she was talking to them, me, or all of us. “We aren’t here to fight you!”

It took me a second to realize what was happening. I zoned out over a new power, not enough to compromise my defenses, but enough to be noticeable. Aisha had said people assumed that was a strategy trance or some kind of power switching trump effect. Apparently those rumors reached New Wave and were being taken seriously enough to put them on edge when they saw it in the field.

I slowly extended the sword to my side before collapsing it back into its pistol form and put it away. The additions of Leet’s technology made it a bit bulkier, but that wasn’t a factor with magnetic holstering. At my signal Garment reduced the flaring of my cape from dramatic billowing (despite a lack of wind) to elegantly sweeping behind me.

I got the sense she resented the compromise.

With that display the tension drained out of the flying capes and the energy around their hands dissipated, though Shielder maintained his barriers. It really drove home what had happened to my reputation if looking briefly contemplative was enough to send heroes into borderline panic. I would have to step carefully if I didn’t want to make things worse.

Still, I wasn’t going to totally back down. They had started this, and I wasn’t sure what they were trying to accomplish. I looked back down at the smoking pothole in front of me, then back up at the assembled capes. Talking from an elevated position was a basic intimidation tactic and a fairly juvenal one, but that didn’t mean it was ineffective.

“Are you sure about that?” I focused on Laserdream as I spoke and she wilted slightly. Some quick glances were exchanged between the family members and I began to suspect this wasn’t exactly a sterling display of the expert coordination New Wave was famous for.

Oh God, had they just rushed in here when the bomb went off and decided to make things up as they went along? That was a troubling thought.

“You’re taking action against the ABB?” By some silent agreement it seemed Lady Photon would be the spokesman for this encounter. Shielder seemed more comfortable with that arrangement than Laserdream, but Lady Photon did give the impression that she was being held together by frustration and caffeine. I’m not sure I would be comfortable with someone in that state leading the discourse with a new villain/mercenary.

“I thought I had made that intention clear during my talk with your niece. I understand our discussion was very thoroughly transcribed and circulated.”

And I immediately felt bad. I was still frustrated at the mess that had cascaded from that incident and the idiocy of so many people involved, but Lady Photon wasn’t one of them. The way her face fell when I mentioned it made me feel like scum.

I tried to push forward in a way that wouldn’t be a total retreat from the discussion. “It seems the only warning I actually intended to convey was the one thoroughly overlooked.”

“You didn’t exactly make it easy.” Laserdream, Crystal Pelham, floated forward, giving her mother time to recover. “You know how much trouble you caused.”

And for a second I could have been back in that Parahumans Studies lecture. It was eerie. I pushed aside old memories and pressed on.

“This city has trouble to spare. There’s no cause to seek out more.”

Shit, did that come off as a threat or a peace offering? Actually, when dealing with Capes was there even a difference?

“Why did you move against the ABB?” Lady Photon had recovered enough to reengage me, but her voice was far from the steady tone that characterized New Wave press events. She, well, she sounded broken. It made me feel even worse. “Did the Undersiders send you here?”

Right, because mercenaries didn’t take their own initiative. Wait, I actually didn’t take my own initiative on this. Well, lie by staying close to the truth. “No, this is a separate contract.”

As the remnant of New Wave absorbed that statement I was greeted by the unwelcome interruption of one of my latest powers. This time confirming that my life was completely out of my direct control, as evidenced by Comm Chatter activating while I was in the middle of a negotiation.

_“We can’t entertain those restrictions at this point. Half of New Wave has Apeiron engaged. We need all forces to move in now.”_ The voice was vaguely familiar, recognizable from press conferences and the occasional news interview.

Of course, my current situation didn’t put itself on hold just because my implant was picking up a radio transition I was fairly sure was excessively encoded, out of range, and possibly actually carried by a landline.

“What were you after? Are you just striking out randomly” There was heartfelt concern in Lady Photon’s voice and I wished I could have focused on it in place of having the radio response talk over her.

_“Director, this is exactly the situation those restrictions were intended to avoid. You are asking for Youth Guard consent to send Wards into an area that you admitted was just exposed to an ‘unknown plasma explosion’. You can’t expect me to consent to this.”_

I did what I could to offload some of the mental load to Survey as I focused on replying to Lady Photon.

“There is nothing random about this. I will not divulge details of my client’s contract, but I can say the ABB was using the office block at 57 Grove street to manage their business interests.”

The director replied as I was speaking.

_“Precautions are being taken, but Clockblocker and Vista are essential to containment strategies. Protectorate forces are on the way and I can guarantee their safety.”_

Protectorate on their way. Possibly for one of those ‘polite’ conversations where you were surrounded by all the parahuman muscle and support teams that could be mobilized. I didn’t have time for that. This needed to be wrapped up. I pushed forward in my response. “It is a building full of civilians with implanted bombs, records of ABB activity and at least recently held several corporate officers of the gang.”

The Youth Guard representative, an older sounding woman, replied to the PRT director. _“Director, the answer is no, not unless you want an immediate critical audit of your Wards program. You don’t have the state of emergency declaration that would bypass these restrictions and I’m not going to consent to send more Wards against the architect of your previous disaster.”_

“Additionally, Oni Lee was recently in the Batchelder Square area of Downtown.” Not that there was much of Batchelder Square left usable after those time bombs. “I think you have bigger concerns at this point than me.”

_“I can guarantee safe distancing from the engagement. Vista’s support is essential for this operation.”_

“Please, explain that to the Protectorate.” Lady Photon called down. “This will escalate, and we can’t afford to work at cross purposes.” She seemed to be struggling to get the words out, fighting through exhaustion and about a dozen emotions. I was seriously impressed that she hadn’t just opened up on me for ruining her life and marriage. I suppose she had enough targets for that without blaming the messenger.

_“What exactly do you consider a ‘safe distance’? Apeiron’s Final Slash was visible in Concord. Until you show me an emergency measures proclamation those children aren’t going anywhere near him.”_ Yeah, I wasn’t going to hang around while Director Piggot desperately negotiated for permission to deploy a time stopper and space warper against me. Not with Aisha still unsupervised in my Workshop.

Okay, she was supervised by my A.I., but that was only marginally better.

“I’m afraid I have other pressing commitments. Weld has my contact information if the Protectorate feels they can be reasonable about their communication policies. For now, I’m afraid I’ll have to depart.”

This was showing off, no argument, but Fleet had been working on the mechanics of it through the entire conversation and I hated to waste all that effort. I signaled the start of the maneuver as soon as I finished speaking.

The micro turbines were much quieter than the previous wheel-based ones and as such the capes could be forgiven for not noticing the motoroid until it dove directly in front of them. That wasn’t the maneuver that had taken so much calculation. No, that started when Fleet activated the transformation while still in midair.

An unbelievably sleek motorcycle dove directly towards the crater that used to be a parking lot with the speed of a meteor. Rather than crash the dive brought the motorcycle to the lip of the crater, letting its traction enhanced wheels bite the earth. With that technology even loose gravel functioned like a professional racetrack, allowing the bike to transition from diving to roaring across the devastated ground directly towards me like an insane version of a skater on a half-pipe.

This was the tricky part, helped along by my improved reflexes, neural implant coordination, micromanipulators, and a little bit of Garment’s natural instinct for the dramatic. As the bike roared past at a speed that broke every traffic law in the country I grabbed the handlebar and swung into the seat.

It was the kind of experience that really drove home how significant my reinforcement was. I could feel the strain on muscles, tendons, ligaments, and I swear even in my very bones. At every level the insane amount of durability afforded by my armor plates held me together with Garment’s reinforcement of her glove ensuring that my grip didn’t falter. That and a bit of stabilization with the cloak had me perfectly settled just in time for Fleet to ramp the bike out of the crater and into the sky.

There was a moment at the peak of my launch when I looked back at the stunned expressions of the New Wave capes, having just enough time for a slight wave before the bike folded around me into the motoroid armor and launched me into the city.

The chatter with Director Piggot had continued, but with the report of my absence from the scene she relented her arguments and there was an exceptionally smug response from the Youth Guard representative, a Mrs. Garrick, before the call terminated. In the meantime I took a low pass over one of the higher buildings in the Docks. It blocked my profile from the street, letting me down another invisibility potion without giving away that particular ability.

There were other capes in the city who could deal with the developing situation. I was the only one who could deal with Aisha Laborn.

The Forge moved again and I was immediately grateful for my decision to depart and redoubled my efforts to return, flying back to my apartment on full afterburners. There was absolutely no time to spare, I needed to get into my workshop as soon as possible.

Because I had just gotten a volcano.

Previously I had concerns about how I was going to deal with Aisha long term, how I was going to prevent her from getting herself killed, how much I could reveal to her, and how to deal with the after effects, and was more than a little frustrated at having this entire situation dumped on me. Now I had a much more pressing concern.

A volcano had just appeared in my workshop. Aisha was in my workshop. Aisha was in my workshop with an active volcano.

The power was actually called Volcanic Forge. It added a ‘small’ volcano to my workshop, though that was small by volcano standards so it was still a fucking mountain. It had serious applications to metallurgy, speeding up my working of metal and minerals while increasing their quality and inherent strengths. It even let me take my time while forging to create unique combinations of materials, forming an alloy that had all the properties of one material while incorporating a specific quality of the second.

It was incredibly useful, but it was also a lava spewing mountain that had just appeared in the place I decided to stash the most impulsive girl I had even met. I didn’t even want to think about the worst case scenarios that were possible in this situation.

Also, on a much less serious note, I now had to redo all of my metallurgy. What was it I said about material science becoming obsolete less quickly? I really needed to stop taunting the Forge.

Given my state of panic it was an accomplishment that I managed to restrain myself to the point where I actually opened the door to my apartment rather than barreling through it in a mess of splinters. I jumped out of the armor as soon as I was inside, dispelling the invisibility and diving for the closet, leaving Fleet to lock the front door.

I practically flew across the apartment with my key extended. It slid into the lock and I wrenched open the door to my entryway. My implant connected with the main copy of Survey and one of the A.I.’s new drones floated in the entrance. I practically screamed the digital request for an update.

The volcano, in the grouping style of the workshop, had been added to the Skyforge. Convenient for both metallurgy and the general aesthetics and landscape. With the updated map I quickly requested Aisha’s location.

Survey happily replied that she was drinking tea with one of the drones.

At the scenic overlook table.

At the Skyforge.

A string of profanities flowed through my mind as I called Fleet. The motoroid transformed and I clung to it as the bike launched through the workshop, covering walls, ceilings, and finally the stairs to the Skyforge at breakneck speed. At my signal Fleet braked the motoroid at the top of the stairs and I leapt off, allowing momentum to carry me the final distance onto the platform.

I launched out of the staircase to the sight of the sprawling mountain vistas of the Skyforge, only with one more mountain now present. A towering stratovolcano rose behind the eagle statue of the Skyforge. Black volcanic rock was veined by active lava flows creeping down the sides. One particular flow linked directly with the lava pool of the Skyforge and ran parallel to a path cut into the mountain. I could see openings and caves dotting the surface, some glowing with dull red light. The path snaked all the way to the active caldera at the summit.

A trail of volcanic smoke was rising from the peak, carried away by the cold mountain winds. Occasional bursts sent showers of molten rock into the sky where they shone like fireworks. It was a striking addition, but not a destructive one. I’d been worried about it opening under Aisha’s feet or burying her in a pyroclastic flow. Instead it was ordered and managed, even adding a striking element to the view rather than detracting from it.

On that note I turned my attention to the table on the outlook. The tea set was on the table and one of Survey’s new drones floated nearby. It was projecting one of the interface holograms I had developed from Space Command Engineer, a partially transparent and color limited version of the image profile the A.I. used. The flat picture had been extrapolated to a three-dimensional model of a person and projected to appear to be sitting in one of the chairs.

A second later Aisha was sitting across from the hologram. The girl was loosely holding her teacup and alternating her gaze between me and the newly arrived volcano. Her expression was a mix of wonder, confusion and fear. I wracked my brain, but couldn’t figure a way out of this other than honest disclosure. I guess intellectually I knew I’d have to explain things at some point, I just never foresaw this particular situation.

“Hello Aisha. You probably have some questions?” The girl nodded slowly, then looked back to the active lava mount. I sighed internally and braced myself for the impending conversation. “We should probably have a talk.”

I looked at the scene again, the smoking volcano, the semi-transparent A.I. avatar, the unsettled girl at the table. And the completely untouched cup resting in front of her.

I smiled slightly at that. 

“Come on, I’ll make you some tea.”

********

Addendum Missy

Missy sat in the locker room of the Wards headquarters feeling useless. In the two days since the fight at the Gallery she’d had precisely nothing to do.

Well, nothing of consequence. Daytime Boardwalk patrols didn’t count, not when the city was burning every night. It was infuriating. They’d pulled double shifts before just to manage dust-ups between the Merchants and Empire. Now they were entering Brockton’s darkest hour and half of the Protectorate forces were being sent home every night with a pat on the head after doing nothing more significant than walking around safe areas while in costume.

It was particularly insulting in that they got to tour the damaged areas after the fact without being able to contribute anything. Just see what everyone else had been struggling against, then get sent home before it gets dark, like all their hero work was no more significant kids playing in the street.

Even today's patrol, if you could even call it that, had been cut back early so that they could ‘rest up’ before the press conference. The rest of the team had gone home, or scattered to some other commitment, just leaving Missy alone in the headquarters.

Even more alone than usual. Even the casual patrols didn’t feel right. Not without Carlos or Dean. She swallowed at the thought. They had been cycled out so quickly they barely had time to say goodbye. Carlos had been ashamed through the whole process, like it was somehow his fault Khepri had attacked him. Dean had been, well he’d been Dean. There for everyone and always optimistic.

And then they were gone.

At least Dean would be back some day. Everything was pointing towards Aegis being a permanent transfer. Apparently he had done well in the Boston Wards. There was a video of him fighting some plant monsters during the blackout and doing exceptionally well. She’d tried to call him to congratulate him, but between the move and all the regional chaos she’d had to leave a message and hope he got it.

Dean was even more unreachable. She didn’t even have an excuse for checking in with him, and apparently he was deep in negotiations regarding his new armor. Even after that it would be a while before it was completed and he got back into the field. Power armor didn’t get thrown together in a couple of days, no matter what a certain mercenary villain claimed while he was attacking the city’s best healer.

She was prevented from diving into that particularly dark train of thought by locker room doors slamming open, announcing the return of Flechette and Shadow Stalker. Both capes had been excused from the evening press conference, since it was as much an award ceremony as an official update on the state of the Protectorate’s efforts.

The two of them were in a surprisingly good mood considering the event they just returned from. Missy had been to more than her share of informal press events. At best they were awkwardly coordinated but still somewhat orderly. At worst they were disasters that had to be glossed over with press connections and inflicted months of comportment lessons just because some preteen Ward happened to say ‘God damn it’ on camera.

Things obviously hadn’t gone that way at the gym. Sophia was the happiest Missy had seen her since the Youth Guard representative first showed up. Vista wasn’t overly fond of that woman, but Sophia had particularly detested the extra attention her case was getting. Missy seriously hoped the older girl would end up called to task for her numerous protocol breaches and brutality, but it seemed the Youth Guard was only interested in going after the administration, not the Wards themselves.

The woman had even started digging into their civilian lives. She’d heard talk about a potential visit to Winslow. No doubt Sophia was going to have some kind of academic trouble smoothed over while her delinquency was dumped onto Piggot’s shoulders, who would make sure the rest of the Wards suffered for it.

Whatever those issues were the tall girl wasn’t letting them bother her now, not from the way she bustled to her locker and shifted into her civilian clothes. Flechette took a more sedate pace as she meandered over to her own locker and took off her visor.

“Clocking out.” Sophia called, hauling a gym bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow, or whenever they decide we can actually be capes again. She brushed by Missy without her usual ‘unintentional’ sideswipe, but still quipped “Later midget.” as she passed.

Missy turned to see Flechette watching the other girl depart. She was running a hand over the material of the new cape she’d received on her night out. It was the kind of costume alteration that flew in the face of every policy Missy had struggled under since she joined the Wards. Couldn’t change the color, couldn’t alter the skirt, couldn’t add any details, couldn’t compromise the ‘character of the outfit’. But when new girl gets handed a cape they greenlight it immediately.

She wished she could say it was just an attempt to get on Garment’s good side and boost the recruitment pitch, but that would be an insult to the design. Flechette already had one of those sleek futuristic costumes, the kind it looked like Missy might have been headed for before she got stuck with the ‘cute’ identity, the kiddy brand. And just from adding the cape Flechette’s costume had shifted from ‘daredevil acrobat’ to ‘hero of legend’.

Missy had sat through enough image classes to recognize what was happening. The item had changed her silhouette, altering appearance and giving her more presence in the field. She even carried herself differently when wearing that cape. Wearing the item meant she stood differently to account for it, which made her take up more space in a more commanding way. She didn’t even look like a Ward anymore.

It was like the rebranding they do when you leave for the Protectorate, where they strip off the overly family friendly elements and add something to let everyone know you’re an adult hero now. Missy dreamed of that day, despite the five years and eight months separating her from it. Now Flechette had just been handed it out of the blue and everyone was okay with it.

She struggled to swallow her jealousy and at least put on a neutral face for the other girl.

“So, how did it go?”

Flechette smiled again and ran a hand over the cape’s material. “Really well. Garment didn’t sign up, but I think she’s on good terms with the Protectorate. Dauntless and Miss Militia got her to register. From what I got she wants to work as a Rogue, probably open a business.”

Missy nodded. It could be like what happened with Parian. She’s been in the Wards for over a year when the fashion cape started operation. There had been an initial fuss over Protectorate recruitment, the possibility of her being snatched up by a gang, or even the Elite moving in. Instead the woman had kept her head down and stuck with designer clothes supplemented by the occasional mascot work with her animated stuffed animals, effectively flying under the radar.

It sounded like Garment was on the same track, which was a bit disappointing. She had to admit to taking personal satisfaction from the pictures of red-faced muggers and skinheads trussed up with pink ribbon.

“How was the rest of the event?” Even if things had gone well with Garment dealing with the public was a whole different challenge. Vista doubted a neighborhood gym had much experience with large press events.

“Really good, actually.” Flechette admitted. “Like, it wasn’t professional or anything, but they knew what they were doing. Someone there had a good sense for things. Like, good lighting, sound, crowd management. I’ve been to Protectorate events that were less coordinated.”

Missy considered things. It must have been a small turnout to be managed like that. Not surprising, with an unknown cape and the city in its current state. Probably meant the upcoming press conference would be even more important.

“Glad it went well.” Missy offered as sincerely as she could manage.

“Yeah.” Flechette cracked a smile. “You know, someone showed up with merch from my debut for me to sign. Two years old and in another city and they just handed it to me.”

Missy’s smile became a little more brittle. She knew Flechette probably wasn’t showing off. If someone showed up with a years old Vista collector cup she’d want to share the story too. Plus, she was from New York. They probably put their Wards on t-shirts the day they had their costume approved.

“That must have been nice.” Missy swore she would never complain about public relations training again if it could get her through this with a straight face. “What was it?”

A nostalgic smile appeared on Flechette’s face. “It was the action figure from when they launched my energy drink. Variant color too, I don’t think it was even sold outside of that window. The girl had it, mint, still in box and everything.”

Missy’s teeth bit down on her tongue as she kept the smile frozen on her face and nodded mechanically. She had just, only just gotten her own action figure. It took years. Shaker 9, highest Shaker rating of any Ward on the east coast, and she only got an action figure for the 2010 Christmas season.

The precise sales numbers for the toy and any presence of the figure in post-holiday clearance bins was not important.

New York. She kept repeating that. Resources to burn. They probably all had action figures, and energy drinks, and probably branded cell phone games or whatever. It wasn’t worth getting into it.

“Uh, do you know if Weld’s been let out of medical yet?” Flechette asked. “I wanted to check in with him before the conference.”

The question jarred Missy out of her contemplation on the unfairness of the Protectorate’s merchandise practices and somehow into an even darker subject.

“I don’t know.” She admitted. It was the truth. She’d been staying well clear of that entire subject since she learned about it this morning. As horrible as the idea of Weld being trapped underwater was, the circumstances of his rescue were more concerning.

It didn’t help that she felt particularly useless around the subject. Flechette had been the one to explain his situation to her, practically begging Missy to use her powers to save him. It wouldn’t work. There was too much life in seawater. Even discounting the larger animals every tiny organism that went unnoticed fought against her powers. Affecting the ocean was like trying to warp space in a crowded stadium.

So someone else had taken the initiative. Someone who just happened to have the recovery technology he’d need for the task, because tinkers did not work that quickly. Someone who used the opportunity to cause unspecified problems between the Brockton and Boston PRT directors. Someone who had done ‘something’ to Weld. Something that no one was talking about. Something that had her quietly dreading his presence at the upcoming press conference.

“I guess there’s still time.” Flechette checked the wall clock. “Do you know why they scheduled it so late?”

Missy swallowed and shifted her thoughts back to a more familiar subject. “Probably so it can be picked up on the local news right after. You know, just enough time to have all the sound bites ready, but not enough for anyone else to seriously weigh in.”

“Huh.” Flechette replied. “Never thought about managing media that closely.”

Missy reminded herself it wasn’t a dig at the size of Brockton Bay before she responded. “The director is actually really good at that kind of thing. There’s a term for it, media tactics or something like that.”

“Right.” Flechette smiled and turned to close her locker. Damn it, the cape even swished perfectly as she moved. “I’m going to check if he’s taking visitors. Good luck at the conference, in case I don’t catch you before then.”

“Right.” Missy responded with not entirely forced good humor. “Thanks.”

It was at least one thing she could look forward to.

Later that evening, under the setting sun, Missy found herself on another foot patrol of a ‘safe’ area, though this time it was actually because they wanted a cape’s presence rather than just being assigned busywork.

She took a slow pace around the edge of the barrier as the shadows grew longer, matching her mood. They had been so close. So close to getting back in the field. When they’d been pulled away from the ruined press conference and mounted up for a response. She had been physically inside the PRT van with Clockblocker, Kid Win, and Browbeat when it had all fallen apart. Delays due to Youth Guard negotiation took them past the window of opportunity.

She sighed to herself, but kept her expression professional as she made another circuit. Civilians were being kept further back from the immediate disaster area, but small crowds were forming at the police line, cameras and raised cell phones trying to capture the scene.

She wished she could just shrink the entire mess to the size of a grape and stick a trash can over it, but there was too much concern about power interactions, and whether Manton effects would persist in the current conditions.

So instead she had been posted as a guard to this monument to Protectorate ineptitude, in a Youth Guard approved display of Protectorate forces, tasked with the incredibly important duty of walking in circles. She never thought she’d wish she was back on a Boardwalk patrol.

A fluttering sound drew her eyes upward and her resolve to hold her professional posture for the distant cameras briefly cracked. She quickly schooled her expression and fell into the carefully practiced demeanor she had cultivated for dealing with her least favorite hero who didn’t shoot muggers with crossbows.

“Hey.” Glory Girl greeting was reluctant and unusually soft-spoken. She seemed apprehensive before deciding to drop the final distance to the ground.

Missy felt the girl’s aura settle over her, but in its diminished capacity, the way it felt when she wasn’t focusing it one way or another. She wondered if Victoria knew how telling the behavior of that part of her power was, how much insight it gave into her current state of mind.

Not that you needed supernatural powers to tell the girl was a mess. Missy didn’t like seeing her like this. The combination of unkempt exhaustion and contained frustration was unfitting for the girl. It didn’t match the shining beacon of a flying Barbie doll that Vista had learned to hate.

She could admit, the real thing that bothered her about seeing Glory Girl like this was it made it hard to hold onto that resentment. Maybe she had been enjoying wallowing in the injustice of the situation. Having to deal with its effect on someone for whom she had cultivated a decent case of disdain made it hard to hold to that particular mindset.

“Hey.” Missy responded. “Passing by?” She added. It was about all she could manage.

Glory Girl gave a tired nod and the two capes stood there in silence in the fading light of the city. As it grew darker the light from the display behind them became more pronounced. Vicky looked at it contemplatively.

“How does that work? I mean, how are they still glowing? Shouldn’t that have stopped?”

Missy shrugged. She wasn’t thrilled about speaking with Glory Girl, but this was something of a neutral topic, or as close to one as there were likely to get.

“No idea. I mean, it’s a time stop. We shouldn’t even be able to see inside it. Somehow light can interact with everything. I don’t know why stuff that was glowing when it went up is still emitting light.”

She took another look at the frozen scene in the center of the square. A collection of robots fighting clones of Oni Lee stood frozen in time. Somehow the exact positioning at the moment of the time stop seemed to have been aligned for maximum drama. It looked like one of those oil paintings of battle scenes that used to be in the Forsberg Gallery before it was destroyed.

Another tragedy in this entire mess. She loved that place, and now it was just gone. Memories of visiting it with her parents before the divorce, of school trips that actually felt mature and sophisticated rather than juvenile, of all those fundraisers where she had helped support the Protectorate, all gone. She had been surprised by Dennis’s reaction when they talked about it at the press conference. It was hard to tell with the full-face mask, but she could see the way he responded when the director talked about its destruction. She had never realized it meant so much to him as well.

The scene before them was like one of those paintings cast with capes and tinker tech and recreated as a life-sized diorama. The transforming robot stood dead center, striking one clone with an arm club while leveling a cannon at a second that was frozen mid-shot, the glowing projectile still shimmering in the growing twilight.

The clone he struck was in the process of collapsing into ash. Other clones were scattered around the scene, either still mid-flight from the impact that shattered the ground or being harassed by those crystal sphere drones. The orange light from the drones, along with the occasional electrical discharge that was frozen in time, was enough to cast a warm radiance across the darkening square.

“Do you think he like, tried to set it up like this?”

Missy frowned at Victoria’s question. She didn’t like talking about the tinker. She didn’t even like thinking about the tinker. It brought bubbles of anger welling inside her. She hated the experience, more for the lack of control over her emotions than for the way her feelings responded to the mention of the villain.

She swallowed her frustration and tried to answer. “I don’t know. I mean, it doesn’t look random, but how the hell do you set up something like this?”

And she immediately hated herself for asking the question. Hated that specific question, because there were no good answers to it. That was because the overarching theme to any explanation was ‘power’. His power, someone else’s power, or just a lack of power from anyone who opposed him.

This was a monument to that distance in power levels. It should have been an embarrassment, valuable assets destroyed at no cost to the ABB and cemented as a permanent remainder of his failure. Instead it was a beautiful work of art, a display of daring and heroism that spit in the face of every actual hero trying to hold the city together.

And they wouldn’t even let her try to get rid of it.

“Have you heard anything about Amy?” It was hardly a better topic, but Missy needed to get her mind off of this mess.

Glory Girl slumped before responding. “Nothing certain. They’re finally bringing in the specialists, I mean if this mess didn’t cause another delay. That should at least get a ruling on what happened to her. And…” Vicky’s voice caught in a way that made Missy’s heart wrench.

“And what?”

The blond girl took a breath before continuing. “There’s something going on about that case. My mom’s been on the phone pretty much constantly since last night and she won’t talk to me about it. Whatever it is it seems bad.” She swallowed. “I’m worried about Ames.”

“Yeah.” Missy offered. “Me too.” Victoria was the last person she expected to offer comfort to, but pain had a way of bringing people together.

The city sank slowly into darkness in a way that Missy found disturbingly ominous. She could see the lights of the emergency vehicles clustered around the destroyed building in the distance. It had been removed as cleanly as if someone scooped it out of the ground. Every emergency effort had been focused on containing damage to the surrounding areas.

Glory Girl glanced around at the settling twilight and quirked a half-forced smile at Missy. “It’s looking like a long night. I’m going to grab some coffee. Want a cup?”

Missy smiled back. Shortly after they were sitting on a nearby bench holding steaming paper cups from a nearby chain.

“Thanks for the coffee.” She took a sip. “And for not assuming I drink cocoa or something.”

That got a smile in return. “Please, you’ve been doing this as long as I have. I know you can put away the caffeine.”

That warmed Vista in a way that had nothing to do with the beverage in her hands. She hadn’t triggered long after Victoria did. As it stood the only cape in the Wards with more experience than either of them was Dean. She’d been treated like a rookie for three years, while Glory Girl was assumed to be a professional hero from day one. At least the girl recognized the time she had put in.

“Hey,” Victoria asked. “You remember, around when we started, how Squealer’s tech still looked kind of normal? Like demolition derby stuff rather than junkyards on wheels?”

That did take her back. God, there were established villains in this town who were rookies or hadn’t even triggered when she joined the Wards. “Yeah, what about it?”

“Well.” She gestured at the scene in the square. “Have you heard the anti- Squealer theory?”

Vista’s fingers tightened slightly around the paper cup. “Uh, no. I think I missed that one.”

Victoria took a breath. “Idea is, the quality of his technology is based on how good he can make it look. Like, build anything as long as it’s pretty.”

Vista frowned. “There are a lot of theories floating around.” She did not like that idea. Villains and heroes, they should look different. Most of that was part of the system, Protectorate heroes had image consultants and costume departments backing them up. Villains threw together whatever fit their theme, if they even bothered to go that far.

But looking at the scene in the square none of that lined up. The workmanship was beautiful, and she hated herself for having to admit it. She hated that there was a testament to the monstrous tinker sitting in the middle of the city like a memorial.

She hated that the display might fool people, make them let their guard down. Make them accept the tinker. Make them forget about the real heroes who had protected the city, just because they were out of sight.

Victoria cleared her throat. “So.” Missy could tell from the tone she wouldn’t like this question. “Did you see the broadcast?”

She managed to keep herself from flinching and bought time with a long sip from her coffee. “Yeah.” She finally answered.

Theory was Uber and Leet had broadcast without delay to draw attention away from ABB assets. Sadly, it had worked, with free assets and even part of New Wave scrambling. Though they didn’t need much effort to point people towards the tinker, not after he interrupted the press conference by shooting down missiles from half a city away.

“Um, what did you think?”

What did she think? She hated it. She hated everything it showed and everything it represented. She hated how she had given three years of her life to the Wards, years of dedication, sacrifice, and pain, pushing to develop her power to the limit of what it could manage and then see one man claim he had come further in three days than she had in three years.

It felt like they were losing. Not being defeated, just being so outclassed that it didn’t matter. It was worse than having an enemy. It was like he didn’t even consider them worth his attention. Side characters in his little games and ostentatious pageantry.

What did she think? Her thoughts on the matter could be summed up in two words.

Fuck Mammon.

“Do you think you could beat him?” She asked Victoria seriously. “With all that, everything he showed, could you handle it?”

Vicky looked grim and let out a slow sigh before she replied. “Maybe? Maybe if we were all together? With Uncle Neil in action and Amy as a fallback. Maybe, if my Dad was on point and we got the right situation, and everything was coordinated again, then maybe?”

It sounded desperate and hopeful, and Missy suspected she was talking about more than just defeating Mammon. It reminded her too much of when her own parents split up. She’d had the Wards to fall back on. More than once she’d spent the night in the Ward Headquarters while each parent thought she was staying with the other one.

Now she didn’t even have that anymore. The Wards weren’t the same, and the Youth Guard was clocking all the time they spent on site or in costume. Vicky didn’t have that either. More fallout from the attack on Amy, and Vicky didn’t have anyone to fall back on.

Or maybe she did. Missy took another sip of coffee. She still hated Victoria, but that was on principle. She could still like her as a person, and be there for her now.

She sighed and set down her coffee cup before turning to the other cape. “We’ll get through this. We didn’t make it three years as capes in this city to fold to something like this.”

The older girl smiled back and nodded at Missy. In the distance the sound of something exploding could be heard. Things were heating up and they could only try to be ready for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Juggernaut (Terraria) 200:  
> Your armor is a lot more effective at doing what it does just by the sheer virtue of it being latched onto and wrapped around your fleshy bits. Not to get too far into the math of it, your armor is about half-again more effective than it would be otherwise.
> 
> Advanced Materials Upgrade Kit (Light of Terra 4 - Lords of the Iron Line - Warhammer 40,000) 300:  
> Plasteel, adamantium, armourplas, synth-leather and other sophisticated materials are used for all sorts of purposes within the Imperium and are typically far more resilient than their archaic equivalents. Archaic styles of armor are seldom effective against advanced weapons, and rarely used in any case, but many of those who hail from primitive cultures favor the styles of wargear they are accustomed to. Wrought from plasteel and armourplas instead of bronze, iron and steel, a suit of chain or plate can be a quite effective defense, often the equal of more modern armors.
> 
> Workshop (Samurai Jack) 200:  
> A small base filled with all the equipment you’ll need to work. This lab can be used for your choice of scientific or magical research.
> 
> Build That Wall (Bastion) 100:  
> You know the basics of Caelondian technology. You understand how to harness the semimystical power of Cores and turn it into usable Mantic energy, to power basic machinery, shortrange flying machines, computers, and a variety of other uses. More interestingly, you can use Core power to reinforce existing structures, running a Matic current through it to enhance whatever physical properties it possesses usually durability, though other uses are possible. This is what allowed structures like the Rippling Wall and the Bastion to survive the Calamity as well as they did. You also gain basic skill for mundane construction.
> 
> Phonograph (Bastion) Free:  
> An old-fashioned hand-cranked phonograph. Very sturdy, gives much higher-quality sound than you’d expect. Has a single record with the full OST for the Bastion game, as well as several additional Caelondian and Ura folk songs.
> 
> Alkahestry (Fullmetal Alchemist) 300:  
> You can feel The Dragon’s Pulse. You understand how to perfom basic Alkahestry, an art from Xing wich can perform transmutation from a distance using linked circles, and can heal wounds of many kinds by following the pulse of the body. With practice or tutoring you can make a real skill from it.
> 
> Bandit Gunsmith (Borderlands) 100:  
> You have amazing technical insight and when shown to a pile of broken weapons or energy shields you can use parts from some to reassemble others into decent condition. Don't expect it to be pretty, but you can nail 15 repeater pistols together to make a functional shotgun, or use bits of five shields to make one that works.
> 
> Volcanic Forge (God of War) 300:  
> The Smith God's power is great, but it is not by his will alone that his works are forged. There is also his tools to consider, and with this you have one such tool. Attached to your Warehouse is a small volcano, a fiery beast that will never fade and never falter. Its power is great, reducing the time you need to break down metals and minerals, reworking them into new forms while increasing their quality and inherent strengths. Should you choose, you may also take a significant hit in forging time to experiment with different metals and minerals, melting and combining them to create a different, newer resource with one quality from the second object in question. Rise, craftsman. Rise and begin your work.


	37. 31 Consensus - Preamble PHO - Addendum Accord

Preamble: PHO

♦ Topic: Apeiron vs Uber & Leet, Round 3 - Apeiron Analysis

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay ► Capes

Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Posted On Apr 18th 2011:

Ok, we have another fight between Apeiron and Uber & Leet to pick over. Lots of new stuff here, so I’m making a new thread to handle the analysis so the main threads don’t get clogged.

Reminder of the guidelines:

This is technical analysis of Apeiron only. No speculation of consequences. No debates about shipping. If you want to put forward a tinfoil hat theory at least back it up with something from the broadcast, and posts with content only. Let’s not have six pages of reactions and shocked memes like on the Final Slash math thread.

(Showing page 1 of 32)

►Battlebot (Not a tinker)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

But we can still react if we post content, right? Because HFS, that fight…

Alright content tax. New(?) tech shown in this fight:

Tripredacus Guardian upgrades/replacements

Better flight maneuverability/stability

Geokinetic cannons

Missile interception targeting (?)

Big fucking lasers that are absolutely terrifying

Tripredacus Scout upgrades/replacements

Faster, formation link with Guardian

Awesome invincible parrying cape

Sidearm/sword upgraded (?)

Sidearm/sword FIELD UPGRADED WITH LEET’S REPAIRED TECHNOLOGY

Red energy nightmare mode of you are already dead (tm)

Did I miss anything?

►Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Scanner for finding out Uber and Leet weren’t in the suits and analyzing the micro missiles? And spotting the barrage coming? (Tripredacus Scouts?)

And we need to talk more about that field upgrade. What do people think? Tech, power, or insane tinker skill?

►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Tech or power for sure. Just watching the video, there’s no way that’s normal tinker work.

►CeFalon

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

*Apeiron*

*Normal*

See if you can spot the problem with putting these words together

►Quester

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Field Upgrade is just Apeiron using his mom’s speed to tinker. Also perfectly explains how he builds everything so fast

►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Fuck, not this again. Read the thread rules and take it to the shipping boards before you get banned.

►Quester

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

You just hate it because evidence is mounting against you. Apeiron basically showed up with a copy of his mother’s cape for this fight. You have super speed, durability, and now even strength, and none of them with any evidence of a technological source. What more do you want?

►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

We saw he wears that mechanical framework on his arms, from when Uber ripped his jacket in the first fight. That could be some crafting assist, program in blueprints and it takes your hands through the motions super-fast. Could probably help with combat too.

► Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

If they help with combat that could be why he was fighting differently. I’m not an expert, but it looked more military-inspired during the storage locker fight. This was some kind of flowy martial art thing.

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(Showing page 2 of 32)

►Quester

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Notice you didn’t touch on the way he ended the fight. Is ‘combat help’ from the framework what let him move and hit like that?

►CeFalon

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Ok, not that I’m on board with the theory (Frankly it seems kind of disrespectful) but if that was Apeiron’s Alexandria powers at the end they don’t look very healthy. Like, even putting aside how he behaved while using them, you don’t activate a full body heal that’s good enough to fix someone who’s been spaghettied and leave it running all fight if you don’t need to.

Did anyone else think it looked like his skin was cracking open and something was leaking through? Like, it obviously made him crazy strong, but whether it’s power or technology, it doesn’t look that friendly.

►Quester

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Nobody knows how Alexandria’s powers work. You only get half of them and you might miss out on a control or safety component. It could explain why it took this long for him to come forward.

►Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Alright, this is getting off topic. Can we stick to the mechanics at work here? Anyone have hard numbers for the strength/speed of the super mode thing, or any of the other displays?

►All Gyro Might

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

I can say there has to be some breaker effect with that boost. There wasn’t enough reaction from the environment to how he was moving. Afterimages, delayed reactions, and flash steps like that don’t happen outside of Hong Kong cartoons or old Japanese anime. Some part of it was letting him selectively ignore reaction forces.

Probably a point against the Hero/Alexandria theory. (I know it’s a sweet idea, but the facts just aren’t lining up) Alexandria always had a hard physics impact on the world, including sonic booms if she flies too fast. There were at least three points where Apeiron would have broken the sound barrier, but no reaction. This is a different effect at play.

But yeah, whatever it is it doesn’t look good. That healing can give someone their arm back and he left it running the whole time that thing was active. What is it doing to his body?

►Rock Hard Physics

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Letting him pile drive Uber and Leet?

Ok, hard to get definite numbers on what kind of force he was putting out because Leet’s tech seemed to be borking physics as bad as Apeiron’s. Actually, can we get some analysis on the Virtuaroids? And once again marvel that Leet of all people is becoming a credible threat? I mean, Leet?

►Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

There’s a separate thread for the Uber and Leet technical analysis from the fight here (link). Try to keep each on topic, beyond what you need to benchmark the other.

►Invar0

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

So is anyone actually going to talk about those lasers? I live south of Downtown and I nearly shit myself when the sky turned red. What kind of ordinance are we talking about here?

►Battlebot (Not a tinker)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Measuring from the scene of the fight to the estimated point where the missiles were destroyed gives us about 2 miles. Also, some reports of rooftop damage and air conditioning failures from taller buildings under the path, plus the light visible throughout the city (as seen in the press conference)

The shot angled out to sea, so we don’t have data on how long the beams held cohesion. Best indication we have regarding their power was the fact that no missile debris has been found, so either vaporized or carried off by the blast.

►Lock Jock

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

2 miles? Jesus, the PRT isn’t going to be happy about that.

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►Quester

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

You think they’d be more worried about the bomb villain that was able to set up a cross city rocket strike than about the guy who shot them down.

►Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Seems like we should probably be concerned about both of them. Welcome to Brockton Bay, a worry in every home and two ulcers for every PRT Director

►Kapefab

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

(piggot_press_conference_reaction.gif)

►Lock Jock

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

To be fair, everyone in the city reacted like that. We just weren’t on TV at the time.

►Sleeping Giant

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

So no way to get hard numbers on the lasers?

►Battlebot (Not a tinker)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

If we can get a detailed damage report from the buildings that could at least let us guess the radiant energy of the beams from mapping to distance from the shot, but at the moment there’s not enough information.

►Luftwaifu

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

What about for the cape? You know, the capey cape that caped through the whole fight? That cape?

►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Hey, if he’s so invincible, why does he need a cape to block things for him?

►Quester

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Rain can’t hurt you, why carry an umbrella? You can see when he was fighting Uber’s mech, auto blocking makes things easier (and it’s sweet that he’s taking after his mom)

►Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Right, not touching the shipping thing.

Any mechanism for how it works? I didn’t see anything that looked like a control system. Is it set up automatically, like his drones? Did he actually program it to billow dramatically whenever he’s standing still?

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►Kapefab

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

I don’t know, would a cape who engineered a situation where he brought his opponents to their knees, x-games motorcycle jumped over them, and flipped onto a lamppost all so he would have time to sneer down at them before combat really be the kind of person who would spend time and effort making sure his invincible combat cloak would “billow dramatically”?

►Luftwaifu

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Right, this is Apeiron we’re talking about. At this rate he’ll probably have stage lighting and entry music by the end of the week.

►Kapefab

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

WWE sponsorship when?

►Lock Jock

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Just what this city needs, more showmanship. Do we need to consider the anti-Squealer theory? Because, even if it isn’t tied to the strength of his technology he’s doing way more design work than the average tinker. I mean, there was filigree on the robot’s clubs.

►Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

I’d make a crack about where he finds the time to do that, but the field upgrade pretty much torpedo’s every theory about his tech reserves and build rate.

►M&Mensa

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Are we sure that’s not a striker power? We could be looking at things all wrong.

What if he’s someone like Chevalier, applying properties of one object to another? He wouldn’t even need to tinker, just grab the tech he needs and mash it into his equipment.

I’ve been working on a spreadsheet of active and retired tinkers whose work could have been integrated into Apeiron’s loadout to cover the feats we’ve seen so far. It’s not complete and there are some holes, but you can see my work here (link).

►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Jesus Christ man. “not complete”? What, are you going for a research project? PhD Thesis? Nobel prize?

►Kapefab

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Typical

Professional PRT Analyst <<<<< Some Guy on PHO

►Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

I’d recommend starting a new thread for that theory. This is about technical analysis, not sources of abilities, though we should probably consider the striker element. Can anyone clean up the video of when Apeiron worked on the Field Upgrade?

►Battlebot (Not a tinker)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Literally moving faster than the framerate, so no. Will say it at least looks technical rather than like a fusion effect.

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►Nevermore

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Can we talk about the Geokinetic weapons? Opening strike was a lot more controlled and coordinated than before (more showing off?) but look at the ranged version in the fight. It wasn’t just destabilizing the ground. I’m pretty sure some of those spikes were being generated by ricochets. That is terrifying battlefield control on display.

►Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Well, we know he has matter gen/fabrication for the Tripredacus Scouts. Did we ever get a consensus on how his pistol worked? The new Tripredacus Guardians (Tripredacus Praetorians?) guns seem to use the same effect, but without the shockwaves.

►Battlebot (Not a tinker)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

No confirmed answer. Obviously kinetic rather than energy based. Glow is from friction/ionization of air, so high speed projectile with a low profile. Serious impact, you can see that in all the interactions. Still no idea how he’s doing it, what he uses for ammo or if there even is ammo, or what the limitations are.

Obviously it can be scaled up, but it’s hard to guess the power of the shots with all the defensive fields they were dealing with. Have some footage from them against Oni Lee, but that’s just dust on every hit.

►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Somehow I doubt normal people would be much better than ‘dust’ after taking a hit like that. Have you seen the other reports from that fight? We’re seeing more deployment of ‘pouch item’ effects, and a lot of them are weird and concerning.

►Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Worse than summoning giant bees?

►Kapefab

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Security cam footage of part of the fight: (link)

►Lock Jock

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Jesus, are they melting? That was what, 20 Oni Lee clones at once?

►Battlebot (Not a tinker)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

I counted 23. And it didn’t kill them. They ashed in sequence, so it just disabled them until their timer ran out.

►Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

How the hell did Oni Lee survive that fight? I mean, the robots were going for the throat from minute one.

Also, how concerned should we be about the killer robots?

►Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

There’s a separate thread for that encounter (link). Let’s stay focused on the Uber and Leet fight.

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►Oakey

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Ok, I’m seconding Red Energy Nightmare Mode as an official name and advocate the use of the ‘Nightmare’ descriptor for all the tech on display that will have me waking up in a cold sweat for the next month, including:

Nightmare Hornets

Nightmare Quakestrike

Final Nightmare Slash

Nightmare Lasers

Melting Nightmare That You Can’t See Coming And Is So Much Worse Because Somehow It’s Not Enough To Kill You

Anything else?

►Luftwaifu

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Nightmare Cape? It is sinister in its flappyness. Just look at the way it billows with malevolence. It was probably spun from the sulfurous locks of the devil himself.

►Kapefab

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Even if we’re not talking horror story nightmare stuff, I’m not thrilled about the idea of being crushed by a giant stone fist, and that’s one of the milder ones. Someone’s put together a compilation of pouch item effects here (link).

►Parker Ave

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Hey, are we considering stuff from the leadup to the fight? Because if so this might be relevant.

(Financial Times – Watchdog Announces Major Bust on ABB Finances, Asset Seizures in Progress)

►All Gyro Might

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Jesus Christ

Content Tax: Do we have any idea the skill level/technology needed to pull off something like that? I mean, we had assumed computer knowledge because of the robotics, but this needs separate evaluation.

►Lock Jock

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Ok, if someone cost ME that much money I’d be launching missiles at them too.

Are we sure it was Apeiron? I mean, we don’t have evidence beyond the timing, and the scale, and the response, and the showmanship…

Yeah, it was probably Apeiron.

►Quester

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

So he didn’t steal any money, he just exposed them? Isn’t that basically vigilante work?

►Kwincy

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

They aren’t going to put Skidmark on a stamp just because he fights Nazis. Gangs and villains go after each other all the time. The real problem will be the fallout from this.

►Tinker's Hoarder (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

We have speculation in the News boards. Unless anyone has an idea of the skills or technology it would take to pull something like this off, it’s not really relevant to this thread.

►CeFalon

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

If we could get back to the ‘super mode’ thing, assuming it’s not Alexandria heritage shining through, do we have any idea what that could have been? Because all we know is he started to glow, apparently needed his healing at full force, then suddenly decided he could run on missiles and dropkick mechs.

Seriously, I don’t even know what kind of technology could pull that off, especially if he needs his healing tech to manage it.

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►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Lots of possibilities, but none of them line up with needing the healing tech. That implies it’s doing something to his body that’s causing damage, either directly or as a side effect. Everything is kind of pointing to wet tinkering, and that’s not a path I want to start speculating on.

►Rock Hard Physics

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Apeiron’s had serious healing technology since both his first rumored and first confirmed appearance. I’m pretty sure the guy is knee deep in wet tinkering already.

►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

There’s a difference between healing tech and whatever bio amplification would let you fight like that and need constant repairs to stay functional.

►Rock Hard Physics

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Apeiron’s healing technology isn’t like Cask’s boo boo brew. He regrew limbs. He saved people who looked like video game graphical glitches. The guy cured a peanut allergy as an afterthought during a post-surgery patch job. Draw a line from zero to his current level and you’re going to cross multiple tiers of ‘bio amplification’. The real question is what else is he holding back?

►Oakey

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

PRT Rating

Tinker: Nightmare

Joking aside, I don’t think we're going to be able to crack this one. Too little data. It’s going to be up there with what the hell his glowing circuit lines of healing actually are. Barring a public statement or a scan and report from a Protectorate tinker I think we're in the dark.

►Kapefab

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Lack of information has never stopped PHO before, why should it now? Bring on the mad theories! I’m leaning towards the idea that he spliced his genes with luminous jellyfish DNA. The strength and speed are from a second, unrelated gene splicing.

►Luftwaifu

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Clearly he's half spliced with his cape and half with another unrelated item of clothing.

►Cobolt

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

I know those are jokes, but should we consider genetic enhancement? Can tinkers even do that kind of thing?

►Battlebot (Not a tinker)

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Not in a stable fashion. Every example has broken down eventually, sometimes horrifically.

►The EDG

Replied On Apr 18th 2011:

Well, there's your answer.

Seriously, Apeiron doesn't seem like the kind of cape who's following the PRT's testing and evaluation guidelines for new tech.

Style guidelines to a T, but probably not safety

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31 Consensus

I may have made the offer of tea somewhat in jest, but when I saw what Survey had served Aisha it became a much more serious matter. I mentally checked with the A.I. to find out what it had done.

‘Tea has been prepared according to official standards.’

I suppressed as shudder as I looked over the procedure for ISO 3103. I mean, it had been followed with incredible precision, but that document hadn’t been assembled with the intention of producing a quality product tailored to a specific blend or type of tea.

‘That is for standardized comparison of tea brands, not palatability.’ I informed the A.I. as I looked over the results sitting on the table.

Survey put an expression of distaste on the projected hologram’s face and sent a message to my implant. ‘Why would the standardized process not produce the ideal product?’

I replied digitally as I started gathering up the tea set. ‘Variations between brands, external factors, and specific blends require subtle differences in preparation technique. Additionally, personalizing the product towards a specific consumer produces superior results that would not be possible with universal standardized procedures.’

The A.I. seemed to understand and signaled that through the projected character’s behavior. I was about to start preparing a new batch when Aisha broke in.

“Wait, are you talking with her?”

She was looking between me and the projected hologram in slight confusion, but that had nothing on my own reaction.

Her?

Seriously, her?

“Her?” I asked Aisha.

“Survey.” She pointed at the hologram. “The computer lady.”

I blinked. “Lady?”

“Well, yeah.” She gestured at the admittedly feminine hologram. I just hadn’t keyed to it since Survey had slowly been refining the image since I assigned the task of generating a profile. “You have the computer girl and the car guy.”

I blinked again. Had Aisha just gendered my A.I.? I linked with the main copies of both programs to review the interactions and check on them regarding this development.

Survey provided a comprehensive breakdown of perceived gender-based interactions both online and in person with a tabulated matrix of advantages and disadvantages connected with presumed gender, and sub-categories detailing variants due to non-gender conforming behavior. The analysis included projected interactions and an analysis of the benefits in various scenarios, with a final ruling that perception as female was 67.832% more likely to be beneficial in terms of expected tasks and interaction.

Fleet responded with simple acceptance of the idea, accompanied by a data file containing the ratios of male to female fighter pilots and formula one drivers.

Looking back, this had probably been developing for a while, and was probably inevitable once they entered the more advanced computational environment of the optical computer core. I’d just been so focused on immediate problems and the A.I.s’ development in other areas that I had completely missed it.

Somehow that made me feel like I’d been negligent.

I congratulated them, unsure if that was the right response. Actually, it probably was. This was a big step towards cementing an identity, so even if I didn’t see it coming it was still important. The fact that it was apparently initiated by Aisha was secondary to the development it represented.

I shook off the implications and turned towards the girl. I was beginning to feel self-consciousness about keeping my face concealed. Something about cape costumes helped you get lost in the spectacle of a parahuman fight, but the idea of having a personal discussion in them suddenly made them seem ridiculous.

Huh, it’s almost as if the whole hero/villain pageantry is being held together by the assumption that it's normal, and falls apart on closer inspection.

I pulled off my facemask, cowl, and visor and set them on the table before looking at Aisha. She was still wearing her scarf mask, but had shifted it away from her face, so it currently sat as a fashionable accessory. Trust Garment to design something that worked equally well for both concealing a cape identity and complimenting an outfit.

“They are my Fleet Management Program and Environmental Analysis and Survey System. Fleet and Survey.”

Aisha looked over at Survey’s hologram, which did a decent impression of a pleased expression. “It is nice to meet you.” The layered synthesized voices had converged into a specific and unique tone.

I took the opportunity to dump the old tea off the side of the balcony. I didn’t actually know what happened to stuff that fell off this possibly simulated mountain peak, but the undrinkable attempt at tea was as good a test ground as any.

There was the slightest quirk of irritation sent from Survey at my act, but that shifted to interest as I took up the tea set and moved towards the forge’s lava pool.

“Right, likewise.” Aisha gave the hologram a polite nod, which I found a bit weird since I knew there were no sensors or computational elements present in the image. “But you were talking with them, right?”

This was a safe enough topic, at least in how I could phrase it. “I have a neural interface. It lets me interact with my systems without having to enter anything manually.”

Aisha nodded along. “So like Bakuda?”

I paused by the edge of the forge. “What, that hasn’t been cleared up yet?”

“What do you mean?” Aisha rose from her seat to see what I was doing. Survey mimicked the motion from ‘her’ hologram. I’d need to remember those designations if I didn’t want to undercut their development.

I used the heat of the lava to bring the kettle to a quick boil, then pulled it back while monitoring the temperature with my omni-tool. “Bakuda doesn’t have a neural interface in her mask. It’s a basic heads up display she was controlling with toe rings. Simple tech that you don’t even need to be a tinker to throw together. The neural interface thing was just for show. I thought someone would have pointed that out by now.”

Aisha considered what I said. “I don’t think the Protectorate really wants to downplay the person who wrecked them like that. Like, the bigger and badder that Bakuda looks the less bad they seem for getting their heads handed to them.”

Wow, the PRT misrepresenting things to cover for their own failings? Perish the thought.

She glanced over at the hologram being projected from the drone floating slightly behind it. “But you built them, right? Like programed them, or whatever? Well enough that they can talk and do stuff and make fun of people for not liking their tea?”

That got a quick inquiry from me, to which Survey relayed that she had informed Aisha of the technical adequacy of the tea and offered suggestions regarding potential causes for a defective pallet.

“Basically, yes.” I worked to brew a new batch of tea as I spoke, binding natural energy into tea leaves that were admittedly better than my usual stock. Apparently they had been produced by some side project of my duplicates. “There’s more to it than that, but before we get into that there’s something you should know.”

I set the teapot down to steep and turned to face Aisha. “You probably have a lot of questions about how all this works.” Her eyes darted up to the looming volcano then back to me. “I’m willing to answer them.” I assured her. “We’ve kind of moved past the point of deniability. What you know now won’t be much worse than the full story, at least for most cases. But the fringe cases, they can get bad, and you need to know what you’re getting into.”

Aisha swallowed before responding. “The Simurgh, right? That’s what you mean?”

I nodded. Aisha might be flighty, impulsive, and immature, but she wasn’t dumb. The Endbringers weren’t a subject of casual conversation. Most people went out of their way to avoid mentioning or even thinking about them. I could tell she understood the implications of our previous talk. She wasn’t taking this lightly.

“The ways I’ve been avoiding her, well her and other stuff on that level? It’s delicate. I can give you the full story, but afterwards you’re going to need the same precautions, or as close as possible. You need to know what you’re getting into before you ask.”

Aisha nodded slowly, but there was a slight trembling in her hands. “I want to know. Whatever needs to be done after that, I can deal with it.”

“Alright.” I watched her closely. “As long as you’re sure.”

She took a breath and forced a smile onto her face. “Besides, need to start paying you off for the rescue. Maybe we can take some of that as part of the installment plan?”

“Okay, fuck that.” I countered immediately.

“What?” she seemed more than a little taken aback by my exclamation.

“Aisha, I’m not billing you for saving your life.” I explained.

She looked confused. “But, that’s what you do, right? The Undersiders…”

“The Undersiders had been diving into one stupid situation after another and it damn near got them killed. I’m billing them to the full level that contract allows because it’s probably the only way I can get them to pump the brakes on an escalation curve that would probably have them dead in a month at most.”

“Wait, that’s why they owe you money?” She had a perplexed look on her face.

I gestured around me. “Do I look like I’m hard for cash?” The weird thing was, I kind of was. I had very limited liquid reserves and most of them were from illegal income. There was probably a threshold of off-the-books earnings I could get away with claiming without attracting attention, especially now that I had something of a reputation as a neighborhood mechanic, but there were limits and one audit would probably destroy me. I really needed to get that sorted out to some meaningful degree. However, none of that was relevant to the current situation.

Aisha was clearly having a hard time parsing my intentions. I could tell the situation was bothering her, not just from her behavior but from my connection to the dragon pulse. That sense didn’t exactly give empathy, but it conveyed people’s physical states, enough to tell me that there was a lot of tension that Aisha was keeping under the surface. She was a lot more concerned about this than she was letting on.

I considered for a moment before trying a different approach.

“Aisha, what do you think your life is worth?” My voice was flat as I asked the question.

“What?” She sputtered. However she thought this was going to go, I had clearly taken it off the rails. It was getting a bit more conceptual than I preferred, but I needed to get this out of the way.

“Do you have a dollar value for your life? Or anyone else? Some number you can quote? Because I don’t.” I mean, I’m not an actuary. Okay, bad joke. I sighed before continuing. “I’m not charging you for today, not for saving your life or any of the stuff around it. I did it because I didn’t want you to die. I didn’t want your father and brother to go through that, and I wanted you to be safe.” That made her flinch slightly and look away.

There was a moment where she stared into the mountains before replying. “You seriously don’t want anything for this?” She asked in an uncertain voice.

I let out a slow breath before continuing. “If you want to stick to financial terms, then I didn’t buy your life, I invested in it. And now I have a vested interest in keeping you alive.” And I God damn did. It was clear that letting a parahuman with Aisha’s age, temperament, and powerset try to function on her own wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t enough of a bastard to cut ties and wash my hands of her, which meant I needed to put in the work to keep her alive.

Aisha didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. She stood in silence while I attended to the tea, staying just out of the roaring heat of the forge that my reinforcement let me ignore. Just as the tea finished brewing I poured energy into it using Elven Enchantment. The basic level, I wasn’t singing to the teapot, but it was enough to take the perfectly brewed tea beyond the limits of perfection.

The exact moment it was complete there was a subtle reaction from Aisha. She was clearly restraining herself, and the previous statement was still weighing on her, but there were furtive glances towards the teapot and slight sniffs as she drank in the scent. I smiled and poured a cup, which she took enthusiastically.

The girl’s eyebrows shot up as soon as she took her first sip. “Damn.” She took a few more sips of the hot beverage in rapid succession. “This is even better than last time.” She inhaled the scent of the liquid and took a long sip.

I looked over the mountains of my Skyforge and the tea before me. The volcano continued to churn out smoke and lava. Alright, I remember coming back here because Aisha was in the workshop with the volcano. I came straight here, can’t remember why. It seems like it would be because of Aisha, but it was hard to make that connection. I glanced at Survey’s hologram.

“She’s over there.” The soft, slightly electronic voice spoke as the hologram gestured towards an empty space.

“Sorry, sorry.” Aisha was suddenly in front of me and apologizing profusely.

“It’s alright.” I assured her. The situation was still annoying, but I knew it wasn’t her fault. “You seem to be getting better with that.”

She nodded. “You were right about it getting easier, or maybe it’s an emotional thing, or even tied to that passenger stuff. I don’t know. But I was able to have a whole conversation with my brother without him wandering off, so that was nice.”

“I’m glad it’s getting easier.” I was. I knew about having to struggle with the side effects of a power. Nothing as severe as Aisha’s troubles, but something I could empathize with.

“Yeah.” She took another sip. “Just lost focus. This is really good tea.”

“Thanks.” I gathered up the tea set and moved back towards the table with Aisha trailing behind me.

“No, seriously, do you have any idea how hard it is to find good tea in this city?” She took another sip as she settled into her seat. “Coffee chains are crap, specialty stores are hardly any better. Only half decent stuff was what they bring out for the ABB bosses.”

She dove into her cup without elaborating, but I was struck with the image of invisible Aisha swiping teacups from the hands of the ABB elite. It was hilarious and horrifying all at the same time.

“My crafting powers?” She looked up from her cup. “They cover more than just machines.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I already had that sense from last time. Then the volcano showed up.”

It was an obviously leading point, and it was about time to finally get into it. “You have questions.” She gave me a flat look. “You know what you’re getting into. Go ahead and ask.”

She looked at her cup, then back to me, then her eyes darted back and forth a few times before she forced herself to put the half full teacup on the table. Before she could start I topped up the cup, which brought a smile to her face, then filled my own, which caused the smile to slightly falter. I could practically see the volumetric calculations being performed behind her eyes and wouldn’t be surprised if she was estimating the remaining volume of tea down to the milliliter.

“I can really ask anything?” She gave me an uncertain look.

“Generally, yes.” I answered. “If I want to trust you then you have to trust me, and you’re probably not going to do that if I’m keeping things from you. If something is too dangerous or complicated to get into I’ll let you know why, but this is me being open with you. What do you want to know?”

I was sounding more certain with the situation that I really felt. My passenger, despite his occasionally off-putting trivialization of Aisha’s situation, was utterly confident in her. I was honestly worried about this, what could happen if it went wrong, and the consequences both for Aisha and myself. The truth was that I wanted this to work out. I didn’t see another way that wouldn’t involve the imposing of another toxic power dynamic on a girl who had suffered through too many of those already.

Aisha considered things for a moment, then took a breath. “Okay. So, what the hell?”

I looked at her with a blank expression. “You’ll have to be a little more specific than that.”

“What?” she set down the cup after taking a quick sip between questions. “You can’t just tell me everything?”

“Everything is too much and too vague. What do you want to hear about first?” I took a sip from my own cup. It was really good tea, somehow calming and energizing at the same time. The flavor was smooth, without the bitter tang you sometimes get. The taste wasn’t buried under the temperature and was strong enough to come through clearly without being overwhelming.

“Fine.” She said with a slight sneer. The volcano spat a plume of lava into the air, glowing red flecks cooling to black in the setting sun. “So, how about this place?”

“The mountains, the workshop, or the volcano?” She smiled and I suspected I was going to get a mathematician’s answer from her. “Alright, it’s basically another universe.”

“Uh, yeah.” She looked around. “I kind of figured that. So is it one of those lettered Earths? Like, did you make a door to another planet? Universe, whatever? And why did the volcano show up.”

I shook my head. “It’s not a whole planet, it’s part of my power. I made the key, but when I started it was just the entry room and a metal shop. My power adds stuff to it sometimes. I think they’re from other universes, but I’m not sure. Usually they have something to do with crafting, tinkering, or some kind of technology.”

She nodded slowly. “So it’s like Labyrinth. Serious shaker stuff.”

I shrugged. “Sort of. It’s huge now, but I was basically working out of a closet for a while. I can’t control what shows up or when.”

She seemed to key to that. “That’s the strategy trance thing, right?” I nodded. “So each time you’re getting something new for this place? And the volcano happened when you were out?” She thought for another second. “Wait, you said it was figuring out tinker stuff. It’s not just things for this place is it?”

I nodded. “My power kind of expands erratically. When it started all I had was this place. Sometimes I get skills, or knowledge, or powers that make crafting easier.”

“How often does it happen?” She asked. “I mean, each time we met, plus during those fights on camera…”

“It started slow, but it’s been getting faster.” I explained. “And it’s not all top tier powers. A lot of the time it’s just some mechanical knowledge, how to fix a car, or how to design things to fit a theme better.”

“But they add up, right?” Her eyes were shining as she put things together. Aisha wasn’t dumb. “They keep stacking with each other?”

I nodded.

“Shit, that’s like Eidolon crossed with Dauntless.” Something seemed to occur to her. “Oh God, PHO’s been shipping the wrong member of the Triumvirate with Hero.”

I gave her a sour look and she broke into giggles. “God, I hate that rumor.” My statement did nothing to deter her giggles. “And it’s not all sunshine.”

She nodded dismissively. “Yeah, but winning the superpower lottery is worth having to deal with random volcanos.” The phrase seemed to amuse her even more.

“I’m serious. There are some real problems with this.” She restrained herself enough for me to continue, but still looked skeptical. “A lot of the powers, especially the strong ones, they come with more than just whatever ability, and that can be hard to deal with.”

“What do you mean?” She leaned in, mostly in concern but also to extend her empty teacup. I refilled it before continuing.

I wondered if I should get into this, but I already extended too far. My statement about the drawbacks had mostly been to shoot down her response to the strength of my powers. I didn’t really want to have to explain all the crap I’d been dealing with.

Actually, in a way, I did. I desperately did want that. Master Builder’s inhuman mindset, the military experience of Class: Engineer, the way the implant had just forced itself into my brain, I’d had no one to talk to about any of it. And that wasn’t even getting into things like aura and having multiple S-Class threats under my belt.

Looking up I could see the humor had vanished from Aisha’s face and she was looking at me with real concern. Right, perceptive girl plus my own status as a terrible liar. Well, might as well get this over with.

“Okay, there is no standard form of how my power expresses itself. As far as I can tell, none of the abilities I’ve gotten work the way a ‘normal’ tinker does.” Aisha nodded along. “Sometimes I get intuitive understanding, sometimes it’s like a database, sometimes it’s personal experience, sometimes it’s almost like a power, it just makes things work.” I swallowed. “But sometimes it’s memories.”

Aisha’s eyebrows rose and she restrained herself from taking a sip from her cup while I continued.

“So, sometimes they’re clear, like actual memories of training to learn something, and sometimes they’re just this feeling, like instincts that I should be able to place but can’t. Sometimes they’re so… so alien that it makes it hard to think normally. I’ve had to start monitoring how I think, trying to make sure it doesn’t affect me too much.”

Silence fell over the table as we sat there and drank our tea. I could feel my cloak bunch in around me as Garment manipulated it into what was almost a hug. It was a little weird, but I appreciated the gesture.

“You know…” Aisha began. “Everyone online, they think you have it on easy mode.”

I let out a harsh laugh at the idea.

“Yeah.” She continued. “Fuck, you’ve got the Simurgh, power problems, PRT after you, ABB on your ass, babysitting the Undersiders.” She smiled at the last statement and shook her head. “They have no idea.”

“Probably better that way.” Aisha nodded at my statement. I let out a chuckle. “Aren’t you glad you fell in with this mess?”

“Yes.” Her answer was so flat and sudden it completely jarred the mood of the table.

I looked over at the now very serious thirteen-year-old. “Right, sorry for complaining about power issues to you.”

“Don’t…” She began, then sighed. “It’s fine. And thank you. Like, for saving me, and everything else. If you aren’t charging you can at least take that.”

I was nodding in response when I felt the Celestial forge connect to a larger mote from the Quality constellation. It was called Divine Child - Hephaestus. It was incredibly powerful, and it had horrifying implications.

With a single connection I wasn’t human anymore. I was now a demigod, the child of Hephaestus. That implication would have been bad enough, but the mote came with another minor power called Old Traditions. It gave me knowledge and understanding of ancient Greece. Comprehensive understanding. I could speak and read ancient Greek, perform their rituals, and understand their mythology.

A mythology that I was now part of.

Old Traditions completely vanquished any ideas that this could have been a metaphorical connection. There was an actual Hephaestus, god of the forge, and I was his child. I was the half-blood demigod son of an Olympian deity. The powers and abilities that came with this mote weren’t just dressed up tinker powers or parahuman quirks. They were the result of having a direct, familial link to a god.

And there were a lot of powers. Without even getting into the more esoteric aspects there were fundamental biological changes. There was a buzzing in my brain from enhanced instincts, kind of a drive to combat. Not enough to be distracting, but enough to provide guidance in battle. Physically there was a complete overhaul. The changes were severe enough to really drive home my concerns about what had happened.

Demigods were obviously beyond other humans on a physical scale. This varied from god to god, but that was about the expression of the enhancement, not its presence. It was almost like stat allocation in an RPG, which were the most enhanced areas and which were the ‘dump stats’.

Hephaestus wasn’t exactly known for beauty or speed, but everything else got at least some improvement. The standouts were strength, dexterity, and most of all stamina. Everything you’d need to do grueling, high detail forge work for hours on end. They were also the areas that were least helpful to me. My nanites could restore stamina, I had precise manual dexterity, and strength wouldn’t save me from an annihilator effect. It was an excess of what I already had, not more of what I desperately needed.

But this was a comprehensive power, as expected from something with a mote as strong as Master Builder’s. This power, and all its baggage, came with a phenomenal ability called Technokinesis. It was a mastery of technology beyond anything I’d considered before. This wasn’t antiquated forge god stuff, it was understanding and control of any technological item in the world.

I could feel technology around me, in my own equipment, in the drone linked to Survey. It was like linking with the machinery on a spiritual level. I could understand its function and how to operate it to the peak of what was possible. It was expertise and understanding all in one package, even direct communication with no required medium. I could detect faults in machinery and would be able to sense any kind of constructed traps. And that wasn’t even getting into what I could build.

This power was connected with Unnatural Skill: Smith. The abilities stacked with and complimented each other, taking things beyond what was otherwise possible. Beyond the magical metals and emulated technology, this would let me create true divine wonders. It was a level of skill for which the word magitech was irrelevant, because it didn’t care about the merger of forces, only the purity of craft. The smith god power enhanced all of my technological abilities, from the most basic engine maintenance to the very highest limit of what Clarketech could accomplish.

And this wasn’t even the limit of the power. There was a second mote that had slipped away, slightly smaller, called Fate finds you interesting. It worked to enhance every aspect of this power. If I ever secured it, it would take this ability beyond the level of the largest motes, to the strength of those rare outliers. One additional connection to a mote smaller than Divine Child was all that it would take to unlock truly godlike power.

And the only price was imposed inhumanity and a persistent confusion about what the hell was happening.

I didn’t know. Seriously, I had no idea what was going on. I was absolutely certain that I was the child of Hephaestus, but what the hell did that actually mean? I would ask questions about genetics, but with a ‘parent’ who had a divine form that seemed like the wrong avenue to solve this. What the hell was my genealogy like? Were my parents still my parents? My family still my family? The forge had done some weird stuff before, but it had never struck this close to home.

“Hey?” I looked up from my musings at Aisha’s concerned face. “Jozef? Are you all right?”

My over-pronounced full name served to pull me out of my ruminations. I had someone else here. I couldn’t just sink into contemplation and freely agonize over things.

“It’s fine. I’m just…” I trailed off, not knowing how to proceed.

“You got a new power, right?” She asked.

I nodded and took a breath. “It... it changed my genetics. Seriously, in a big way. I’m… I’m trying to figure out if I’m still related to both my parents.”

“Shit.” She exclaimed. Her hand trembled on the handle of the teapot, then she forced it out to refill my cup, watching the liquid pour with a forlorn expression. “It can do that? Seriously?”

I nodded and gestured in thanks for the tea. “Not often, but yeah. It can mess with my body. This is a big one though, bigger than anything before.”

Aisha took a slow sip from her cup before nodding. “Your shoulders are broader. That was the power right?”

I quickly checked the visual feed from Survey’s drone. Yep, slightly more build, particularly in the upper body. A build designed for forge work.

“Yeah, that was it.” I confirmed.

“So it happened before?” I looked at her in confusion. “Your jacket? It hid your muscles. Really well, actually. Was that tinker tech or Garment?”

I shrugged. “Bit of both, actually.”

“Yeah, it did a great job of hiding things. I had no idea until you took it off.” She took another sip of tea and looked sadly at the level of her cup. “You know, you hear about how hard people have to train to get a ‘hero’ body type.” She smiled in what seemed like an attempt to reassure me. “I think most of the Protectorate is on restricted diets and spends more time in the gym than on the street. Most people wouldn’t care about the other stuff if it meant they got a body like a Greek god.”

I did a terrible job of concealing my reaction to that particular word. I hadn’t expected it, and after being this candid I wasn’t properly on guard, Aisha latched on to the reaction and zeroed in.

“What? What was that?” She asked.

“Look, it’s nothing.” I explained.

“That wasn’t nothing.” She gave me a hard look. “You said you’d explain things if I asked. Well, I’m asking. What the hell was that?” Her expression was defiant and her cup was empty. I wondered if I could bribe her away from this line of discussion with more tea, but ultimately decided against it.

How the hell would I even start to explain this? The magical side of the Forge was complicated enough that even I had a hard time accepting it. Explaining it to someone else felt like complete crazy talk. Another glance at Aisha showed that there was no way out of this. I took a breath and tried to gather my thoughts.

I could practically feel the intensity of her focus through the dragon pulse. There was no way I was going to be able to deflect this. I could also feel Garment’s reassurance, which was even more comforting than the cloak bundled around me. Strangely, there was a third spike of emotion.

I could feel Tetra. The life fibers didn’t understand the situation or what was being attempted in this conversation, but they picked up on my discomfort and were practically radiating concern and support. But that wasn’t all.

Tetra could tell something had happened to me. Life fibers were incredibly sensitive to biological changes. Even without direct contact they could sense the energy of lifeforms. Tetra knew something big had happened and was actually extremely excited about it.

It was a bit odd that there was a universally positive reaction to this transformation and it was from the alien parasite. All Tetra knew is something had happened to my biology that, from its perspective, was an absolute positive. There was a serious eagerness for the next time we could connect and well as continual good feelings about the transformation.

The reassurance was honestly helpful in dealing with my immediate concerns, or at least setting them aside for the moment. I turned to Aisha and did my best to explain things.

“Alright, this is getting into aspects of my power that I don’t fully understand, so if it comes off as crazy or doesn’t make sense I can’t help you.” Aisha nodded. “Right, right.” I took another breath.

“So, my power, when it gives me a new ability I get some information on it, how it works and other details.” Aisha gestured her understanding and I continued. “Sometimes it’s basic, like little more than a name and a few details, and sometimes it’s really comprehensive information.”

“Wait,” She interrupted. “All your powers have their own names?”

“That’s right.” I confirmed.

“Items too? Like stuff that shows up here?” She looked around as she asked.

“Yes.” I assured her.

“So, what was that called.” She pointed at the volcano.

“Volcanic Forge.” She raised an eyebrow. “Speeds up metalwork and can make really good alloys.”

“You got an entire mountain just for that?” She asked, incredulously.

I shrugged. “I don’t control this stuff.”

“Right.” She looked around. “Hey, what was this place called? Before the Volcano showed up?”

“The Skyforge.”

She nodded, taking in the setting sun across the mountains and the shadows of the eagle statue. “Good name. What about downstairs?”

“That was just called the Workshop.”

She scrunched up her face at that. “Boring.” She paused. “Wait, so this has something to do with that last power?”

I nodded apprehensively. I wasn’t sure how I was even going to bring up an idea this crazy. “It’s…”

“Are you a god?” She exclaimed, cutting me off.

I stuttered in response. “What?”

“You said it changed your genetics, then you reacted when I mentioned Greek gods. That’s it right?” Her eyes were shining and I was reminded how annoyingly perceptive she could be. I decided to push forward.

“Alright, the power is called Divine Child Hephaestus. Apparently it’s supposed to make me the demigod child of Hephaestus. He was the Greek god of…”

“God of smiths and the forge. I know.” I gave her a look and she smiled. “Princess Gwenevere.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “Right. He made a bunch of the superweapons they used in the sequel show.”

“Noble Phantasms.” She corrected. “Figured you’d know more about that, seeing as you have a reality marble worthy of Shawn Emiya.”

I blinked as the Forge missed a connection to the Alchemy constellation. “This isn’t a reality marble. And I make more than swords.”

“Fine.” She waved dismissively. “Shawn Alter.”

I was getting into unfamiliar ground and needed to pull back. “You do get what I was saying, right?”

“Sure.” She shrugged as she tilted out her empty cup, checking for any missed drops of tea. “And it’s crazy, but I mean, you have a mountain range in your closet. You fixed someone with a chair stuck in their chest. You’re pretty much leading a one-man gang war. If your power says you’re a demigod I’m not going to argue with it.”

It was a level of trust and acceptance of impossible concepts that is pretty much only possible with an eighth grader. I’m pretty sure Myrddin would have called me to task for making this claim, but Aisha was willing to roll with it.

“So, what did you get from it? I mean, other than rocking shoulders?”

I sighed, but remembered my promise. “Bunch of physical buffs, strength, dexterity and stamina. Also a kind of technology sense power. I can understand and use machines better.”

“Couldn’t you already do that?” She asked.

I shook my head. “That was through actual analysis, this is an innate power. It’s like a sense for how technology works and how to use it.” I took a moment to focus. There were other, more subtle aspects to the power. I could sense metals and heat, and there was a particular connection to the volcano, which at least made thematic sense. I think there was some slight control over heat, but without the second mote to strengthen it I doubt anything practical could be done with it.

“So can YOU make god weapons?” The question was teasing, but there was a glimmer of excitement in her eyes.

“Sort of?” She looked at me expectantly and I continued. “This power lets me work to a level of quality a lot better than what I could manage before.”

“Right.” She said. “Because you were basically churning out Squealer tech before.”

I grinned slightly at the joke. “You said it, they add up. I have a whole bunch of powers that make what I build slightly better. This is the first one that’s like, divine class.”

She nodded. “Do you get a lot of that Adept shit? Gods and magic and stuff?”

I shrugged. “There’s a lot of stuff my power calls magic, but as far as I can tell it treats parahuman powers the same way. Maybe the Adepts are right, or maybe it’s just shorthand for how this all works.”

“So you can make like, magic-magic, like pacts and circuits and all that stuff?” She asked, leaning forward.

“Uh, no. Not like that.” I explained. “The magic, or whatever it is, that comes from this power needs special metals to work. I had a related power for a while, but it’s hard to get the materials I need.”

“What are they?” She asked.

I went over the creation of celestial bronze. “Well, I need a special kind of base metal. This power pretty much covers that. Also I would have needed a volcano, but, you know.” The mountain shot another shower of molten spray into the air and Aisha nodded. “Third part is the hardest. I need to cool the metal in special water. Should be from the River Lethe.”

“Where’s that?” She asked.

“The Greek underworld.” I answered grimly. “It was a magic river that made people forget things. Also a spirit of forgetfulness.”

“And it’s called the Lethe?” She asked, pronouncing the word carefully.

I nodded. “I might be able to make the water, or something similar, and there are other types of metal that might work, but without them most of this ‘god’ magic isn’t going to work.”

“Lethe.” She sounded out the word again before turning to me. “But that’s ‘this’ magic. You have other kinds, right?”

“Yeah.” I took out my pistol and put it on the table. “I can make runes that give weapons different properties. Elemental stuff, but I’m working on other effects. I’ve got another power that lets me use elemental weapons better. I got another enchanting power that lets me empower stuff as I make it, but it’s still pretty basic. Just improving the quality. Outside of that I’ve got a few potions and some alchemy.”

“So that was all the wind slashes and earthquakes and stuff?” I nodded. “And with the other enchanting, do you have to like circulate prana or something? Do a big ritual?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s just channeling energy. I pretty much do it whenever I make something.”

She nodded slowly, then her eyes dropped to the teapot. “Wait… you made the tea. Did you enchant the tea? Have you been serving magic tea?”

“Yeah?” I admitted. She seemed halfway between impressed and offended. “I mean, this time. I couldn’t enchant stuff last time. That was just good teamaking. And natural alchemy.”

“What was that?” she snapped.

“I can channel and bind natural energy. It lets me make potions, that’s what changed my eye color the other night.” She started glancing around, her eyes moving in a way that suggested she wanted to check her eyes but couldn’t figure out how. “I used it to improve the tea leaves, up the quality.”

“And it’s safe?” She asked, while making a show of trying to check her eyes in the polished surface of her cup. I fabricated a small mirror and handed it to her. She shot me a glare as she took it, then checked her eyes in the reflection.

“It only affected the tea leaves.” I assured her. “You get better quality tea from the same ingredients.”

“Uh-huh.” She seemed satisfied with her eye color, then noticed the workmanship on the mirror and almost dropped it. “Did you enchant this too? Is this a magic mirror?”

“No, that’s just a good mirror that looks nice.” Aisha slowly rotated the gleaming hand mirror taking in the design work. “I told you, I have a bunch of powers that make stuff better quality.”

“Right.” She said, gently setting the mirror on the table. “How did you make that anyway?”

I pulled up the now unnecessary holographic interface for my omni-tool. “This is called an omni-tool. It’s a combination computer, scanner, and micro fabricator. I have a reserve of omni-gel, kind of a slurry of dissolved metals and plastics, that I can use to make basic items. That’s what I did there.”

“Right, basic.” She looked down at the mirror like it might bite her. She had been a lot more cavalier when talking about this stuff in the abstract than upon seeing it in action. “So,” She steeled herself and turned towards me. “How magic was that tea?”

I sighed and pushed my cup away. “It’s just tea.” She gave me a look suggesting she didn’t believe me. “That level of enchantment doesn’t do anything but basic improvements. It’s more tea than you usually get, but that’s it. More of the positive aspects of tea are there, but there’s nothing beyond tea.”

I was saying the word tea so much that it was starting to sound weird.

“So that’s it? Just super tea?” She eyed the cup with a combination of eagerness and apprehension.

“Yes, basic level enchanting.” I explained. “I didn’t dictate its nature or sing unseen aspects of reality into its creation.”

“Wait.” Aisha gave me a hard look. “You can do that.”

“No.” I countered. “I can’t. The power is supposed to be able to do that, but that takes practice, training, and someone who can sing without offending everyone in earshot.”

She gave me a questioning look. “What the hell is that power called, anyway?”

“Elven Enchanting.” I answered.

“Elven.” She responded flatly. “You gave me elf tea?”

It took me a second to figure out where she was coming from. “Look, it’s just a name?”

“Really, demigod?” she asked, indignantly.

“Damnit Aisha, it’s just well made tea. It’s not going to steal your soul or put you to sleep for a hundred years. I’m not some kind of fey.”

“Are you sure? Have you tried this before?”

“Yes.” She gave me a questioning look. “I had an elven sandwich for lunch.”

That seemed to take the wind out of her sails. “Sandwich?”

“Turkey club.” I replied. “It was really good.”

“A… sandwich?” I nodded at her. “God, okay. I can’t actually picture a sinister plot involving a turkey club.”

“It was a really good turkey club.”

She grinned at me. “Alright, I’m prepared to accept that your magic tea isn’t actually some evil plot.” She picked up the teapot and handed it to me. “But just to be sure you better make another pot, you know, so I can check.”

With the smirk on her face I had to wonder how much of the early pageantry had been her pulling my leg. Still, I took the pot and carried the tea set back to the lava pool. Or course, I didn’t need to brew my tea over molten lava, but seriously, who was going to use a camp stove or hot plate if they had a domestic volcano handy?

“So,” Aisha called as I worked on the tea. “What’s all this for?”

“What do you mean?” I asked as I set a second pot to brew.

“Like, what’s the end goal? You’re building up, getting more powerful all the time. You just became a god.”

“Demigod.” I corrected. “Still mortal.” And still with concerns about what the Forge might have done to my genetics. It could change things retroactively, I knew that from the implant, so what did this mean about my parents?

“Fine, but you’re strong and getting stronger. Where is this going?” The question was asked with a combination of excitement and concern, and more troubling, I didn’t have an answer ready.

“I don’t really know.” I admitted. At her glance I continued. “Right now, it’s about dealing with the ABB. Bakuda, Oni Lee, Leet, and the thinker. After that probably try to convince the Protectorate I haven’t been mastering people, then I guess work through threats as I can manage them.”

“What do you mean?” She asked while watching the steeping teapot like a hawk.

“Well, I get enough power and resources I should be able to counter threats other people haven’t been able to deal with.” This was getting into darker topics that I wasn’t comfortable discussing with a thirteen-year-old, no matter what her life experience was like.

“So what, you’re going to go around dealing with major threats, like a one-man Guild?” Aisha leaned forward just as the tea finished and I bound energy to it. I wondered how she got the timing so exact, but put the question aside and poured her a cup.

“Maybe. I’ve been dealing with things as they come, so I haven’t really made long term plans. I’ve barely been keeping my gear up to date with my powers.”

“Right.” She drew out the word sarcastically as she smiled over her cup. “You’ve really been dragging your feet. Shoddy workmanship everywhere. I mean, this tea is just barely magically delicious. You really need to step up your wizardry.”

I sighed. “Aisha, I have a handful of ways to apply what are probably dressed up parahuman effects to objects. I’m not actually some kind of fantasy wizard.”

The girl pouted slightly into her cup and I felt the Celestial Forge move again. It was the Magitech constellation, the smallest mote from the Magitech constellation, but I connected. I finally had a second connection, a way to link magic and technology properly.

And the power was called Setup Wizard. And was accompanied by a slight rumble from deeper in the workshop.

“What was that?” Aisha asked.

I had no way around this. I swear, the Forge was taunting me at times like this. I know about confirmation bias, and how you can find patterns in truly random systems, and a large enough sample size will eventually produce results that can be taken as ordered. But none of that was a comfort when faced with what had just happened.

“That,” I explained in a grim voice. “was my power giving me a magic wand.”

So we found ourselves in the entryway of my workshop staring at the newly installed locker. I’d made a quick stop at the throne to renew my memory protection before checking on the wand’s location. It was a small addition to the wall, barely a few inches square, and slid out in its entirety like a safe deposit box. On the front of it was a gold placard with elaborately engraved writing on it.

‘Black Walnut and Unicorn Hair’

’11 ¼ inches’

Aisha watched me eagerly with her teacup in one hand and the entire pot in the other. Survey maintained ‘her’ hologram, mimicking Aisha’s interest when I knew the A.I. already watched and recorded everything from every sensor available.

The girl made an encouraging gesture and I sighed before sliding out the case from the wall. It opened to reveal a thin stick of black walnut, elaborately carved and sculpted. Sculpted in a way that seemed just perfect for my hand.

I wanted to maintain my skepticism and frustration with the Forge, along with my irritation at having this moment turned into a spectator sport. I wanted to hold onto that mindset, but upon seeing the item in the box all my reservations disappeared.

My right hand moved before I even realized what was happening. My fingers closed around the dark brown wood. They brushed against the smooth texture, feeling just the barest hints of the grain before closing around the carved heartwood. As soon as the wand was in my hand I felt a surge of power like nothing before.

This wasn’t the rush of life fiber energy, or the exhilaration of a new connection from the Forge. This was, well it was like coming home. It was like reconnecting with a friend that you had forgotten about, but within seconds you were as close as ever. Warmth flowed up my arm and a sense of security and confidence filled my body.

This was good. It was an unquestionably good thing in my life. Memories flooded me at the sensation, or warmth and light and beauty. It was the most unquestionably positive thing I had received from the Forge since that memory of the pair of trees on the hill.

I tightened my grip as my mind called that image to the forefront. I may have tried to play this off to Aisha as possible parahuman powers through an unusual method of application, but I knew I didn’t really believe that. This was magic. True pure magic. It bubbled within me, waiting to be expressed.

I swung the wand in a graceful arc and a shower of gleaming silver sparks flowed forth, hanging in the air like moondust before fading into the background of the room. With that expression of magic I could feel the wand settle. Not receded, just held back, waiting for when it was needed.

I had a magic wand, and it was wonderful.

“So,” Aisha grinned over her cup. “You’re a wizard now?”

I sighed. I could feel the power in the wand, but accessing and directing it was another matter. “No.” I countered her. “That was about the limit of what I can manage.”

“Seriously?” She asked. “What kind of power was that?”

“That power was about getting magic and technology to work together.” I explained. “The wand was a bonus. My power does that sometimes, adds little trinkets or minor abilities.”

“Really?” She gave me a questioning look.

“Yeah.” I admitted. “That demigod power came with the ability to speak ancient Greek. Usually they’re slightly useful, entertaining, or the kind of thing that takes a lot of work to get any useful result.”

“Okay,” She conceded. “But you have your implement and your demesne. You just need your familiar and you’ll be all set.”

I blinked in surprise. “Wait, was that Maggie Holt?”

“You had sisters, right?” She asked. “You must have seen at least one of the movies growing up.”

“Actually, I read the version from Earth Aleph.” I admitted.

“Thornburn?” She accused.

“That’s right.” I nodded defiantly.

“So…” She looked up at me. “It’s like that, is it?”

“I’m afraid so.” I met her gaze without flinching.

We stared at each other, each fully prepared to dive into the most well-trodden debate in adolescent fiction.

Aisha was the one to crack first, bursting into a fit of giggles that was positively infectious. I found myself joining in, and then Survey made an attempt to emulate the behavior with her hologram. Seeing the result only made Aisha laugh harder, starting the cycle again.

Finally things calmed down enough for us to get a hold of ourselves. Aisha leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths with the occasional residual giggle breaking forth.

“Seriously.” She panted. “How many capes end up arguing about the Maggie Holt series?”

“I don’t know.” I admitted. “It’s been going since the eighties, so probably more than you’d think.” I paused. “Wait, is that why you were worried about elf tea?”

“Sort of?” She shrugged. “I was mostly messing with you, but the thought did come up.”

“Aisha, these are real powers. You can’t use fictional series as the basis for how they’ll work.” I flicked my unicorn hair wand to accent the statement, sending out a small shower of sparks as it moved.

“Are you sure?” She asked. “I mean, you said you don’t know where this stuff comes from, and it’s probably all from different universes. That means your powers probably come from different universes as well. So maybe it would work to look at them that way, like from a universe based on something else?”

“That’s not how the multiverse works.” I clarified. “You have divergence points and different historical paths. There’s no selection of historical events that’s going to lead to the Blake Thornburn universe.”

“Maggie Holt universe.” She corrected. “And are you really sure? What about that Greek god power you just got?”

I sighed. The uncertainty of that situation was diminished with the feeling of confidence from having a wand in my hand, but there were still some major concerns. “I don’t know.” I admitted. “I know it works in a way that lines up with Greek mythology, but not more than that. This is getting into high level aspects of power expression, cause vs effect, and mechanics of the supernatural. I don’t have a perfect handle on it, so I can’t really explain it to you.”

“I guess that’s fair.” She admitted. “Would have been cool, though.”

“Yeah.” I conceded as the Forge missed a link to the Time constellation.

Aisha glanced through the force fields and holograms that secured the entrance to my apartment in Brockton proper. “Uh, hey. I didn’t ask, and feel kind of horrible for leaving it till now, but you know, volcano.” I nodded. “How did things go after I left? Was everything alright?”

I considered her question. “It went okay. I got some of the ABB’s assets, but their main accounts were too well protected. Some kind of parahuman banker blocked me. After that the ABB scrambled some capes, but I managed. No captures, but no fatalities, civilian or otherwise.”

Aisha nodded. “I kind of wish I could have seen it.”

I considered things, then checked with Survey. “Well, Uber and Leet streamed the fight. Do you want to watch it?”

“What, seriously?” She asked.

“Yeah, I have a new TV room I’ve been meaning to try out.” One my duplicates had built. Still, might as well get some use out of it. Garment flapped on my back, reminding me I should probably get changed as well. “Survey can take you there. I’ll meet you with Garment after I get changed.”

I sent Aisha off, guided and watched by Survey, as I gathered the clothing I had discarded in my haste to rescue Aisha and made my way into the Laboratorium. Walking through the place with my new technology sense was an incredible experience. In addition to the chirps of communication from the skulls as they digitally announced their progress on various tasks I could feel a deeper connection to the technology of the place.

The Laboratorium was old. I don’t think I really appreciated how old it was. There were elements of this place that had thousands of years of operation behind them. Even considering the machine spirits’ commitment to not expanding beyond their design parameters that kind of experience has a weight behind it. Every piece of machinery in the room, from the most advanced computer to the most minor diagnostic tool, had weight, history, and an unbelievable amount of care behind it.

Almost instinctively I dipped a finger in a font of oil and traced a pattern along the seam of a diagnostic engine as I walked by. The action seemed arcane, but it displaced micro particles of dust that were beginning to impede secondary systems of the sensor array. The quick motion prevented any harm and brought the device back to peak performance.

The basic machine spirit of the engine sent out an electronic acknowledgement of the action and the skulls trilled thanks on its behalf. The coordination systems of the Laboratorium registered the monitoring of the system was no longer needed, logged the action, and shifted focus to other matters with the vague sense of appreciation for not having a noisy subordinate bothering them any more. The entire room seemed to shift slightly towards higher efficiency through a single act.

It was holistic maintenance. A decidedly odd concept, if surprisingly effective.

When I reached Tetra’s stasis bay Garment stripped off my costume, folded off my hands, returned her dress from its cape form, and began spooling the fibers away from my body. It felt a bit callous to be using the temporal suspension system at this point, but I didn’t sense any discomfort from Tetra. From their perspective it was a non-event. There had been no gaps where the fibers weren’t being attended to by me. That was probably a big factor in their development.

Still, I brushed a hand against them as they pulled away from my body. There was the flare of energy, but it wasn’t as draining or overwhelming as before. Divine stamina could endure life fibers better than human, and the fibers clearly enjoyed a divine host more than a human one.

The fibers wrapped briefly around my hand and I could feel the connection as our chi circulated. It was stronger and more stable than before. There wasn’t even the mad hungry clamping of the first experiment. Tetra released my hand freely as Garment completed the spool and the stasis field activated. With that my sense of their energy ended.

This was a really big step forward, and it felt like I’d been dealing with a lot of them lately. Looking around I realized eventually I’d need to fill in Aisha on this place, Tetra, and the other high level threats I had access too.

After our initial conversation I was feeling better about this plan. She was still Aisha, but I could tell how hard she was working to restrain herself. I came into this with trust rather than derision, and Aisha seemed to be trying to measure up to the faith I put in her.

Really, I would really have liked to have torn into her about this whole mess. The plan was stupid and impulsive and nearly got her killed. Would have if not for me. And the only reason she had an out was her stealing my cell phone number from a text to my therapist. There was boiling frustration at the violation of that act, but I swallowed it. I knew where she was coming from. Chewing her out might make me feel better, but it wouldn’t resolve any of the problems with this situation.

I sighed and made my way to the TV room, stopping briefly at the throne to secure my memories again. The TV room was a modification to part of the Hidden Hideaway house. I hadn’t visited that part of the base since my initial tour, but it seemed it was a popular destination for duplicates to spend their 20% time.

The entire lower level had been remodeled, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the upper floor had received the same treatment. The building had kept it’s 1930s-1940s style while still being cleaned up and modernized. I could spot small improvements, conveniences, and the massive improvement of quality on every item in the house.

The TV room wasn’t as ridiculous as I feared. Yes, the screen was basically an entire wall and I’m pretty sure the sound system would overpower those sonic cannons police used to break up riots, but there was none of the ridiculousness I was afraid of.

I entered with a heaping tray of snacks that had Aisha perk up immediately. My latest brush with Tetra reminded me how hungry the expenditure made me and I decided to head things off before I ended up drowning out the video with the rumbles of my stomach.

That might not have seemed possible with the strength of the sound system, but you have to consider just how famished I could get post life fiber. As a hint, the tray represented less than a third of the food I actually prepared.

“So, this more goblin food?” Aisha asked, but the way she grabbed a sandwich from the tray betrayed her real opinion on the matter.

“Yes it’s enchanted.” Though that clarification was probably unnecessary with the expression Aisha made as she took her first bite.

Garment slid onto the couch next to Aisha and began fussing over the holes in her costume. I took a seat on the other side of Garment, followed by a hologram of Survey appearing sitting next to me. I could tell Fleet was observing the interactions, but had no particular interest in projecting a hologram for simulated engagement.

There was a remote on the table that was completely unnecessary with my implant, but I picked it up anyway. It was child’s play to link with the computer core and find Uber and Leet’s broadcast. I made a show of turning on the TV with the remote and the opening image of Uber and Leet’s robots moving down the street appeared. Before I could start the video Aisha leaned over and pointed at the remote.

“Hey what does that do?”

There was a large button in the center of the remote that was simply labeled IMAX. Aisha looked at me expectantly and I privately cursed my duplicates for putting me in this situation. It was another thing Aisha would have to find out about at some point, but not something I wanted to volunteer right now. Instead I put on a show of knowing what I was doing and pressed the button.

Darkness swallowed the room as the space seemed to bow around us. Before us stood a towering screen, easily 35 by 30 meters. The room had seemed to expand, leaving us sitting in the center of an oversized IMAX theater with Uber and Leet’s broadcast projected on the screen.

Aisha’s eyes glowed in the dim light. “You can make it look like we’re in an IMAX theater?” Her voice was full of wonder.

“Yes.” I answered stiffly, my technokinesis resonating with the excessive number of spatial engines currently in operation. Simple Scientific Solution. Household problems. Problems like not having enough space for a home IMAX theater. “That’s what it looks like.”

I ignored the way my voice echoed around the cavernous space and hoped Aisha would be too distracted to inquire about it. Instead I started the video.

The image of the pair of robots speeding down the street sprang to life, complete with better sound and cinematography than should have been possible from a live broadcast. The advantage of tinker tech camerawork.

“Jesus.” Aisha exclaimed. “How the fuck did he build that stuff so fast?”

Survey answered before I could. “Virtuaroids were composite constructs primarily driven by recycled structural and defensive fields.” A holographic outline of each robot with the massive amounts of empty space present appeared above Survey’s projected hand. “Comparisons indicate composite equipment from at least seventeen prior projects. Construction work also indicates a partially completed frame that had been rapidly augmented.”

Aisha watched the presentation play out. “So he took some failed projects and crammed them into some unfinished robots and called it a day?”

“That is an imprecise description of the situation.” I nudged Survey through my implant. “Though no part of it was entirely incorrect.”

Aisha seemed to take that as a win and turned back to the screen just in time to see my motoroids slam down and send Leet’s robots flying on a wave of earth. The Size constellation passed by without a connection as I watched myself execute Fleet’s maneuver, launching over them, flipping off and landing on a lamppost.

“Holy shit!” Aisha exclaimed at the spectacle. She gave me a questioning look.

“Fleet’s idea. He wanted to test out a new maneuver.” I felt the older A.I.’s satisfaction at the statement.

“God damn, Fleet doesn’t mess around.” She fell silent as the dialogue began, coming across clearly this time. Her smile grew wider with each exchange until it looked like her face might split in half.

By the time the fight broke out she was on the edge of her seat, following every blow on the giant screen. There was even a brief moment where I wondered why I was watching this in the TV theater before my awareness of Aisha flickered back. She quickly apologized before focusing back on the fight.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” She exclaimed as the lasers tore across the sky. “Why didn’t you use those things earlier? They single shot or something?”

“No,” I shook my head. “Too powerful. At the very least firing at the ground would have damaged the surrounding buildings.”

“The least?” She asked.

“New system.” I explained. “Wasn’t sure how much I could throttle it back.”

She let out a long whistle, then watched as the suits flew away.

“Going after the launch site.” I explained.

“And you can handle them with just one…” She dropped off as the final suit rose into the air, away from the battlefield. Then her jaw dropped as I finished integrating Leet’s sword rifle into my pistol.

“That’s gotta piss him off.” She smiled, a smile that faltered slightly when the red lines of the life fibers appeared over my body, and faltered more when the nanites activated. She was about to ask me something, but whatever the question it was forgotten in the spectacle of me entering the fight personally.

Aisha watched the display like the climax of an action movie. For me it was confirmation of various aspects I hadn’t had time to analyze from my own readings. Yes, life fiber energy suspended or altered some aspects of classical physics. It hadn’t just been the inertia system that failed, at least three of Uber’s robot’s defensive screens had burned out on the first hit. And yes, I actually did jump off of missiles to get the height for my final strike on Leet’s machine.

Interestingly, I could read Aisha’s reaction through the dragon pulse. It was just her physical state, probably tied to its medical applications, but I could feel every beat of excitement and apprehension through the fight. It was like being in a crowded theater where you got a sense of the people around you, only much more precise.

The fight ended with my final exchange with Leet followed by his overloaded plasma bomb which was enough to take out the sensors. Aisha took a moment to process the scene.

“What did Leet mean by that?” She asked. “What he said at the end?”

I shrugged. “Probably nothing good.” She gave me a look and I continued. “Okay, Leet can build anything, right? But the closer it is to what he built before the more likely it is to fail. Now, between the thinker and some possible personal development he’s pretty much bypassed that limit. He can make short-use technology for anything.”

“But that wasn’t what he was talking about?” She guessed.

“Probably not.” I let out a breath. “Absolute worst case scenario? He goes for the technologies he’s been staying away from.”

“What kind of technologies?” Aisha looked concerned.

“There are some things that Protectorate won’t tolerate. Exponential replicating technology is the only thing that guarantees an S-class rating, but there are dozens of other fields that are regarded as blanket threats.”

“Like what?” She looked as interested by the idea as she was concerned by it.

“Well, anything to do with dimensional travel. Professor Haywire cemented that. In fact, any dimensional technology more advanced that Dodge’s pocket universes would set off warning bells. There’s also more aggressive temporal effects, a lot of nanotechnology, self improving A.I.s and nearly the entire field of wet tinkering. Also anything that messes with powers, enhances, suppresses or grants them.”

Aisha let out a whistle. “Leet can make some of that stuff?”

“Leet can make all of that stuff.” I replied grimly. “He’s stayed away from it to avoid heat, but if he gets pushed enough he could end up going in that direction. It’ll be worse if he gets lumped in with Bakuda’s eventual kill order.”

Aisha considered things, then the significance hit her. “He’d have no reason to hold back?” I shook my head. “Damn. That could get messy.” That was something of an understatement. “Could you stop him if he went full S-Class?”

“Maybe?” She gave me an incredulous look. “Okay, probably. Especially if I have time to prepare and build up more. But with Leet I have no way of knowing what he can make or how bad it will be. I can build faster and better than him, but he still knows more fields than me. And that’s not even touching on what the thinker can coordinate.” Something occurred to me and I checked the timestamps.

“Fuck.”

“What?” Aisha asked.

“The PRT was going to announce the thinker’s identity at a press conference. That was at the same time I was fighting Uber and Leet. God, I hope I didn’t screw up that announcement.”

I linked with Survey and checked on the status of the broadcast. Her obsessive recording of everything proved a boon and she quickly loaded a record of the press event.

It was broadcast in standard resolution, a format that made Uber and Leet’s broadcast look significantly more professional. Still, that probably made it easier for television broadcasts, and that’s undoubtedly who they were playing for.

The conference had been held in front of the PRT headquarters. The front, with the nice plaza, sculpture, and tall lobby windows behind them. Not the garage entrance that apparently had burned for two days after the bombings. That was absent from the shots and I doubted anyone in the press corps would ask about it.

Director Piggot was standing at a podium flanked by Clockblocker, Browbeat, Kid Win, and Vista on her right and Triumph, Battery, and Weld on her left. Weld looked as professional as ever and was being kept adjacent to the director. Everything was set up so that he and Clockblocker would be at least partially within every shot of the conference.

I hadn’t made any statements about recovering Weld and the PRT hadn’t attributed the action to me either. For me it was something of a good will gesture to let them dress it up however they wanted, knowing that they couldn’t push too far without embarrassing themselves.

Their chosen approach seemed to be just not mentioning it. Weld was back, look at him standing there. How did he get back? Wow, isn’t it great that he’s back? Look how back he is! No, I’m not avoiding anything. What questions?

Yeah, I was confident that the press corps would be carefully sidestepping that issue as well. I was fine with that as long as they didn’t decide to dive into any questions about the altered finish of his skin or why he may have a sudden interest in Brockton’s assortment of Thai restaurants.

They had done a decent job of setting up the scene but I could count at least five, well ten, okay more like thirty… A lot. I could see a lot of ways it could be improved, especially if you considered the effect they were going for. Actually, with a fully critical eye it was almost painful. Did they even direct this, or did they just center the shot on the building and hope for the best? They didn’t even take into account the angle of the sun. Those shadows were practically highlighting the exhaustion on the Director and Protectorate capes, and not in a way that made them look earnest and hard working.

“That Director Piggo?” Aisha asked.

“Director Piggot.” I corrected. “And yeah, it is.”

The girl leaned forward slightly. “Is she, like, okay? Not to be a dick about it, but she doesn’t look that healthy, and not just from the weight.”

I nodded glumly. “There are rumors online about it, but no official statement about her condition. It’s pretty severe, but the official policy is that it doesn’t affect her ability to function in her role as director.”

Aisha didn’t look convinced, and I was right there with her. Even before I got my expanded abilities it was clear that something was wrong. Now I was getting a dozen warning signs. That was seriously bad health, and probably several unrelated injuries or conditions. There was no way it wasn’t affecting her ability to function.

The Director began to talk, saving me from further analysis. The four of us, or five counting Fleet, fell silent as the recording of the conference began.

“Thank you for coming. This has been a challenging time for our city. We have endured hardship and tragedy on every level during the events of the last few days.”

She knew how to handle herself at a press conference. Also, the PRT had a good makeup team. They did a good job of covering the weight of exhaustion on Director Piggot’s face without it looking artificial or overdone.

“The monstrous actions of Bakuda and the ABB have sown chaos not just in our city, but across the entire north east. Protectorate teams across the region have been struggling with the damage and aftermath of the attack.”

She paused for effect and a string of flashes caught her serious expression.

“Over the past few days we have seen mounting violence from the Undersiders, horrific brutality from the ABB and the rise of powerful new capes. But these forces have been met by the heroes of this city, both Protectorate and independent, working to restore order to our city.”

She shifted slightly, letting the focus move towards the line of Wards.

“Today we gather to celebrate our youngest heroes. During the worst of the ABB attack, Brockton Bay’s Wards defended the staff and guests of the Forsberg Gallery against a brutal kidnapping attempt. They were able to drive off the force of attacking villains and ensure the safety of the civilians under their care. Sadly, the gallery was destroyed in the attack, a tragic cultural and architectural loss for the people of this city.”

Clockblocker’s body language shifted slightly at that, but I couldn’t tell exactly what the reaction was about.

“During the crisis, acting team leader Clockblocker displayed exceptional judgement and leadership. His quick thinking and resourcefulness ensured the safety of thirty-four civilians and coordinated a plan that nearly resulted in the capture of half of the attacking force. In recognition of his brave and selfless actions I am pleased to present him with an official commendation from Chief Director Costa-Brown.”

Clockblocker stepped up and shook the director’s hand. She passed him some kind of framed certificate. I guess medals would be a little too military for the image the protectorate was going for. She stepped slightly to the side to allow him to take the podium.

“Thank you Director Piggot. It is an honor to receive this commendation. On behalf of my team I would like to extend my condolences to all those harmed by these attacks and assure the people of this city that the Wards will be there for them.”

He came across as a little coached, but was clearly putting in the effort. I was beginning to suspect that this conference was mainly designed to generate sound bites and clips that would look good outside of context.

“In addition to Clockblocker, special recognition has been awarded to the Brockton Wards’ newest recruit. Browbeat was instrumental in saving a civilian from one of Bakuda’s implanted devices, carrying out the procedure with minor assistance and no detrimental effects.”

The big ward stepped forward but didn’t approach the podium.

“I am pleased to announce that Browbeat has been recognized by the Protectorate as a class two trauma responder and will be undertaking expanded medical training along with his Wards curriculum.”

There was a series of flashes from the assembled reporters as the purple clad cape held his pose like a statue before falling back into line at some unseen cue.

“I am also happy to announce Weld’s return to service following his recovery from Saturday night’s conflicts.”

The metal teen smiled and waved at the cameras. I had to wonder if they were intentionally using recovery as a double meaning, or if they really committed to the idea that he was on medical leave. They never publicly stated he was at the bottom of the bay, but that didn’t stop theories. I could see them burying this and hoping I didn’t bring it up.

Shit, did they think I was holding this over them? Well, it was the kind of thing that would only be relevant in the short term. I could just sit back until the event got buried under the cape news cycle.

Oh, the Forge connected to a small mote from the Knowledge constellation. Analysis. It let me identify defects in hardware from casual observation. Any kind of hardware, from devices, to vehicles, or even buildings. It had the advantage of letting me ensure my own work avoided any flaws while letting me exploit defects in my opponents equipment. Not bad for one of the smallest motes.

I turned my attention back to the conference as Piggot continued.

“With the Wards returned to full strength and the Protectorate recovering, actions are being taken to ensure the continued peace of our city. The damage from the blackout was far reaching, but recovery and restoration has nearly been completed. The damage to our city, from the devastation of the Forsberg Gallery to the corner shop damaged by unrest, will take time to fully heal.”

It was heartfelt, tender, and a stark example of the kind of bullshit that made me want to stay away from PR work. It was worse than lying, it was lying with the intent to manipulate. I understood the necessity of it, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

“We are ready to face the evolving cape environment of Brockton Bay. The ABB has proven themselves to be a dire threat that must be taken seriously. In addition to the established threats of Lung and Oni Lee the addition of Bakuda has presented a drastic and imminent threat. The actions of the last few days crossed every line of restraint and decency, creating a monstrous and personal threat that many of our citizens still find themselves subject to.”

She was getting into current events and hamming it up for the cameras. I wondered how she would spin my own involvement, or the Undersiders? Still if she was going through the ABB the thinker would be announced soon.

“The ABB has made their ambition clear, and must be stopped. In addition to their established alliance with the duo of Uber and Leet, we have confirmed that prior to the attacks they recruited a minor villain from New York to bolster their numbers. The Protectorate will be focused on countering and containing the actions of this gang.”

I leaned in as Piggot elaborated.

“Their latest recruit has been identified as March, a thinker-striker with a talent for coordination. We believe she was able to assist in the deployment of forces on Saturday night. This, coupled with unexpected synergy from Uber and Leet, has created an unexpected…”

Director Piggot kept droning on, spouting details of gang composition, the status of the city, and counter initiatives. I wasn’t listening. Nothing she said had any bearing, not when compared to the pit of dread that had opened within my mind. I was getting a single feeling from my passenger, one so strong it dwarfed everything before it. Even the highest intensity that had been conveyed before the bank job didn’t approach this level. It was a devastating fear of such complexity that I could only express it in two words.

Not right.

This was wrong. March was wrong. March here was wrong. Not now, not here, not with the ABB, not in this city. Whatever had stopped my passenger’s analysis was completely torn away and every fear and concern hit me like a truck.

“Uh, Jozef?” Aisha asked. Garment was expressing concern and even Survey was trying to emote through her hologram. “Are you alright?”

“…no.” The word was about all I could manage as I struggled under the weight of what my passenger was trying to convey.

“Is it like before? Did you get another bad power?” She was glancing at Garment, trying to figure out what she should be doing.

I just shook my head. “Thinker power.” I stuttered. “March.”

“The Rabbit.” Aisha nodded. “She’s really that bad?”

“I don’t…” It took a breath and tried to sort through my passenger’s reactions. “I’ll try to find out.”

It wasn’t easy. The droning of the press conference didn’t help, but I didn’t care enough to turn it off. The Director was using the time to highlight various actions of PRT teams during the crisis and future plans for countering the ABB. I could tell they were mostly for show, but with March in the equation my passenger was absolutely convinced they would fail.

How the hell had this happened? March was apparently an incredible threat and my passenger hadn’t seen her coming. Well, no. My passenger had, but not now. Whatever he knew, it wasn’t right anymore. March was a threat from another time and place, but somehow she was here.

Before she was supposed to.

It answered a question about my passenger’s predictions. I didn’t have active precognition at my disposal. I had a single look into the future, probably from the time of my trigger event. That meant everything I did that changed things made the predictions less accurate. I could probably trust his assessment of people or past events, but my ability to see the future was crumbling.

I was losing a safety net I barely realized I’d been relying on. How long before things changed too much for any of the original predictions to be useful? Had it already happened? I was adrift with a monstrous threat with no idea what she was planning.

The fact that I was now in the same boat as every other cape on the planet provided no comfort at all.

That didn’t help. I might not be able to predict her, but I could obviously assess her. My passenger knew how dangerous she was, so I just had to consider things and gauge his reaction and find out what I was dealing with.

I leaned forward and concentrated, considering comparisons, match ups, and counter powers. The comparison to the threat level of anyone else in Brockton Bay was almost laughable. March clearly worked on another level, and I had to find out what it was. What was her end goal? What was she working towards that was so terrible?

The answer hit me like a lightning bolt and I shot to my feet in a fit of shock and fury. The words were out of my mouth in a scream of rage and fear before I even had a chance to process them.

“HOW CAN IT BE WORSE THAN THE ENDBRINGERS?”

Aisha’s expression of shock was mirrored by Director Piggot’s as the press conference was bathed in red light and the sound of my magitek lasers could be heard through the recording. There was a scrambling of activity on the screen before the recording cut off. At this point I didn’t even care about interrupting a live broadcast with a tactical weapon. I, somehow, had bigger problems.

“The Endbringers?” Aisha’s voice was practically a whisper. People don’t talk about the Endbringers casually. The fact that I had repeatedly mentioned them and had a concrete reason for doing so clearly made an impression.

I took a breath and reminded myself that I was dealing with a traumatized thirteen year old girl. Actually, that wasn’t really relevant. Anyone who used the phrase ‘worse than the Endbringers’ and was serious about it was working in an area that would be too much for seasoned veterans, much less minors.

“I don’t know exactly what.” I explained. At this point I couldn’t offer any assurance that wouldn’t be an outright lie, and I was in no state to attempt convincing deception. All I could do was be open with her about the threat I, no the threat everyone was dealing with. “March, she’s dangerous. Really, really dangerous. But she’s working towards something, or messing with something, or just going to do something. And that thing is worse than the Endbringers.”

I could see the blood drain from Aisha’s face. Garment put a comforting hand on her arm and the girl grabbed it like it was a life line. I quickly canceled the IMAX expansion, bringing the room closer and banishing the darkness of the theater.

“But you can handle it, right?” She practically pleaded. “You’re Hero Eidolon Dauntless. There’s nothing that you can’t stop, right?”

“I don’t know. I…” I took a breath and checked with my passenger. Threat assessments, measuring March against various levels of the Celestial Forge, chances of victory, and confidence margins. My dread grew worse and worse the deeper I went.

“She can kill me.” My voice was robotic.

“What?” Aisha’s eyes were wide.

“I can’t defend against her.” I checked with my passenger again. “Nothing I have, nothing I can get, it won’t be able to stop her.” The penny dropped and I sent Survey on a desperate information gathering quest. “Striker. It must be her striker power.”

“But if she was that strong they would have mentioned it.” Aisha offered, somewhat desperately. “They wouldn’t have called her a minor villain.”

Results of Survey’s search began filtering in, both as direct digital reports and projected on the screen. Assessments, evaluations, photographs, and the rare video of her in action.

One of the better shots played on the still large but no longer IMAX screen. Security video from some store being robbed. March strode into frame wearing an ill fitting marching band uniform with a store bought rabbit mask and a pair of ears glued to the cap. She sauntered towards a large case, reinforced with bulletproof glass, and drew a weapon.

I hesitate to call it a sword because that would be an insult to every sword crafting power I had. It was a gaudy stainless steel reproduction piece, the kind you see in mall kiosks. It was over-decorated with fake gems and gilt and I could tell from one glance the edge wasn’t worth a damn.

She took an exaggerated fencing stance while some mottle dressed capes filed in behind her. Less than half a dozen with clear displays of their powers. Nothing major or dramatic. One had hair cycling through different colors and another was carrying a pink flame in one of his hands. There was one with the bulky look of a brute, or at least someone acting that role, while the last two had no visible displays, just cobbled together costumes.

March drew the tip of her sword around the edge of the case, leaving a shimmering trail like a bluish purple watermark. The trail started to spark as she turned and strode towards the rest of the group. Then the spark reached the end of the trail there was an explosion that tore the front of the case apart. The rest of the young capes rushed in to loot the contents while March stood back and watched.

I sent Survey to hunt down police files, news coverage, and insurance reports from that and any similar incident. Meanwhile I advanced the video frame by frame, observing both on the screen and in my head, balancing new information with what I was seeing in motion. Aisha hovered with Garment, watching me intently.

“Fuck.” The pieces finally came together and they weren’t good. I looked at Aisha’s concerned expression and Garment’s worried movements and took a breath before explaining.

“She’s an annihilator.” I explained. When that didn’t resonate I dove deeper. “Capes with powerful attacks, all-or-nothing types. Damsel of Distress, Murderbeam, the Siberian, those types.” Aisha nodded. “That attack is some kind of multi-dimensional explosion. If what my thinker power is telling me is right it might actually be an omni-dimensional explosion. No one can defend against it because there’s no defense that covers infinity.”

“So why was she rated so low?” Aisha asked.

I sighed. “The effect is restrained. Striker, low area, time delay, and most of all probably never went up against anyone who had really impressive defenses. If the Siberian only fought guys in body armor no one would know she could kill Alexandria.” I looked over the information again. “March’s thinker power is also a lot stronger than they’re giving her credit for. Uber and Leet alone are proof of that. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was intentional, if she was keeping beneath notice before she was ready to move.”

The Forge connected to a power from the Time constellation called Researcher. It was a significant research booster. The process of designing and discovering technology was massively accelerated and it increased the frequency of moments of inspiration and breakthroughs. It was something I would need if I was going to counter this threat.

“New power?” Aisha asked. Honestly, it was kind of comforting to have someone to share this with, though in the face of a threat like March anything that wasn’t a dire portent would seem comforting by comparison.

I nodded. “It’s called Researcher. It speeds up development and discovery of new technology. Will probably help countering some of the ABB’s nastier tricks.”

“Is that the plan? You’re going to build a counter to that?” She gestured at the frozen explosion on the screen.

“I… no, probably not.” I shook my head. “Maybe I can come up with something if I get a closer look, more information, but I don’t think I can properly counter it.”

“So what is the plan?” Garment indicated her interest as well.

“Mostly don’t get hit by it. Beyond that, try to catch her, stop her, and the rest of the ABB with her.” Saying it like that it almost seemed reasonable, not like some desperate quest with the fate of the world on it.

Aisha rose to her feet and looked up at me. “I want to help.” She said firmly. “If it’s as bad as you think then you need all the help you can get. I know I can make a difference.”

I took a slow breath and looked down at the girl. I figured something like this would come up, but didn’t expect this particular sequence of events leading to it.

“Aisha, you’re thirteen, untrained, and almost died earlier today. I’m not sending you out to get yourself killed...”

“But I can help.” She interrupted me. “And if it’s this bad I’m going to try with or without you.”

I raised a hand and she restrained herself. “Yeah, I kind of put that together. You were lucky today, it could have gone much worse.” Fuck, this felt like child exploitation, but I pressed forward. The options were Aisha goes out alone and repeats today’s mess, or Aisha goes out with support and probably survives. “What I meant was I’m not sending you out unless I know you’ll be safe, not without support and equipment.”

Aisha’s eyes glowed as she looked up at me. “You’re going to make me a costume?”

I scowled. “Fuck that. You’re getting a hardsuit.”

Aisha looked confused. “What’s a hardsuit?”

“The good power armor.” Her grin spread so wide it could have split her face. “Aisha, You’re right. I do need help. You have a very strong power and I hate to admit it, but it could make all the difference here. I will do everything to make sure you have what you need to be safe, but you work with me on this, not on your own and not at cross purposes.”

“Yes, deal, whatever. I’m in.” She was way too excited about joining a gang war. Then again, it was for the survival of the planet. What eighth grader didn’t dream about that kind of thing?

I would really need to stop holding back. There were a lot of technologies I’d been apprehensive about or put at a lower priority because they didn’t seem necessary. Well, they were necessary now. It was time to start pushing the limit of what the Celestial Forge could do.

“So what’s next? Where do we start?” Aisha was bouncing on the balls of her feet as she asked. I had to wonder if I had just gotten a sidekick, a minion, or an extended babysitting job.

“Next I need to call the Undersiders.” Aisha glanced at me. “March blocks Tattletale’s power, so I need to warn them, make sure they stay safe.” The girl seemed happy about that. “After that we can talk about equipment and tactics.”

She beamed at that. Right, she had harassed me, privately exposed my identity, broken into my workshop, and then almost gotten me killed. As a result she was getting a full set of free tinker tech. Perfectly fair.

No, that wasn’t right. That was residual frustrations coming up. As annoying as she had been initially it was never actually malicious. If it was she could have done a lot more damage very easily. It was a teenager acting out in a way that she would eventually know better than to try.

It was actually nice having someone else here, someone who knew about what was happening who I could talk to, I mean other than myself, in both senses. Aisha was smart enough to know that the gear I was building would come with strings attached, and she seemed to accept that.

Her stranger power was terrifyingly effective, and even a minor armament would turn her into an absolute nightmare. I did not like taking someone her age into dangerous situations, but she would be safer next to me wrapped in power armor than snooping around possibly trapped corridors in an isolated part of the city.

“I’ll be back soon. Survey can help you if you want to review any part of the broadcasts, or just watch TV or something.”

“I would be pleased to assist.” The hologram offered, and a menu of viewing options appeared on the screen.

“Thanks.” She settled down onto the couch, still bursting with energy. It was better than being seeped in dread over that ‘worse than the Endbringers’ prediction.

I slipped out to my office with Garment trailing me. Once I was away from Aisha the weight of the situation crashed down on me. I was grateful when Garment laid a hand on my shoulder.

“Thank you.” I offered. “I appreciate it. I’ll manage this, somehow.”

She made a slightly offended gesture and indicated to herself.

“Okay, we’ll manage this.” I smiled at her contented gesture, then pulled up Tattletale’s number.

The call was answered before the first ring was complete.

“Joe, what the fucking hell?” her voice was strained.

I quickly accessed the phone network. “Line secured. Hello Lisa.” I came across as a little more sarcastic than I intended. “Did you see the press conference?”

“Yes, I saw the press conference, Uber and Leet’s broadcast, compiled footage of your stunt downtown, and the commentary on both the national news and twenty-four-hour networks.”

I pushed past her rant. This was more important. “So you know about March?”

“March? Yes, I know about March. I also know about the cluster fuck you just started. What the hell happened to ‘nothing planned at the moment’?”

“Something came up. It was time sensitive and I had to act on it.” I wasn’t about to reveal Aisha’s existence to the Undersiders. She was right at the age where they would make a recruitment pitch, had a valuable power, and I was still concerned about their mysterious boss. If not for the current crisis and March overshadowing everything I would have been digging into that point with a much higher priority. For now it was the least pressing of my many disaster level concerns.

“Did that ‘time sensitive’ matter involve gutting the ABB’s finances?” she spat the words through the phone.

“That was a target of opportunity, and I wasn’t able to drive it home anyway.”

There was the sound of a heavy breath through the line before Lisa continued. “Look, Watchdog and federal agencies are already seizing or raiding the ABB’s legitimate holdings. Do you know what that means?”

“They have fewer resources?” I offered.

“They have fewer connections.” She barked. “They were trying to settle and consolidate, launder money and resecure their territory. It could have bought us a week before they moved again. You just cut all their roots to the city. At this point they’re basically a better organized version of the Teeth. Do you know how the Teeth operates? Because that’s what we’re in for.”

My expression hardened. “Lisa, Bakuda is still operating, both literally and figuratively. She brain bombed an entire office block. What does your power tell you about how far that would have spread with a full week to fester?”

“Fuck.” She muttered. “There’s a difference between civilians being grabbed and desperate villain battles in the streets.” Lisa cut herself off, probably because she realized that wasn’t the best approach to take with me. “Lung will be looking for reprisals. Before it would probably have been show, but with this he’ll be going for real damage.”

I grimaced. “I can…”

“No!” She practically shouted. “Fuck, just no. This will be between gangs, and they will at least try to keep things contained. After your stunt the city is a hair's breadth away from a state of emergency. If that happens there is a good chance Bakuda is going to go free for all with her bombing campaign. Please, just stay out of it for now.”

My frown deepened. “If it stays limited to the gangs…”

“Fine. That’s fine.” I could hear her panting.

“Besides, there’s March.” I added.

“Okay, what about March?” She asked. “Did you get something from your power?”

“Yes.” I replied. “Yes, I got something. And it’s bad. You actually don’t have to worry. I’m not moving against the ABB, not until I’m ready to deal with March.”

“Deal with March?” She asked. “March is a coordination thinker from New York who chased around Flechette and probably followed her here. How much more firepower do you need to counter her?”

At the mention of Flechette things fell into place, and not in a good way. That importance of Flechette I got before? It just ramped up to eleven. Well, more like eleven thousand. Flechette was in danger from March, and losing Flechette was bad. Bad on a global scale. Bad like nearly Taylor level bad. This was even more serious than I thought.

“Fuck. I hadn’t realized about Flechette.” I muttered.

“What? What are you saying?” She actually sounded a little scared.

“This is actually a lot more serious than I thought.” Taylor was a general concern, and still vaguely at risk. Flechette was being actively targeted. I needed to take action. There were serious technologies that I would have to start implementing, regardless of risks or consequences. The Magic constellation passed by as I spoke. “I’m going to have to take some steps to make sure…”

“Taylor!” Lisa interrupted me with a shout.

“What?” The non-sequitur caught me off guard.

“She wants to talk with you about that stuff from earlier, clear thing up, like you said.” She spoke quickly. “Tomorrow. Just hold off, whatever you were planning, hold off until then.”

Was Tattletale throwing Taylor at me as a distraction? Probably, but I wasn’t going to call her on it. In the scope of this apocalyptic problem, the predictions for which may not even be accurate anymore, Taylor was slightly more vital than Flechette. Flechette’s absence would make things a lot harder, while without Taylor the entire operation fell apart. It was frustrating trying to piece this together from murky impressions from a power that was becoming increasingly less reliable.

Still, I did need time to get ready. I could stay out of gang fights, deal with other problems, and try to prepare for March. Talking with Taylor, as much as I wanted to avoid that conversation, would let me meaningfully tackle online interaction, and possibly some PR as well. I wasn’t sure if she wanted a blanket denial, no mention of supposed connection, or some other approach, but this mess really bothered me. I’d be alright with anything that put it to rest for good.

“Alright.” I said. “Let me know the time and place. I’ll hold off anything until then as long as it stays contained. I’m not letting the city burn over this.”

“Trust me, that’s what I’m trying to prevent.” I could hear her breathing relax. “What you’re getting from March, it’s really that bad?”

“Yes.” I confirmed. I wasn’t getting into the ‘worse than Endbringers’ or Flechette’s connection with Taylor’s role in saving everything, but I needed to get across the severity. “As soon as I got her name things started coming together. Have you gotten anything?”

“She still blocks my power. I have some other sources that say they’ve been having trouble predicting the ABB as well. Looking at what I’ve been able to get from the PRT I think the effect extends to Protectorate thinkers. That might be why she’s got such a low threat profile.”

“I can see that.” It was terrible and would make it hell to get anyone to take her seriously, but it made sense.

There was a pause before Lisa continued. “Are YOU sure your reading is right? She’s spoofing everyone else. Isn’t there a chance you’re getting a false positive?”

She couldn’t quite keep the hope out of her voice. I glanced at Garment as I considered the situation. Obviously my passenger’s predictions weren’t perfect, but I had no reason to think that problems with the future extended to the past or present. I had confirmed that March was a powerful annihilator cape. I’d seen what she’d pulled with the ABB and Uber and Leet. Even if the apocalyptic stuff wasn’t happening she was still a major threat.

There was distance to those apocalypses. The ‘worse than the Endbringers’ thing was particularly distant, but it's scale kind of made up for it. Speaking of scale, the importance of Flechette was another matter. Even if she wasn’t crucial to the survival of everything she was still a teenager with a crazy cape after them. That warranted some intervention.

“It might not be perfect, particularly going forward, but I’m confident of my assessment.” I stated.

Tattletale let out a long breath. “Alright. I’ll see what I can find for you. It will have to be from mundane sources.” Meaning Survey will probably already have found them, analyzed the records, and categorized the results. Still a second set of eyes wouldn’t hurt. “Just, please don’t jump the gun before then. I’ll make sure Taylor calls you with the details for the meeting.”

Right. Taylor wanted to talk to me so badly that Tattletale had to make sure she called. This was clearly forcing the issue, but it was an issue that needed to be forced, so I wasn’t going to complain. The image of the spiked and barbed mess of a shield jumped into my mind, settling so comfortably that it was unnerving. The exact picture of what I was trying to move past. I pushed it aside and focused on the call.

“Fine. I want the Undersiders to watch out as well. I’m not standing down if you’re not.”

“Deal. I can promise that. We can work out any more details when we meet on Wednesday.”

Right. Taylor tomorrow, Undersiders on Wednesday, and a gang war running through the whole thing. Oh, and I had to get Aisha wrapped up in enough defensive technology to keep her safe in this city. Given the building situation that probably meant a nuclear proof suit with an emergency teleport.

“Right.” The conversation hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped, but at least things were moving forward. “Anything else?”

“Not as long as you keep your head down. Nothing that can’t wait until Wednesday.” She sighed. “We should be alright until then.”

“Got it. Call me with the details of the meeting.”

“I will.”

The call disconnected without a goodbye. I don’t think our relationship was as cordial as it had been, but honestly I saw most of that as pageantry on Tattletale’s part. It was actually refreshing to hear her make her case without trying to leverage manufactured comradery in support of it. The Undersiders weren’t terrible people, but whatever shine the group once had wasn’t there anymore, rubbed off between the bank job and Bakuda rescue.

Now they were just people. A group of scared teenage capes with a tendency to get in over their head and a mysterious crime lord looming over them. Teenagers don’t make the best decisions, teenage capes even less so. Hopefully I could prevent Aisha from getting pulled into a mess like that.

Not that my situation was that much better, but at least I could provide power armor, medical care, and on-site fashion consultations.

So this was it. Finally dealing with Taylor and facing the fact that I kept repeating the same mistakes. That was regrettably in line with the mindset I’d spent a lot of therapy time trying to counter. At least I was facing it rather than putting it off. With how adamant Tattletale had been I doubt she’d let this slip. She was probably afraid I’d challenge Lung to pistols at dawn if she didn’t find some way to distract me.

Seriously, what the hell was happening with my reputation? I get the crazy extrapolation online, but even from Tattletale? At the moment it felt like the only people who treated me normally were the ones currently in my workshop.

I sighed and turned to Garment. “We should get back. There’s a lot to do to prepare for this, and I don’t…”

I fell silent as my phone rang again. Personal line, not my work phone. It was a recognized number as well. I checked the caller I.D. and froze.

‘Alena Duris’

It was there, plain as day. Chicago area code, probably why I hadn’t bothered blocking the number. She never called. Ever. But she was calling now.

Shit. That meant things had gotten bad, or were about to. I couldn’t deal with this now. Every ring hit me like a funeral bell. I felt my heart speed up as the implications set in.

Fuck, I had to take this call. Something like this just screamed last resort. There was no way it would have come to this if every other avenue hadn’t been attempted. It felt like answering the phone was going to open a backdraft, but that would be better than dealing with a landmine in a couple of days' time.

Actually, I’d be lucky if I had that long.

I would do what I always did. Endure. Push through. Keep going. I couldn’t let this stop me. Not now. Not with everything riding on this situation.

I looked at Garment with a feeling of grim determination “Garment, can you give me some space? I need to take this call.”

She made an inquiring gesture and I swallowed before responding.

“It’s my sister.”

It was time to deal with my family.

******

Addendum Accord

Accord sat in his workshop, laboring over his latest creation. It was the fifth in a series of identical projects, though the first two had needed to be reworked as he identified improvements through experience with the construction. It was the price of perfectionist work, and one he was willing to pay.

This particular project had started as vanity, a personal challenge coupled with genuine enjoyment of the activity. Carefully budgeted time, separated from the rest of his schedule. Little pleasures after a day of frustrations.

It had since become something more.

His eyes returned to the small item in a velvet case on the edge of his workbench. Once more his mind spun, plans upon plans building. Balanced spectrums of fabric, paired with the stylistic influences to prevent the garishness usually associated with such a gradient. There were multiple possibilities, too many to determine the ideal paring. He pulled his eyes away before he could begin to lament the possibilities that would need to be discarded.

A polite three beat knock sounded from the door. Perfectly timed and not in the slightest bit rushed and demanding. An adequate announcement of interruption.

He set down his tools and rose to face the door. “You may enter.”

The door swung open to reveal a woman in a goldenrod yellow evening dress. The yellow gemstones on her mask complimented her delicate makeup and immaculately styled hair. She entered the room, softly shut the door, and waited for his acknowledgement.

“Citrine, I trust you have ample justifications for this interruption. You may present them.”

“Thank you, sir.” She stepped forward and opened an embossed leather bound folder, reading from the first sheet.

“The delivery and installation of the retrieved artifacts has been completed. I personally evaluated their placement and confirmed accordance with your specification.”

That was excellent news. Enough for a slight shift in protocol. The unavoidable impact on social roles would be balanced by the improved efficiency of action, something his subordinates understood the need for.

“Very good.” He turned back to the workbench. “You may continue your report as I work.”

“Yes sir.” She stated briskly as he returned to the engraving. After four previous items he knew the design perfectly, but checked the reference pictures for confirmation. It wouldn’t do to introduce an error at this stage.

“Caldron has completed their evaluation of potential candidates for the new position. In their assessment, the strongest match for the desired effect would Svetlana Vasiliev, formerly of the Moscow Ballet.”

Accord frowned and glanced back at the delicate item. “She was rejected due to failure to meet performance standards. What is your reasoning for her inclusion as a candidate?”

He felt anger building. Looking at the hairpin didn’t help this time. He could see the elegance of the design, the perfection of form and control. There were ways to improve it, but only laterally. Shifts to create an item that would be subjectively more suited to a situation, not a marked improvement.

It was a design principle he had only found in his own creations, the tools and projects he personally crafted. Everything in this room had been made by his own hand. It freed him from having to see the nagging imperfections that sullied the rest of the world, but it didn’t remove his awareness of them.

Looking back at Citrine. She was clad in a dress and mask of his own design. Her hair, skin, and makeup were all applied with the care and precision he demanded of his Ambassadors. But she was suggesting something vile. The inductions of a sloppy, careless individual into his presence. His mind began to calculate plans, perfect arrangements of forces using the items of his workshop to end her life if it proved she had been lax in her duties.

“Sir, Miss Vasiliev’s unacceptable performance has been attributed to the ongoing impact of an injury. I have personally verified the medical assessments. Cauldron has recommended vial 47-D-271. In addition to having a strong propensity for light-based powers it has an excellent record for restorative effects upon being administered. They have offered high confidence of inducing a full recovery. Given Miss Vasiliev’s commitment to her craft I believe she will be able to function in accordance with your standards.”

He considered Citrine’s words as he made another adjustment to his work. It was an adequate assessment. Gratitude for a second chance at life could drive a person to a level of dedication that should prevent unfortunate disappointments. Being able to function in a ballet environment with a persistent injury indicated suitable strength of character. In the event she proved a disappointment, well the C.U.I. was always willing to purchase more capes. Cauldron looked after their customers and would no doubt offer a discount on her replacement.

He reached over and lifted the hairpin out of its case, turning it in the light. Behind him Citrine stopped breathing. The colors of the pin shifted, dancing across individual petals in a loose pattern that betrayed the subtle order enforced on the simple material.

He smiled. If not Miss Vasiliev someone else would be found. It was a project worthy of investment.

“You may proceed with Miss Vasiliev.” Citrine began to breathe again, doing a commendable job of concealing the effort. “Inform Cauldron to begin preparation for administering the vial immediately and send me Miss Vasiliev’s measurements. I will notify you of any modification needed.”

That was an unlikely scenario. Ballerinas, even failed ballerinas, maintained a discipline over their body that was admirable. He remembered the last time an ambassador had requested to have one of his designs ‘let out’.

That had been an exercise in creativity, though the clean up had been somewhat trying.

“Thank you sir.” A small note was made in the folder. “I also have an update on Garment, the fabric cape who recently premiered in Brockton Bay.”

That brought another small smile to Accord’s face as he worked the crystal plates. Though the news report had been framed for excessive appeal it couldn’t counter the grandeur on display at Garment’s debut. It helped that it was being conducted in a historic building rather than one of the modern monstrosities that sprouted like tumors across the city’s ‘Downtown’ area. In fact he had been able to watch the entire report without more than half a dozen aspects of the building infuriating him.

A situation easily rectified by an anonymous donation to be executed through competent contractors. Ostensibly to bring the building up to code, in reality it would address the handful of truly unacceptable design flaws that marred an otherwise immaculate event.

It was somewhat insulting for Garment to be referred to as a ‘fabric cape’. He had recognized the skill of her work from her first appearance. The true peak of human accomplishment, bound in fabric. It was made even more blatant by her show of assembling needle lace on camera while simultaneously creating a bespoke jacket that managed to turn a brutish lug into someone fit to enter society.

He had actually needed to join a lacemaking forum to correct some erroneous assumptions being made about Garment’s workmanship. It had resulted in a rather heated series of arguments with a cantankerous veteran member of the site. He smiled to himself as he recalled how easily they had been baited into breaking forum rules, anonymously reported, and subsequently banned.

Of course, the real secret was on display from the moment of Garment’s arrival. Garment, and wasn’t that an elegant name, worked to the limit of human ability. No one had seen it, though could an ant distinguish the heights of mountains? The public would need to be forgiven for failing to recognize the difference between perfect workmanship and something that went beyond that.

The dress had been dismissed as tinker tech, and perhaps it did fall into that category, but tinkers were concerned with technicalities, not aesthetics. There was a second influence in that dress. From one master to another the pattern was clear. It had been a collaborative effort.

Apeiron had assisted with that dress. It was as clear as Garment’s workmanship on the tinker’s costume. The stylistic difference between items the tinker made personally, the hairpin jumped into his mind, and those with Garment’s influence, was obvious to anyone who looked. Garment had found a tinker patron before the Protectorate had even been able to make their first move.

“What are the recent developments on that matter?” His work was nearing completion as he made the final adjustments to the lighting assembly.

“The Protectorate is overseeing her registry, and providing initial legal and financial support to allow independent operation. Garment has expressed interest in opening a business in Brockton Bay. Given the restrictions of NEPEA-5 it will likely be a designer boutique offering custom works.”

Accord’s hands stopped moving and he considered the news. It was not unexpected, but confirmation was another matter. In any other situation he would have devised a plan to relocate Garment to Boston, but her connection with Apeiron made that untenable. As much as he detested Brockton Bay and its current circumstances he could accept this outcome.

“Have one of our holding companies purchase several properties in prospective locations, including the area of her debut. Use a disconnected shell company. It wouldn’t do to arouse suspicion from Coil.” The snake was exceptionally territorial. “When Garment formally announces her intentions, offer her a favorable lease-to-own arrangement, in recognition of her heroic works.” It wouldn’t do to have some Brockton landlord impeding her work. “I will need to review the locations personally before purchase.” It also wouldn’t do to have said boutique in an unacceptably displeasing location.

“Yes sir.” Citrine made another small note in her folder. “Additionally, Apeiron has made another appearance. As requested, I have edited the stream to remove all commentary and advertisements.”

Accord turned and drew up the video on his workshop terminal. Normally the prattling antics of the villain duo was insufferable. He would have delegated any required analysis of their streams in a heartbeat. The presence of Apeiron changed that.

From the cape’s dramatic entrance to his derision before combat it was like watching a work of art. Accord didn’t let himself get lost in the spectacle, there would be time for that later. New weapons, technology and tactics were being premiered. Citrine waited in silence as he watched the encounter play out.

No doubt most viewers would be focused on the upgraded autonomous drones, increased firepower, rapid field tinkering, heavy ordinance, and combat enhancement. All were striking abilities and would no doubt tie up hours of think tank analysis, but once again, they would be looking in the wrong place.

He scrolled back the video, freezing on a particular frame. That living cloak, sturdy enough to block a plasma blade from a twenty-four-foot-tall robot. People would be looking for technical elements, hidden wires, micro-servos, or smart materials. Nobody would be looking at the gloves.

They were a different design, but there was no hiding the purity of that shade of white. Accord was familiar with the difficulty of maintaining white clothing. He could recognize the unnaturally pure shade at a glance. Watching the interaction again it became clear exactly what was happening.

Apparently Garment was more than just Apeiron’s tailor. He gently rubbed his hands together and considered what the experience must be like for the two capes. He had long since moved past the need for physical intimacy, but this seemed like something else. A joining of purpose? Such a fascinating concept.

“I will review this in more detail at a later time.” He lifted his completed project and strode towards the door. Citrine opened it without needing any signal, then gently closed it before falling into step behind him.

“There is one final item sir.” Citrine offered. At his signal she continued. “It has been confirmed that Blasto has fully withdrawn from Boston. Reports have shown him in contact with members of Lost Garden and it is believed he is relocating his lab to their territory.”

So, the man had fallen in with Barrow. That could be a concerning situation if the shaker could move the area of his effect at more than a snail’s pace. No doubt Blasto’s creations would prove a headache for any municipality attempting to divert Lost Garden and their collection of runaways and misguided environmentalists.

As it stood it would be a relief to have the man out of his city. He had his doubts about the new Ward, particularly after his disastrous tactics and showing against Apeiron’s works. The beauty of that knife contrasted drastically with the tangled mess that was the poor boy.

He had honestly expected a similar debacle to result from the cape’s transfer. Instead Aegis had thoroughly squashed Blasto’s attempt to take advantage of the power outage, resulting in the wet tinker being completely routed by the Protectorate during cleanup efforts. He would have to send his congratulations to Director Armstrong. Perhaps something for the boy as well. An anonymously redesigned costume? Or perhaps a friendly benefactor might cover the cost of a commission from a newly operating fashion cape in his hometown?

“That is most excellent news.” He replied as he approached the latest addition to his lair. The circular room would normally have driven him to fury, but this was different and well worth the lost space on the floor plan. In fact, it allowed ample soundproofing, something essential to the design.

He carefully checked the layout, ensuring that Citrine had indeed followed his instructions. Everything was exactly as it had been in the original site. Four of his creations had already been installed and he moved forward with the fifth.

The pillar had a height that was not conducive to a man his size, but Citrine had the foresight of leaving an access ladder for his use. He climbed the steps and put the large orb of interlocking crystal sheets upon the pillar. Activating its internal lighting system it merged its orange glow with the orbs on the other pillars.

The combined light spread through the domed circular room, illuminating a pair of carved granite benches sitting on a sandy surface. Normally Accord detested attempts at the use of sand in interior design, but it was absolutely essential here, as was the faint projection of circling water on the dark dome of the room.

Citrine retrieved the ladder and retreated to the doorway, a device of his own design ensuring that no grain of sand was tracked into the rest of his hideout. Accord slowly moved through the room, appreciating the combination of sightlines, lighting, temperature, and design.

It was direction of purpose, the most admirable aspect of Apeiron’s work. In the retrieval of Weld he had created a space that was both mentally soothing and conducive to discussion. This wasn’t some cheap master effect like had been touted by the ignorant analysts in Brockton Bay. It was more than that. Control of details, removal of distractions, and design with clear intent.

You could see it in every aspect of the cape’s work. What’s more, it was getting stronger. The hairpin didn’t have the unnatural fluidity and perfection of his later work, but still functioned ideally in its role as a demonstration of skill. Looking at the footage of the bank you could draw a progression line through the Undersiders’ blades, charting the improvement in his workmanship, a trendline that progressed through the conflict with Bakuda and now expanded into his latest confrontation.

On first examination Accord had theorized as to what steps would be necessary to bring the tinker into his Ambassadors. Now it was clear he would be standing as a peer rather than a subordinate. It was unthinkably rare to have a cape who Accord knew he would be able to work with. Apeiron seemed fundamentally incapable of the type of sloppiness that drove Accord to rage, and effortlessly produced items of beauty and calm.

Apeiron. Limitless. The theory of Anaximander, positing the boundless chaos, subject to no decay, that produces fresh material from which all things are derived. Generating the opposites that act on the creation. The force from which everything is generated and everything returns.

He wondered if the Protectorate understood just how poignant the name actually was. He moved over and seated himself on one of the benches. The alignment of the room had a calming effect on his mind. Beyond the removal of distractions, it provided comforting perspectives everywhere one could look. He thought on his current operations. The fury was still there, the chaos and incompetence of a world that refused to allow him to help it, but it was manageable.

Yes, this had been worth the expense. The hiring of parahuman salvagers who normally looted Leviathan attacks had been costly, but facilitated the location and retrieval of the site before the local Protectorate had even thought to look for it. Rushed to Boston and recreated to the finest detail, and now he was free to reap the benefits.

“Citrine, you will retrieve my notebook and writing kit, and then not disturb me for a period of two hours for anything less than a direct attack.”

“Right away, sir.”

She departed quickly and Accord leaned back, once more drinking in the atmosphere of the room. Apeiron was fortunate that he could so easily manufacture peace of mind. Undoubtedly, that was the most valuable commodity for men of their station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Divine Child - Hephaestus (Percy Jackson) 400:  
> You are the direct child of a god of your associated pantheon and gain various benefits from this. You gain lesser manifestations of your parent's domains as well as generally being better than an ordinary mortal. You may take most any god as your parent but to take one of the heads of a pantheon as a parent you must take the "Fate finds you interesting" drawback receiving no points for it (you can also do this with a lesser god to get greater powers). Generally this will give you insight into and some control over your divine parent’s domains, a son of Poseidon for example can control water and ships, talk to horses, cause minor earthquakes and is empowered within water.
> 
> Old Traditions (Percy Jackson) Free:  
> You are knowledgeable in the ways of the ancient civilization corresponding to whatever mythology you're most connected with. You can read their languages, know the proper ways to honor the gods, and have a decent grasp of their mythology. Otherwise unassociated Drop-ins may choose any one ancient culture to know of. You may purchase this multiple times, each time gaining insight into a new culture.
> 
> Setup Wizard (Harry Potter) 200:  
> You have a natural knack of melding technology and magic. You can easily jury-rig technology to work at Hogwarts. Your inventions could do considerable good for the magical world if they weren’t all such luddites.
> 
> Wand (Harry Potter) Free:  
> A wand. You don’t have it yet, mind you, but you’ll get one soon enough on a trip to Ollivanders. You can choose the wood type and between one of the wand cores he produces wands with (Unicorn Hair, Dragon Heartstring and Phoenix Feather). You may instead choose a more exotic wand core (excluding Thestral Hair and limited to parts from other canonical magical creatures/beings of this world e.g. Thunderbird Tail Feather, Veela Hair, etc.) although the three previously mentioned are among the most reliable and powerful. Different cores and woods tend to act a little differently but regardless of what you choose the wand will choose you as soon as you are introduced. Different woods may alter your historical personality (for all but Drop-ins) and therefore tendencies very slightly (e.g. Cypress wands tend to choose brave people and you will as such have been a relatively brave child, Blackthorn may result in you being slightly more combative, etc.). If you already had a wand you may import it into this role and while it will keep it’s wood and core it will gain a significant loyalty boost.
> 
> Analysis (Red Alert 3) 100:  
> You can immediately identify any defects in hardware upon casual observation. This is effective on devices, Vehicles, and buildings.
> 
> Researcher (Age of Mythology) 400:  
> You are far faster at designing and discovering new technologies. Inspiration and breakthroughs hit you far more often.


	38. 32 Family Fugue - Preamble Taylor - Addendum Mike

(Author’s Note: I have a busy time coming up so I will be taking next week off my update schedule. The next chapter will be out in two weeks.)

Preamble Taylor

Taylor sat with her father in the living room. Well, actually Taylor lounged on the sofa bed while her father sat nearby. Since Saturday night he had been treating her like she was made of glass. It was a kind of anxious doting she hadn’t seen since the aftermath of the locker, and then he’d been so embroiled with legal battles that she’d barely seen him.

It was sort of nice, if frustrating. The inconsistent attention from her father was probably worse than being either smothered or ignored. It highlighted the worst thing about their situation, the fact that her father wanted to make thing better, but didn’t know how. He was alternating between trying to help, giving her space, or just being at a loss for what to do.

That was the hardest part. The knowledge that her father didn’t have a solution for any of this. He was trying, and she loved him for it, but that wouldn’t fix her problems.

Well, it wouldn’t have fixed her problems when they were limited to Winslow, the trio, and the general shittyness of her school and personal life. Since then her problems had become considerably more impressive. The news report that caused her father to rapidly change the channel was an example of that. He might be trying to shield her from the chaos in the city, but she knew she’d have to deal with it at some point, and it wasn’t something he could help with.

Even so, it would be a lie to say she didn’t appreciate what he’d been doing so far. Doing everything he could to make sure she was comfortable, catering to her, even cutting back on his office hours to spend as much of the day with her as he could manage, and that was after she assured him she didn’t need him to stay home all day.

Right now they were working through an old fantasy movie they had found on a cable channel half way through its run. Taylor had a bowl of popcorn on the edge of the sofa bed, positioned so her father could snag a few kernels every now and then. The remnants of dinner had been cleared away and Taylor was wondering if she wanted to move back to her bedroom or just drift off here.

The recovery from her ‘concussion’ was on track. The worst of the dizziness had vanished after a night’s rest, and was barely a factor anymore. What did remain was more of a side effect of the other consequence of that bomb.

She closed her eyes and reached out to her swarm, feeling the difference in the connection. There was no change in her range or the level of her control. Instead there was a kind of resonance between the scattered bugs. The sensory data that she usually filtered out had been leaking through.

When she first realized it she had panicked. She nearly called Lisa on the spot, but after digging through every internet resource she had found on corona pollentias and realizing her other powers weren’t affected she had calmed down. Even now she could pick up snippets of sound from the houses around them, the indistinct murmur of people talking or other television sets. It wasn’t clear enough for her to pick out words, but she was pretty sure the Cohens at the end of the block were watching the same movie as her and her dad, just from the way the sound picked up and dropped off.

Even if she never got to the level of actually being able to hear through her bugs, just being able to detect when people were talking was huge. It was more situational awareness than she had before, and a big step forward with her powers that she was personally proud of.

That situational awareness detected the car pulling onto their street and slowing to a stop in front of their house. When the door opened she could immediately recognize the girl walking towards their front door.

She frowned internally, but showed no reaction as she watched the person approach their porch. Her father looked up as the step squeaked, followed by a polite knock at the front door.

Her father was already rising when he heard the step and gave her a concerned look that evaporated as he checked the porch window. Quickly he moved to open the door.

“Hello Lisa.”

The blond girl smiled back at him. “Hello Mr. Hebert. I’m sorry for dropping in like this…”

“Not at all.” Her father assured Lisa. “We just finished dinner. Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m fine. I was just passing by and had a message for Taylor. I thought I’d drop by and see her in person.”

Taylor felt her uneasiness build as Lisa smiled at her father.

“Well, it’s nice to see you again. I hope nothing’s wrong?” Her father stepped back to let the blond girl into the house.

“Nothing like that.” Lisa replied in a sweet voice. “My papa just wanted Taylor to come by tomorrow for a checkup.”

Taylor’s stomach roiled. Lisa’s papa had been cover for the black market doctor who gave them a clear bill of health, well all except Taylor who got a giant question mark. Whatever Lisa wanted it wasn’t a medical checkup, and she had just blatantly lied to her father to cover for it.

Her father nodded. “That’s very considerate of him. What do I…”

“Mr. Hebert, I told you he wouldn’t charge, not for this. It’s just a quick in and out to make sure things are alright.” Taylor noticed Lisa send her a pleading glance and cursed herself for getting into this situation. She swallowed before speaking up.

“That’s fine.” She announced with confidence she didn’t feel. “It’ll be good to get out of the house.”

“Sweetie, are you sure you’re up for it?” Behind her father’s back Lisa’s pleading look intensified.

“Absolutely.” She assured him, burying her concerns. “It’s just a doctor’s visit.”

It wouldn’t be a doctor’s visit. Lisa was putting on a show for her father, but something was really bothering the girl. Something serious enough that she had to show up in person and basically lock Taylor into this course of action.

Something that she wasn’t going to leave until tomorrow. If there was some disaster brewing Lisa could at least let her know what was happening.

She pushed aside the bowl of popcorn and climbed to her feet. “I think I’m going to head upstairs. Is it okay if I talk with Lisa for a bit before bed?”

“Of course.” Her father assured her. “Are you sure I can’t get you girls anything?”

“We’re fine.” She answered as she moved towards the stairs.

“Thank you Mr. Hebert.” Lisa assured him.

“Okay, let me know if you need anything.” He called after them.

Taylor resisted reacting while they climbed the stairs and crossed the hallway to her room. As the door finally shut she spun and glared at Lisa.

“Okay, what the hell is going on.” She growled, showing more intensity than she meant. Once again, she was struck by just how hopeless the attempts to keep her cape and normal lives separate actually were.

Lisa’s reaction softened her anger. The girl was clearly worried. She didn’t completely trust her assessments of the thinker, but this seemed genuine. “It’s Joe.” She answered.

“What about Joe? What’s happening?” She asked as quickly as she could manage.

“Did you see the news today?” Lisa asked while fishing out a smartphone.

“Just a bit.” She confessed. “My dad’s been trying to keep me from stressful stuff. I’ve been following stuff online, but I haven’t had a chance to check tonight.”

Instead of answering Lisa began playing a video on her phone. It began with Uber and Leet’s broadcast, then a clip from the protectorate press conference, then assembled cell phone and security camera footage from downtown, including an entire building just vanishing in a column of flame after one of Joe’s robots flew into it. Then a news clip about the ABB financial seizures.

By the time Lisa ran out of clips Taylor was leaning into her swarm to distract herself from the weight on her mind.

“He only had one of those robots on Saturday, and it was nothing like that powerful.” Her voice sounded hollow as she spoke. This had implications she’d been trying to avoid thinking about.

“It’s worse than you think.” Lisa whispered in a warning tone.

“What?” Of all the things she expected to come out of the girl’s mouth after watching that video, that was about the least likely. “How can it be worse?”

“Joe called me afterwards.” The girl swallowed. “All that stuff was apparently spur of the moment, like not even thought out. He called the finance raid a target of opportunity.”

“Wait,” Taylor held up her hands. “All that and he didn’t care? It was nothing? He was just okay with it?”

“No, he was freaked, just not about the attack.” Lisa’s face was grave.

“What?” Taylor felt like that was becoming a refrain in this conversation. “What was he worried about?”

“March, the ABB thinker? He found out about her during the press conference, and apparently his thinker power started going nuts. He was ready to go on a warpath.” Lisa explained in a low voice.

Taylor thought back to the broadcast. “Isn’t he on one already?” This was insane. Were the Undersiders going to get pulled into this? It seemed like something they should help with, but at the same time felt totally out of their league. Things kept escalating, and she hated it.

“No, he wasn’t. That was nothing. He went out with what he had on hand. I spoke with him right before the attack. He didn’t have anything planned before whatever it was that set that off.” She frowned deeply. “From what I can tell, for Joe that was the equivalent of an enthusiastic walk.”

“What do you mean?” She thought back to the video. “You said he’s getting more powerful. We can see it. What else is there?”

Lisa sagged and suddenly Taylor could see every minute of the days of exhaustion she’d been under. It had been there on Saturday night, but the Thinker had been able to play it off. Now, even after the intensity of Joe’s healing she could see the toll this was taking on the girl.

“Joe has been holding back. Massively. I don’t think I realized how much until tonight.” She swallowed nervously. “There was something about March, it’s related to the new Ward, Flechette, and it’s got him freaked out. He was ready to pull out the stops.”

“What kind of stops?” Taylor grit her teeth. She didn’t need this, not at this time of night, not after everything. The two days of rest she’d gotten suddenly seemed like they weren’t nearly enough, not when something like this was waiting for her.

Lisa sighed, a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail falling limply across her face. “Best guess is the kind of stuff that would set off national alarm bells with the PRT. Robot armies, self-replicating anything, proper mecha, not that stuff Uber and Leet threw together.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m pretty sure that red boosting thing at the end was some kind of lifeform. The lines were moving, just a little bit, but it was enough to pick up a pattern. He might be wet tinkering, and that is not something we can deal with right now.”

Taylor’s eyes widened. “Is March really that bad?”

Lisa scrunched her forehead. “I don’t know. She spoofs every thinker who tries to read her. Maybe he’s right, but more likely he’d gotten a false positive and is about to take a nuclear option over it.”

That though did nothing to settle Taylor’s nerves. “Why are you telling me? What am I supposed to do about it?”

A horrible shadow emerged from her memories, Alec’s jokes about her and Joe. What was Lisa getting at with this?

Lisa gave her a serious look. “You’ve seen the stuff about Apeiron and Khepri online? And in the news reports?”

Taylor nodded grimly. Oh, she’d seen it. Online, news reports, in the paper, and not just letters to the editor. She’d seen the depth of that speculation. The ‘fans’ that had built up. The badly edited cape music videos.

She couldn’t believe they’d pulled together enough footage to make a single CMV, much less a series. Dear God but she hated Youtube.

A horrible thought entered her mind. Was that what Lisa was getting at? She had been so sure before, so certain that it had been something else, but she’d been wrong about so much. Was this another of those points? Taylor’s mind flew in wild directions as she desperately tried to piece together what Lisa was asking her to do.

“Joe, he feels…” Taylor felt her entire body tense like a coiled spring. “…terrible about that misconception.”

Taylor swore she could feel her brain disconnect from her body, drawn away by the disorienting intensity of sheer relief the statement induced. She tried to reply, but the best she could manage was a mumbled. “Uh-huh.”

“He wants to clear the air, apologize, probably try to make it up to you, fix it if he can.” Lisa explained. “He’s willing to put off the March crusade until after he deals with that.”

Taylor was able to get her mouth working again. “That’s more important to him than… what, robot armies?” She whispered the last word.

Lisa nodded. “Best I can tell, it’s something personal for him. I think he’s messed up like this before. He really wants to make this right. You need to speak with him.”

Taylor felt her guts wrench. “What the hell am I supposed to say?”

The blond girl sighed. “At this point, anything that holds off a state of emergency would be a win. Things are going to get messy. We have our team meeting with him on Wednesday. You need to speak with him tomorrow. Reassure him, talk him down, or just distract him. Really anything that keeps him from any more escalation.”

Escalation. Taylor was starting to detest that word.

She sighed. “I’m not good at this, you know. I don’t know what you expect me to accomplish here.”

Lisa smiled slightly. “Joe will probably be as awkward as you, and he’s the one who’s trying to make things better. Even if all you talk about is that misconception, it will be enough. I’ll try to come up with a strategy for Wednesday.” She gave Taylor a reassuring look. “We can make this work.”

Taylor wished she had the girl’s confidence. “Fine.” She said in defeat. “Where am I supposed to meet him?”

Lisa handed over a slip of paper. “Here’s his number. Call him tomorrow and suggest somewhere you feel comfortable. Somewhere that can’t be construed as a date. That should make it easier for both of you. I can meet you beforehand, try to get you set up and ready for this.” She saw Taylor’s expression and put on a brave front. “Taylor, it’ll be fine. You can handle this, and we’ll manage things.”

Sure, she just had to talk down the strongest tinker in the city, who was breaking out tactical weapons and had even worse stuff in reserve, a tinker who was only on the wrong side of the law because of her undercover work, which had turned into an absolute quagmire.

Still, what else could she do? It was her mess, and she had to keep moving if she was going to find any way out of it.

“Alright. I’ll come up with something.” This might be the first time she had called a boy, and weirdly it would be to confirm that they weren’t in a relationship. Given how upside down her life was feeling that seemed somehow appropriate.

Lisa visibly relaxed at her words. “Thank you Taylor.” She pocketed her phone. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow. Hopefully Joe won’t be messing with anything stupid or dangerous in the meantime.”

Well, Taylor thought, they could only hope.

Celestial Forge 32 Family Fugue

The phone kept ringing. I could easily use my technical skills to keep it from going to voicemail, but if she hung up on her end my only options would be to deal with the fallout or call her back. I didn’t know which option I found less appealing.

Garment was visibly worried at my response. She seemed to be trying to communicate the desire for more information. Unfortunately I couldn’t give it to her, not in the time I had.

“Please.” I asked. “Just let me take this.” The idea of dealing with this call in front of an audience twisted my stomach.

Garment looked ready to protest, but there must have been something in my stance or expression that convinced her. She took a moment to make a gesture of reassurance before reluctantly edging out the door and back towards the hideaway house.

I closed the door, took a breath, and connected the call. I wasn’t letting this anyway near my implant. This would be trying enough without being beamed into my brain. I set the call to be routed through the omni-tool in my watch. Then I dove in before I could overthink this anymore.

“Hello?” My voice was as steady as I could make it, and a good deal calmer than the voice that answered.

“Jozef? Thank God, what the hell have you been doing?”

The familiar voice was more frustrated than concerned. Actually, pretty much entirely frustrated. It really put the call into context. It made sense that THAT would be the reason Alena would reach out.

I mean, what was I expecting? Oh, hi Alena. How’s the new job going? I’m fine. So nice of you to check in without anyone putting you up to it.

Instead of going with that quip I steeled myself. Sarcasm wouldn’t be helpful right now. “Hello Alena. And what do you mean?”

My innocent act would obviously not convince her, but it was the best opening I could come up with.

“Jozef, this isn’t the time for that crap.” She actually sounded a little tired. I wondered how much family fallout she had to deal with before she made this call? “Why the hell have you been ignoring Mom’s calls?”

I took another breath. “I haven’t been ignoring them.” There was a moment where it sounded like she was going to contradict me, so I cut in before she could. “I blocked her.”

“Blocked her?” There was the offended tone. “Of course you would do that.” She muttered.

“So,” I tried. “I’m guessing Mom asked you to call me?”

“Of course she did,” She answered indignantly. “because she actually cares about you. You’re in the middle of a terrorist attack and you didn’t even check in to let her know you were alive.”

I gritted my teeth and swallowed my frustration. Through my implant I could feel a presently unwelcome inquiry from Survey regarding my personal health and mental state. “Alena, the city isn’t exploding around us. It’s not a warzone. People are actually living here.” And it’s not like Brockton doesn’t see this kind of stuff regularly, just at lower levels.

“You could have at least called. You know how much she worries about you. That should be more important than sulking in your apartment.” That came across more as venting of frustration than any kind sincere concern, or even a personal attack.

“I’m not going to do that.” I forced myself to remain calm, but whatever internal effects that was having triggered another inquiry from Survey. “Not after what happened.”

“Right, because that’s what all this is about.” She scoffed. “You need to stop overreacting and think of someone other than yourself. God, you always do this.”

I took another breath and spoke slowly in my response. “Do you even know what happened that night?”

“You got some bad news, threw another tantrum, and stormed out.” She said with absolute certainty.

I bit down to keep from saying something I’d regret. Survey sent a series of progressively more concerned inquiries and started extrapolating her own data.

I swallowed my own frustration as I watched the A.I. dive into the phone network, extracting telemetry data from cell towers and triangulating the call location. Oh, Alena was calling from her apartment. I guess it was nice that she had decided I at least deserved her full attention instead of rushing this call from the street or something like that.

Survey began digging further, pulling information for Alena and her roommate, work history, utility connections, and delivery records. I had to step in and call her off before she could start trying to access my sister’s employment records. At my pleading the A.I. finally withdrew from monitoring the call, but her uneasiness with the situation was obvious.

I could feel my sister’s impatience building as the Forge missed a connection to the Time constellation, so I reluctantly dove back into the conversation. “Is that all you heard?” It was getting harder to keep my responses measured.

“No.” Her reply was sharp. “I’ve been dealing with Mom while you’ve been pulling more of your nonsense. I heard about what happened. You got in another fight with Natalia, got upset when Mom called you out on it, then stormed off when you got the letter.”

My stomach churned at her summation of the night. “That’s not fair.” I worked to keep any hint of petulance out of my voice. “You know how Natalia can get…”

“That doesn’t matter.” She cut me off. “You’re an adult now. You should be able to get through a single night without causing problems for the entire family.”

“All I did…” I spoke carefully. “was leave. I didn’t say or do anything to anyone.” I swallowed as the image of my original passenger flashed into my mind, the one before the Forge. Then I struggled to push aside the memory.

“You think that’s an accomplishment?” Yes, I did. But I could tell from her tone that wouldn’t be the answer she was looking for. “Jozef, everyone in the family has worked so hard to help you with this thing. It’s hard enough without you fighting against them.”

“You think…” My voice raised involuntarily and I quickly bit back on it. Anger was coming to the surface. It was harder to control, and felt like a trap. If I got angry they could dismiss my concerns as irrational. Well, dismiss them more easily than they usually did.

“I am working on this.” I said as calmly as I could manage. “And I am actually making progress.” There was a bit of pride on my last statement. The memory of Dr. Campbell congratulating me for my actions that night, reassurances on my decisions, commitments I’d made to improvement. It was hard, damn hard, but I was moving forward.

“Jozef,” The tone of Alena’s voice changed completely. Suddenly it came across as completely sympathetic. “Mom knows you got fired.”

“What?” I nearly choked on the statement.

“When she couldn’t reach you she tried to call you at your job. Your boss told her about firing you.” She had shifted from indignant to companionate so fast it was jarring. “I get that you’re embarrassed about it, but you can’t ignore a problem like this and hope it will go away.”

That particular statement hit way closer to home than I thought it would.

“Alena, I didn’t get fired. I quit.” And I instantly hated myself for feeling compelled to justify myself, something I could tell from her response hadn’t made the slightest difference anyway.

“You didn’t show up for your shift, it doesn’t matter how you try to frame it. Do you even realize how stuff like that looks?” She sighed through the line. Of course that was what she would focus on. My work performance. And apparently an entire narrative had built up among my family and run away from me because I refused to be involved in shaping it.

Okay, THAT hit close to home, though the perception of my cape persona seemed like it should be a bigger issue than what my family thought about me. I just wish that was actually the case. This should be trivial compared to all my other problems, but family had a way of amplifying things.

“Jozef, stop being so stubborn.” She pleaded. “You’re only making things worse.”

“I’m not being…” I cut myself off before I could finish. There was no way to win this conversation… I was going to say ‘no way to win by playing by her script’, but the truncated version seemed more appropriate. Just ‘no way to win this conversation’.

“Look,” She continued in a soft voice. “Just call Mom and Dad, explain what happened, and apologize. They want to help you.”

My mind screeched to a stop and I leaned forward. My free hand balled into a fist and I rested my knuckles on the office’s immaculate desk. I looked down at the active call on my omni-tool in shock. Eventually I managed to put together a response.

“Apologize?” I have no idea how my voice came across. It felt like I was operating my larynx from the other side of the solar system. My head buzzed and I struggled to stay focused.

“It’s what normal people do when they make a mistake.” The derision was creeping back into her tone. “You SHOULD be able to manage it.”

“I am not apologizing.” My voice felt robotic as I spoke.

“God, can you try not being blindingly inconsiderate for once in your life?” Her voice was more pleading than derisive as she spoke. “No matter how you feel about this, you really upset Mom. And Dad too. You can at least tell them you’re sorry for that.”

Right, and then have this lorded over me for the rest of my life. Another sterling example of how Jozef can’t…

No. I made a conscious effort to cut off that line of thinking. I knew most of this wasn’t even a deliberate attempt by Alena to get to me. It was just how she was. Basically, she was running on auto-pilot. I’d spent too long trying to figure out this mess, to understand these dynamics, to fall apart now.

“Is that what this is about?” I asked. “You want me to call home, explain how I was wrong, and then what? Move back home?”

“Well, what else are you going to do?” Once again the question hit me like a sledgehammer. “You aren’t working in the city anymore, and you can’t do anything at the University until you get your enrollment fixed. Just go home so Mom can stop worrying about you.”

“You mean,” I did my best to keep my tone from sounding as harsh as I felt. “So she’ll stop bothering you and Natalia about this?”

“That’s not fair.” She replied.

“But that’s it, isn’t it?” It didn’t escape my notice that Alena had picked a school and then a job that was a thousand miles from Captain’s Hill, and Natalia probably would have gone to school on the west coast if she had the grades for the school she wanted. I’m pretty sure they were happy I picked Brockton University just because Mom would have someone closer to home to occupy her attention.

“Do you have any idea how selfish you’re being?” Alena countered. “Natalia has finals coming up, as well as her graduation. She’s going to be looking for a job soon. And you don’t even want to know the hours they have me working here. Neither of us has time to deal with your problems right now.”

“So it’s easier if I just go home and keep Mom off your backs?” I spat. Control was slipping, but I didn’t care as much as I did at the start of the call. Anger was bubbling up, but that was good. Anger meant I could realize this situation was wrong. Anger wasn’t that hollow, empty despair that had characterized so many of these conversations over the years.

“Yes, it’s SO horrible that I’m asking you to go home to stay with free rent, home cooking, and no bills to worry about.” She quipped. “And all I’m asking is for you to actually be considerate for once in your life. Hell, if you wanted to really show some appreciation you could finally clean out your room.”

I blinked. “Seriously? You’re getting into that now?”

“It’s something you should have done years ago.” She accused. “It’s creepy that you held onto that stuff. Mom would feel better to finally get it out of the house.”

“I know.” I growled. “She never stops talking about it. And it’s not like I show that stuff off to people. Why is this even an issue?”

“Because he’s a serial killer!” She shouted.

“He’s a victim!” I countered.

“You think that matters to anyone? Just by holding onto it people are going to think you’re one of those Slaughterhouse fanboys.” That statement was more of an accusation than a warning.

I took a mental step back. Having this argument now would accomplish nothing. My family had wanted me to get rid of my Sphere Moonbase Set from the moment of the Simurgh attack, even before Mannequin was a thing. That was the extent of her influence, everything she touched was suspect.

Rogues don’t usually get action figures, but there was a lot of hype around that project. It was after Hero had died, so finding a new ‘hopeful’ tinker was a big deal. It had taken a Christmas and two birthdays to get the whole thing, including the project plans and the live update access you got if you collected the entire set. It was kind of excessive, but they were funding a space colony with toys. The scale of the set was probably the reason I held onto it into my teenage years.

That meant I actually got immediate notice of things falling apart. That was not a great day for me. Five years ago that dream of tinker space future just came crashing down. Then it was a battle to keep a set of toys that according to my family were both inappropriate and something I was too old for anyway.

Alena’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Look, if you don’t call her, Mom will probably just throw it out herself.”

The statement brought up so many memories that I actually let out a bark of laughter.

“What? What’s so funny?” She asked.

“She’s been threatening that since I was sixteen.” It was up there with the threats to drop my gaming books off at Goodwill or donate my violin since I ‘never use it’.

“You think she won’t do it?” My sister’s voice sounded confused and a little concerned.

I sighed. “No, she’ll do it. And then it will be my fault that she did it. And if I get upset that will be my fault too, since it would be something not worth getting upset about.”

“You shouldn’t talk about Mom like that.” I wasn’t really sorry, but that statement was more candid than I usually got. “You know how hard she tries.”

Right, because she’s the only one who gets graded on effort rather than results. “It doesn’t matter. She’ll do what she’s going to do.”

There was a pause before my sister replied. “What’s happening? Is there something wrong with you?”

Well, I’m in the middle of a cape war for the fate of the universe. I have at least three different life perspectives bouncing around my head, my mind and body have been seriously altered, and I’ve just been dragged back into family drama centered on the worst night of my life. Hell, with the path I’m on I’m set to meet Doctor Alan Gramme in person sometime in the near future. Why should I be worried about what happens to his action figures?

I decided to abstain from mentioning any of that and instead asked. “What do you mean?”

“Are you on drugs?” She asked in a flat voice.

“What?” I gasped in reply.

“Is that what this is? Are you taking drugs?”

“What kind of a question is that?” I asked. “You know I am.”

There was a pause before she replied. “God, Jozef. Don’t scare me like that.” She scolded. “I meant real drugs, not your antidepressants.”

I sighed and resisted the urge to try to convey the scope of any aspect of what I was dealing with. The Forge missed a connection to the Size constellation as I replied.

“No Alena, I’m not on drugs. ‘My antidepressants’ don’t mix well with other substances. I couldn’t even go out drinking when I turned twenty-one. Please trust that I didn’t fuck up the only stable treatment I managed through this whole mess with something you know I stay away from.”

“Fine.” She didn’t sound totally convinced, but dropped the subject. “But Mom said you freaked out even though you were on better medication.”

“Better?” I made absolutely no effort to keep the derision out of my voice. “What exactly did she tell you?”

There was a pause and I was momentarily concerned she was going to go off about the harshness of my tone instead of answering. Apparently she decided to let that slide when she finally responded.

“She said she finally convinced you to switch to a better medication, but you still went off on everyone.”

I took a long slow breath, the anger inside me at a slow boil. I was grateful for it. It wasn’t pleasant, especially all the places it grew from, but it was better than the alternative. Better than that horrible feeling of emptiness, of being buried in guilt and shame for your own existence, or questioning your worth as a human being and place in the world.

Anger meant I could tell this wasn’t right, wasn’t fair. Actually see the holes in the dynamic that was being put forward. It was still unpleasant, but it was a motive force. Something that pushed me forward rather than pulled me back. I held onto it and used it to move forward.

“Alena, are you near a computer you can use?” I knew she was, but I wasn’t about to flag that little invasion of privacy.

“Yeah, why?” She asked.

“I would like you to look something up.” I responded as calmly as I could.

“What’s this about?” she sounded confused. I held back a sigh.

“Can you please just do this?” I asked. “As a favor to me, can you look this up?”

She went quiet at that. Directly asking for something wasn’t that common in my family. It was a dynamic I hadn’t noticed while I was growing up, not until Dr. Campbell noticed and pointed it out. Generally someone would point out the reasons why you needed to do something, usually with the implication of some personal failing if you didn’t follow through. Directly asking for something for yourself was not a common occurrence.

I talked Alena through the web search, finally getting her on the correct site. I followed along with my implant as I talked her through.

“And you see the side effect’s tab?” I asked.

“Yeah.” There was a pause as I assumed she was reading through it. “Are you saying this is what happened? It was the medication?” She sounded skeptical about it.

“You know my normal medication affected my sleep. This stuff has side effects, and they can get pretty bad.” That was an understatement, but I was dancing around how bad things could have gone.

“You’re sure about this?” She asked, as if it was something that would escape my notice.

“Yes, I’m sure.” I replied in a measured tone. I didn’t appreciate the dismissive attitude, but I was used to it.

“Well, why don’t you just explain this?” She asked. “If you hadn’t stormed out this could all have been avoided. Just call and tell them what happened.”

She said it like it was the easiest thing in the world. “Alena, I am not calling home, I am not apologizing, and I am not moving out of the city.”

“Damnit Jozef, people are trying to help you. Why do you always have to be like this?” She complained. “What, are you worried Mom and Dad won’t forgive you? Come on, you know better than that.”

“I don’t need their help.” That sounded more juvenile than I intended, but I pushed on. “It’s been eight months since I moved out. I think I’ve shown I can actually manage on my own.”

“So, what? Are you just going to sulk until you run out of money or get yourself hurt in that mess? Look, at least go home until things settle down.” She was beginning to sound desperate. I had to wonder how much pressure had been put on her to make this call.

“I’m not going to run out of money.” I countered. “I told you, I wasn’t fired. I quit because I had another job lined up.”

“Really?” She asked. “What are you doing, exactly?”

Lie by staying close to the truth. “I’ve been doing odd jobs, mostly repair work and deliveries. A friend of mine is starting up a business soon, so I’ve been helping with that.”

“Friend.” She said somewhat skeptically. “And you can get by with that?”

“I’m already good for the rest of the month, and there should be steady work. I’ll be fine.” I assured her.

“You’re really alright with that? Just doing odd jobs?” She asked.

“It’s better than retail work.” I countered. “More hours and better pay.”

“God Jozef, what about school? You’re too smart to just give up on that, not after everything Mom and Dad did for you.”

Ah, a compliment buried under guilt and derision. Of course, I was only ‘smart’ when it created an obligation towards something they wanted.

I was managing this better than I thought I would. It was still getting to me, but not as badly as it would have even a week ago. I’d like to think it was because I was making progress, but I had a nagging concern that my mental alteration powers were more of a factor. Or maybe recent events had just forced some perspective.

Or maybe I was just better at being angry. I had seen things over the past few days that would have horrified me without my military mindset holding me together. The families missing loved ones in the wake of the storage yard attack. The casual brutality of the ABB’s actions. Michael Won dead and mutilated for the sake of a trading scam.

With all of that behind me and everything mounting in front of me I just couldn’t afford to deal with this. I couldn’t get caught up in this mess again, where my family thought they could roll in and get whatever they wanted because of some cultivated obligation.

That said, there was a difference between handling things better and handling them well. This conversation was still dredging things up that I tried to keep buried. I had worked on how to deal with them, worked damn hard, but that was exhausting. Generally it was better to just avoid thinking about this stuff.

“Alena, I know how hard Mom and Dad worked to send us to college.” Not that it was ever possible to forget it. “But even if everything went perfectly, I wouldn’t be able to reenroll until September. And I’d have to make up my second year courses, and then get my program back on track.” I felt a weight settle on me. This was the line of realization that had come with my trigger. Minimum three years of school ahead of me, assuming everything went perfectly.

And things were not going perfectly. Therapy was helping, but it didn’t actually fix any of the external problems I was dealing with. I still had my family trying to get me back on track through the worst tactics possible. I still had every problem I’d grown up with, and it was still being reinforced every time I spoke with them.

“Jozef,” Her voice was hard. I suspected she desperately wanted to avoid having to call Mom and tell her she hadn’t managed to talk me around. “Can you try, just try to not be a child about this? Mom and Dad are worried. The very least you can do is talk to them. After everything they’ve done you can at least do that much.”

It was a last resort move. Kick the problem over to Mom. She wouldn’t get the credit for fixing things, but it was basically a hand off to someone who would be even worse to deal with.

Everything they’d done. That phrase. In addition to assigning guilt to every supposedly nice thing from my childhood it brought everything else with it. Everything I tried to avoid thinking about, every painful moment. Next to that the problems from my time in University were a drop in the bucket. The mess with Sabah was a symptom, the inevitable result of something that had its groundwork laid over decades.

I focused and held onto the anger. Emotions are real, but they might not be true. Everything from my past, all the waves of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and self-loathing, it felt real, but I had worked on this. I had looked at it with Dr. Campbell’s help. I knew the way it had been set up, that toxic environment that tricks your mind into believing it’s normal.

The anger WAS real. Being able to look at all of it and hold on to my fury felt like a victory. Every moment when something seemed wrong and I was taught that it wasn’t, that I should feel differently, that I had no right to be upset, well I was feeling that now. Not how I was taught to think, but the feelings beneath it. The sheer injustice of the situation. It was like reaching into my past and connecting with who I really was. And right now, I was furious.

There was a gray flash and my fist jumped down through the surface of the desk. Two inches of solid oak shattered like kindling without any of the leverage that should have allowed such an action. I lifted my right hand from the ruined desk and stared at the gray light surrounding it.

The gray aura surrounding it.

I watched as the energy slowly faded, but felt it inside me. That personal expression that was shoved in my face by the weapon, and apparently also kept buried in my own thoughts. That expression of who I was and what I’d dealt with. With a single impulsive act I had found an alternate path to that power.

I just had to start dealing with my shit.

A storm of emotions churned inside me. I didn’t know how to feel about this. It was almost exactly what I’d been afraid of when I saw that weapon and read its name. But it was more than that. It shifted the anger at the mess of my life from something I either had to be ashamed of or tolerate to something that could be a source of power. Righteous anger, the kind that could actually be put to a useful function. I tried desperately to hold onto that feeling.

“What was that?” Alena’s voice chirped the omni-tool on my left hand.

“I knocked over a chair.” I answered without delay.

“I heard splintering.” She said in an accusing tone.

“It bumped a jar with some pencils in it. Probably sounded weird through the phone.” Blatant denials with no chance for rebuttal. She knew I was lying, but what was she going to do? At worst tell Mom, and then what? I smiled to myself.

“Look, Jozef…”

“Alena, I’m sorry, but you actually caught me at a bad time.” I countered.

“What? What do you have to do?” She asked.

End this conversation before you can push any further? Get back to trying to save the city from the ABB and the world from March? Leave you to explain things to Mom, knowing you’ll enjoy that call about as much as I enjoyed this one?

“I told you, I have a job.” I quipped. “I need to get back to it.”

“At this time of night?” She asked.

“Deliveries.” I offered as a plausible excuse. “But, you know, thanks for calling. It was just great catching up. Call back any time.” I didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of that final line.

“I…” She trailed off. In a way I hated doing this to her. We all came for the same place, and at least for me that meant some unavoidable empathy towards my sisters. Plus, as bad as she was, dealing with her was a massive step up from Natalia or, God forbid, Mom.

“Goodbye Jozef. Look after yourself.” Her tone at least made the sentiment believable.

“You too. Goodbye Alena.”

I killed the call and slowly felt the vindication from the end of the conversation being eroded by doubt and guilt. It was harder to counter these things in the space of your own mind when you didn’t have someone in front of you to direct your emotions towards.

I sank into the chair behind my ruined desk and slumped my head. Had I even accomplished anything there? Anything more than if I just let the call hit voicemail?

Well, I had the petty satisfaction of knowing that I was pissing off my entire family. Typical Jozef, making things harder for everyone. Of course, when you have literally no other way to express your frustration you are pretty much limited to schadenfreude. Probably not the healthiest dynamic, but that’s pretty much my family in a nutshell.

That actually may have been why I held onto those Sphere toys for so long. I mean, yeah, they were important to me, but eventually they kind of became a way to express frustration without even doing anything. That’s me, the brutal teenage rebellion of not throwing away some outdated plastic crap.

I felt a sense of comfort emanating from my passenger. Like when I’d been in therapy he had held back during my conversation, but was offering support to help with the aftermath. I appreciated it. The Forge missed a connection to the Magitech constellation as I felt his reassurance on the situation. It wasn’t like the actual situation had changed, but it was helping to pull me out of the funk I’d been sinking into.

I watched as the splintered surface of the desk began to groan. I understood the mechanics perfectly and could tell exactly how the displaced forces were pulling on the structural components that would lead to imminent failure. I just didn’t care enough to do anything about it. There was a mounting groan with the sound of splintering, then a crash as the desk’s surface split in half, its center collapsing as its legs split out.

There was a gasp and I looked up to see Aisha standing in my office looking significantly more embarrassed than I ever remember seeing her. I slowly put together the pieces and furrowed my brow. As I rose to my feet she frantically pointed towards the office door.

“It was Survey!” There was a pleading tone in her voice and more shame in her expression than I’d ever seen before. I paused before turning to open the door.

Standing in the hallway, directly on the opposite side of the door, was Survey’s hologram. I briefly marveled at the way Survey was positioning her hologram like it was listening at the door, despite all the sensor equipment being on the drone floating behind it. Oddly, beneath the drone was a tiny race car, about two feet long and in the style of Formula One. It was one of the set that had been built for Fleet by my duplicates and had been roaming the workshop ever since.

When I looked at the drone the hologram spoke, rather than providing a direct digital message.

“The call was triggering seriously adverse neural activity and emotional responses. Alternate monitoring was necessary after primary avenues had been disrupted.” The hologram delivered the explanation in a calm voice, but the body language being conveyed by the projection mirrored Aisha’s discomfort.

“She asked me to check on you.” Aisha clarified. “I didn’t realize what was going on until I got in here, then I was worried about distracting you or messing something up, so I just kind of…” She made a vague gesture.

I looked at the girl and frowned. “What did Garment…” I trailed off and turned to the door. There were a pair of white gloves on the doorframe and the hint of a dress peering around the edge. Of course she had been in on it. It seemed Garment’s willingness to respect my privacy only extended to the point of emotional distress, after which she would happily join a conspiracy.

Great. Everyone was worried about me. Considering this was basically the same situation I had skipped out on from my family, why did it feel different in this case? Well, for one, while Aisha HAD violated my privacy, she wasn’t giving me shit about it. That was a nice change. I imagined what would have happened if one of my sisters or like anyone from my high school had been privy to something this personal and cringed internally.

Was Aisha violating my privacy just going to be a thing that kept happening? Her spying on my gym paperwork had been an intentional, if not overly personal, violation. Sneaking into my apartment and workshop had been worse, but I think I had reinforced how dangerous that had been. This… Well, this was Survey.

I checked in with the A.I. through my implant and found a jumbled mess of frantic concerns and assessments. I winced at what she had been dealing with and did what I could to correct them. This would take a trip to the throne to properly address, but mostly boiled down to ‘Web M.D. is not a reliable source’. Fleet had stepped in to stop some of the frantic logic loops Survey had launched herself into. While the older A.I. had provided support there was actually still a level of concern coming from him. Between the two of them and Garment’s complicity I could believe Aisha had been put up to this.

Really, it only took one look at the girl to reveal how much she wished she hadn’t been involved. More than shame and embarrassment, there was recognition. I cringed as I thought about her own history and how this probably looked.

I didn’t want to deal with this. I wanted to bury it under layers of work and more pressing concerns until I felt fully justified not even thinking about my family or any of the issues relating to them. But then I looked at the desk. That would be easy enough to fix with basic Alchemy, but that didn’t change the fact that I had been able to shatter it with no build up from a position completely without leverage. That wasn’t strength, it was a supernatural force acting on the physical world.

Aura was serious stuff. It might run off the expression of some ‘true self’ that I barely understood and didn’t want to think about, but it was a major superpower. So, I could send everyone out, scold them for snooping, patch over Survey’s concerns, and bury everything all over again. Or I could actually try to deal with some of this stuff. That was something I badly needed to do, even if there weren’t superpowers on the line.

Before I could say anything Aisha spoke up. “Hey,” Her voice was unsteady as she turned to Garment and the drones. “Could you give us a minute first?”

Garment made a gesture of assent and ushered the drones and Survey’s hologram away. She made an encouraging gesture before closing the door.

I watch to see what she would do. Instead of launching into any prepared speech she just kind of slumped towards the table and leaned against one of the chairs.

“Uh, do you mind?” She gestured towards the seat.

“No, go ahead.” I assured her.

She pulled out the chair and sank into it, resting her head on a hand. I watched her for a moment before taking the seat across from her.

“Fuck.” She lifted her head and took a breath. “Okay, I’m really, really sorry for barging in on that. Survey was freaking out, I couldn’t tell what Garment was going on about, and by the time I got here I didn’t know what to do.”

I sighed. “It’s alright.”

“No!” she snapped. “No, it fucking isn’t. God damn it, I shouldn’t have seen that. It shouldn’t even have fucking happened.”

I nodded. “I know, but I understand.”

“That’s not…” She took another breath. “Look, you’ve been around the gym. Someone has told you about my parents, right? Probably with one of those whispered conversations where they leave out all the specific details?”

“Yeah.” I admitted. I obviously wasn’t the first, and probably wouldn’t be the last person to be informed in that way.

“So, I’ve fucked up. I know that. Like, not generally, but that too. I mean stuff with you.” She took a moment to center herself before continuing in a slightly calmer voice. “Messing with you, the cape thing, this place, the ABB. They were all major fuck ups, all on me. But you kept making excuses for me.”

“What, did you want me to go off on you?” I considered an unpleasant possibility. “Was that what this was? Pushing to see how far you could go?” It didn’t seem right, too disjointed, and I’d seen that kind of stuff before.

“No! That’s not…” She collected herself before continuing. “I know I have problems, okay? Like, I’ve never been tested, but there’s something there. Maybe it’s one of those brain things they have alphabet codes for, or maybe I’m just generally screwed up. The thing is, I tend to fuck things up without meaning to. But you always cut me slack, make excuses for me or whatever. I used to think it was because of what you heard at the gym.”

She grit her teeth on the last words. I couldn’t imagine Aisha enjoying that kind of treatment. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a factor, but honestly her trigger and passenger were probably more significant elements in how I treated her.

She took a breath and looked at me. “You do it with her as well. Your sister, some of that stuff, I mean, you just took it.”

I let silence settle before I responded. “You want to know why?”

She shrugged. “Kind of? Most people wouldn’t put up with half that crap, and they aren’t anywhere near as powerful as you. So why?”

It wasn’t an easy question and I didn’t really want to answer it. Still, Aisha was concerned. Did she think I was just tolerating her like I did with Alena? I let out a slow breath and ploughed forward.

“Direct confrontation wasn’t exactly a winning strategy in my family.” I admitted. “I kind of learned to work around it.”

“Okay, but why do you put up with it?” She looked concerned. “Most people would have told her to fuck off half way through that call, if they even picked up at all.”

Well, the historic answer was ‘because I had to’, and then mostly because it was hard to move away from that mindset. I had dug a little deeper into it since then. “I try to understand where they’re coming from. Like, generally where people are coming from. Knowing that someone doesn’t mean to hurt you doesn’t make the situation any better, but it helps you understand why it happened. Sometimes that makes a difference.”

This was my own history. I’d fucked up with Sabah. I didn’t mean to, but that didn’t make it any less bad for her. It’s a different dynamic when you think about things like that. Getting hurt because someone doesn’t know better is hardly better than getting hurt because of malice, but it can make it easier to deal with the aftermath.

Aisha swallowed, then looked up at me. “My mom? She’s a mess. Like a real fucking mess. Anything you heard about her is probably true. The cheating on my dad, then the boyfriends, and the drugs. I’m… I’m pretty sure that’s what messed me up. Like, she was more careful with my brother, but when I was born…”

“Aisha,” I interrupted her. “You don’t have to share this stuff just because you got a look at my own crap. And I’m not trying to say my problems are anything like yours.”

My parents were still married. They both had good jobs. I’m pretty sure my family counted as upper-middle class, though they prioritized education over any extravagance. I didn’t like the idea of complaining about the situation, much less to someone in Aisha’s position.

“That’s not what I…” She took a moment before continuing. “I was just trying to say I get that moms can suck. I don’t know what the deal with yours is, but it doesn’t sound good.”

I considered how to approach this. “There’s a quote by C.S. Lewis…”

“Narnia guy?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “He has this quote about how people who torment you for your own good torment you constantly and feel good about it afterwards.”

My omni-tool watch chirped as Survey announced to my implant that she had the complete quote.

“What’s that?” Aisha leaned in.

“Oh, right.” I pulled up the holographic display. “Survey isn’t really that hologram. She’s more of a centralized system. There’s a version on my watch that she’s linked with.”

“Uh, hi Survey?” Aisha waved at my arm. An image of Survey’s avatar appeared on the display. “I figured about the hologram thing. I just didn’t know you were still here.”

“Hello Aisha.” The image shifted to make eye contact with Aisha, once again despite having no sensors in the display. “Would you like the complete quote?”

I didn’t really want to get into this, but Aisha seemed excited. At her gesture Survey began reciting it.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Aisha nodded slightly at that, and it was the full extent I remembered, but Survey continued.

“They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

I sat back as Survey finished. It was a lot more impactful than I had thought. Infants and imbeciles. Yeah, seriously more impactful. The Alchemy constellation passed by as I considered the implications.

“Shit.” She turned to me. “That’s what you’re dealing with? What it was like?”

I shrugged and tried to play it off. “My sisters, me, it’s what we’re all dealing with. It’s hard to manage when someone who is honestly trying to help is actually the problem. I don’t like getting into it.”

“Fuck, I get it. And sorry for pushing this far, and for all the stuff before.” She shook her head. “I mean, no wonder you broke the desk.”

I grinned slightly. The only good thing to come out of this. I didn’t like where I had to go mentally in order to make Aura work, but at least I showed I could use it without the weapon. That thing was basically training wheels and thanks to my sister's call I had at least taken a couple of wobbly steps without its help. I could build on that.

“Uh, if you don’t mind me asking, what was that glowy thing?” I looked back at Aisha. “The bit with the gray light and the smashing? I’ve never seen that before.”

I sighed. I said I would answer questions, and at least it wasn’t more personal family history stuff.

“It’s called Aura.” I focused. I wasn’t totally confident I’d be able to manage this, but I had done it before. Now I had Do One Thing at a Time to help. I concentrated on the lantern-shield, the way its barbs and angles seemed so appropriate, and on the way Alena had dug up everything I’d tried to hold back. All those moments of burying my feelings, the frustration of it all. How I just wanted to let it out.

“Woah.” Aisha called as the gray light spread over my body before fading.

I nodded and smiled slightly. “It’s one of those hard to use things that came with other powers. It can do a bunch of physical enhancement stuff, but I can’t use it reliably.”

“What’s the problem?” She asked. “It run off a low battery, or burn you out, or something?”

I shook my head and winced internally. “It's more personal than that.”

Aisha leaned back. “Look, I’ve already pushed way more than I meant to today. I know you said I could ask anything, but please, don’t get into it if you don’t want to.”

I sighed and looked up at her. “No, it’s not that bad.” Well, it sort of was, but the explanation was fine. “Aura is like this personal expression of who you are that manifests around you. Self-expression is a big part of it and I’m… not great with that kind of thing.”

“That why it came out during the call?” I nodded. “God, your power is a lot more complicated than anyone thinks.”

I shrugged at her. The worst of the effects of the call had passed, but I was still feeling agitated. It would be good to move on to another subject.

“How did you figure it out?” Aisha asked. “I mean, if all that stuff was hard to get to?”

“Apeiron was granted a weapon that acted to facilitate that particular ability.” Survey’s voice chimed from the screen floating above my wrist.

“How did that work?” Aisha asked the display directly.

“Specific design elements were personally resonant in a manner that facilitated the ability.” The A.I. answered. Apparently she had been informed by my duplicates. No doubt they thought they were helping, and also enjoying the fact that they wouldn’t need to deal with any of the aftermath.

Aisha was looking at me hopefully. To say I didn’t want to get into this would be an understatement. On the other hand, Aura. It was the super mode of life fibers without the mental effects or needing Garment as a regulator.

It was also deeply personal, and something I didn’t want to share with anyone. But that was the problem. Keeping closed off was pretty much the antithesis of Aura. That power was about projecting who you were out into the world, almost literally baring your soul. Doing that without honest expression was incredibly difficult. If I wanted to use it without training wheels I would need to get comfortable with this kind of thing.

Which is how we found ourselves by the entryway lockers. By we I meant everyone. Garment, Aisha, Survey’s hologram, and the recently added holographic projection of Fleet leaning against the wall in his racecar getup.

“Is that it?” Aisha asked. “I mean, it looks nice, I was just expecting more from the way you were acting.”

I held up my arm to show the black metal band wrapped around my wrist. “The power that Aura came with was about shifting weapons from one form to another, combining them, or collapsing them to smaller forms.”

“Wait,” She leaned in. “That expands, right? What does it turn into?”

“You might want to step back.” I said. “It’s not very nice.”

Aisha retreated to the other side of the room and watched intently. I did not want to do this, but I could at least consider why I didn’t want to do it. Taking a step back and trying to separate out the emotions from the current situation.

This would help me get a handle on Aura, there was no doubt about that. My concerns about it dredging up old memories were kind of moot at this point. That damage was done. I could try to paper over it, or try to get something out of it.

Power through and deal with it. It’s what I’m good at.

I activated the shift and felt plates of adamantium slide across my arm, forming a gauntlet. The front of the band unfolded into a small shield ringed by barbed spikes. Weapon mounts and an integrated lantern decorated the front and a spool of razor wire sat under the shield, connected to the grapnel launcher on the gauntlet.

Aisha watched the entire display with wide eyes. I felt my confidence wilt as she stared open mouthed at the monstrosity of metal that was apparently a personal expression of self. Suddenly this wasn’t seeming like such a good idea. I desperately wanted to activate the grapnel and launch myself out of this situation.

“Holy shit.” Aisha whispered, and I cringed internally. “That is so fucking cool.”

…and it was times like this that reminded me that Aisha is in eighth grade.

“Seriously, look at that fucking thing! It’s like the coolest shit ever! And it gives you superpowers? Jesus Christ that’s awesome. Is that a harpoon on the glove? Can you like, Batman around the city with it?”

I turned away from her uncomfortably intense adoration, looking to Garment for help.

What I saw filled me with unspeakable dread.

Garment had her sketchbook out and was frantically drawing SOMETHING inside it. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to tell where she was directing her attention, but this time there was no doubt, not with the way she shifted every time the shield moved.

Aisha followed my gaze, then leaned over to look at the image Garment was working on. Her eyes lit up and a smile split her face.

“Garment, no.”

“Garment, yes!” Aisha responded as Garment turned a page and began working on another sketch. I quickly collapsed the weapon, much to the disappointment of my audience.

“Oh, come on.” Aisha pleaded on her and Garment’s behalf.

“Nope, that’s enough.” I put the weapon back into its locker and closed the door. “Before all this crap started we had work to do. That situation hasn’t changed, so no more distractions.”

When I turned back I saw Aisha leaning forward, reading the locker’s placard. My stomach roiled as I remembered what was printed there. But instead of treating it with any level of derision Aisha looked up at me sympathetically.

“Is that why you were so anxious about this?” she asked.

I shrugged and felt like sinking into the floor. “Sort of. It’s not a nice thing to have shoved into your face.”

“Yeah,” She agreed. “I guess your power isn’t that subtle with this stuff.”

“No.” I said, looking down at the plate. “It really isn’t.”

Weapon Name: Trauma

Owner: Apeiron

Class: Grapnel-Lantern Shield

Type: Melee, Ranged

Weapon Derivation: Lantern Shield, Grapple Gun (Razor Wire)

I was thankfully saved from the awkwardness by the arrival of a power from the Resources and Durability constellation. It was called Lack of Materials and cut the material requirements for any work in half.

Normally that would have been useless, considering my other resource powers, but this had another effect. If I did use all the materials I needed, after the effect of other powers was factored in, it would provide an increase to both quality and capability.

That was absolutely massive, and also unique. The quality increase was nice, but I had several powers that improved the quality of my work. There were some projects or designs that just couldn’t be enhanced through better workmanship. Double the quality of a knife and it’s still a knife, just a better made knife. This power meant I could actually affect the capability of what I created.

Actual, blanket improvements just from providing the same materials I’d already been working with. It was huge. And daunting.

Once again, everything I made was obsolete. And this wasn’t just a small blip of quality. Everything I made was now lacking the expanded functionality that I could grant it. All my workshop upgrades, personal gear, vehicles, equipment, armor, and even household items. It was all outdated.

“What?” Aisha asked. “New power?”

“Yeah.” I admitted. “Called Lack of Materials. Uh, actually related to the volcano.”

“Seriously?” She raised an eyebrow. I just shrugged.

“Some powers have loose connections. Same type of technology, or just a similar feel. Not always obvious. Volcano’s also connected to a power that makes things I create look good.”

“So they’re grouped together? Like they’re from the same place?” She seemed to be considering something.

“Yeah, but it’s not always relevant.” I replied.

She put aside whatever she was thinking about and turned back to me. “So what does this one do? Something with materials, right?”

I nodded. “Can make stuff with half the materials I used to need, but if I use the full amount I need it comes out a lot better. Not just better made, but with better capability for whatever it’s designed for.”

“But, wait.” Aisha considered things. “If you only need half or whatever, you can make something, break it down, and you have twice as much? This power gives you infinite materials! Holy crap, you’re going to be unstoppable!”

“Aisha.” I spoke in a flat voice. “I already have a power that does that. I’ve had infinite materials since Saturday night.”

She blanched. “What, seriously?”

“Yeah.” I confirmed. “And it’s a better power than this one. Between five and twenty five times what I put into a project.”

“So, what? You just have infinity gold?” Something occurred to her. “Shit, that’s how you made the throne, right? And the diamonds. Jesus, you really are rich?”

“Okay, you’re just getting that now?” I asked.

“Give me a break. This takes some time to sink in.” She shook her head. “So what was that other thing? About improvements?”

I let out a slow sigh. “Yeah. It’s a huge quality increase. Not just that, but more functionality than before.” I thought about all the work I’d put in that would have to be redone. “I’m going to have to rebuild all my projects and most of the workshop again.”

“Why?”

Aisha’s question took me completely off guard. “What?” I asked.

“Okay, I’m not pretending to get this stuff on your level, but why do you need to rebuild everything?” She took a look around. “Is it worse than it was before?”

“No.” I admitted.

“Is it going to make a difference? I mean, you pretty much creamed Uber and Leet. Would this upgrade have made that better?”

“Not really.” It might have let my duplicates take down Oni Lee, but that was dicey. He was flicker teleporting continuously and using buildings and civilians for cover. A sniper shot can’t stop someone who’s gone by the time you aim the weapon.

“Is any of it going to help stop March or the ABB?” She asked.

I thought before responding. “Some of it will. Major projects and key manufacturing components.”

“Then shouldn’t you just do those? Why do you need to do everything, especially if this is going to happen again?”

I took a moment to think about it. The instinctive reason that jumped to my mind was ‘because it wasn’t right’. All these projects were staring at me, reminding me that I could do better. That they were less than my best effort. Stopping here, going out with less than the best I could manage, that was admitting it was my limit. Permanently associating me with mistakes and rushed decisions.

I normally wouldn’t even have thought about it, but after the call I’d had and the effort it took to access Aura it was fresh in my mind. This was more family crap. That attitude had been so common growing up. Good enough wasn’t a thing. You did your best, and if it was less than perfect, if it was defective, that meant that you were defective.

I gritted my teeth at the thought. Sadness transitioning to anger. It was progress. I hated leaving things, but Aisha was right. I couldn’t afford to make sure everything was perfect. I needed to focus on what could make a difference now.

“You’re right.” I admitted. “I need to prioritize things.”

“Great. So what’s first?” She asked eagerly. Right, I had promised her power armor. That was something I’d be working up towards. I wasn’t going to stick her in a hardsuit on day one.

“Well,” I answered. “Probably should take a crack at celestial bronze. Magic metals will open up a lot of options, and I have the volcano now.”

“That the one you need the magic memory water for?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I answered “That’s the stumbling block, but I should be able to figure it out.”

“Hey,” She looked up at me. “You said parahumans are like magic right?” I nodded. “There any way I can help with that? Since it’s a memory thing?”

The question took me by surprise. I stared blankly before I could think of a response. “Uh, I really don’t know.” I started going over the alchemy needed for this transmutation. “Maybe?” I offered.

“Really?” She perked up as she asked.

“I’m not sure.” I admitted. “I’ll have to check things in my magic lab.”

“You have a magic lab?” She inquired.

I nodded. “It showed up right after you called. I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, so this is as good a time as any.” And hopefully there wouldn’t be any difficult to explain surprises waiting for us.

It turned out the magic lab was fairly mundane, at least by the standards of the Forge. It was a good deal more than just a lab, actually a small base in its own right. That means in addition to the facilities needed for magical research and testing it had various basic amenities. Essentially it was another version of the Hidden Hideaway house, but without the veneer of domestic design.

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t a surprise waiting for me. I was dealing with the Celestial Forge after all. It wouldn’t be right if there wasn’t some horrible revelation. Since the workshop started seeing rapid alterations Survey had been charting them obsessively. This resulted in floor plans that were fully three-dimensional and accurate to less than a millimeter. Reviewing these on the way to the lab revealed the terrible truth.

When the volcano appeared it was clearly the largest addition to my workshop. A ‘small’ stratovolcano is still thousands of feet high, and considerably broader. I had recognized its appearance next to the Skyforge, its size, its relative positioning, and the fact that it had some internal structures. It wasn’t until Survey mapped those internal caves and passages that I realized what had happened.

The Skyforge had been the highest point of my workshop. The volcano towered over it. The insane thing was the volcano extended DOWN. Down as in into my base. There were links from the volcano tunnels to certain areas of my workshop. The relative size and positioning of the volcano’s appearance meant its base pretty much encompassed my entire workshop.

Which meant I didn’t have a workshop anymore. I had a volcano lair. Everything other than my Skyforge was ‘inside’ the volcano. It meant I could actually make alterations, add paths and hallways, and install new rooms. It also meant everything was inside a volcano. I was trying to convince the Protectorate I wasn’t a villain while simultaneously conducting research from inside an extra-dimensional volcano fortress.

That was something I decided to set aside for the moment. And definitely not mention it to Aisha. At all. In any context.

For the moment, I had a proper magic lab to enjoy as well as my first parahuman test subject. It was a level of research I hadn’t had a chance to indulge in before, so I was relishing the opportunity to dive into the mystical arts. It was a dynamic and harrowing encounter with the primal forces of the universe.

Aisha was not quite as impressed by the endeavor.

“You know, I’m pretty sure I’ve done all of this stuff at sleepovers. We could probably save time by just grabbing this crap from my room.”

“Aisha, I have two sisters. I’m well aware of what happens at sleepovers. Trust me, you were doing it wrong. Now hold the cup steady.” I dripped the molten wax into the water, then removed the hardened blob and examined it under a magnifying glass.

“So what is that supposed to accomplish again?” She leaned back to look at me.

“Measuring thalamic differential.” I answered without looking up. “I need to find out how your power influences things around you.”

“Don’t you have a machine for that?” She asked. “I figured this would be like five minutes under an MRI, then on to the magic god metal.”

“Trust me, I’d like to get to the god metal just as much as you, but this is new ground.” I set aside the wax and added some details to my notes.

“Is that ‘new ground’ based on schoolyard fortune telling?” She quipped.

“Divination. There is actually a method here.” I sighed.

“So you bringing out the crystal pendants again?” She quipped. “Or are we moving on to Ouija boards and cootie catchers?”

I looked up from my work. “You suddenly an expert on mystical dynamics now?”

“Come on, can’t you speed this up?” She asked. “I mean, it was fun at first, but this is just dragging.”

I considered things. I could actually use some help here, and Aisha was going to find out these details eventually.

“Fine.” I answered. “I’ll get some help. That will get us through faster.”

“Great.” She looked around the lab. “Who’s helping? Survey? Fleet? Garment?”

“No.” I smiled. “The other guys.”

“What?”

Aisha watched me skeptically as I held the vial of blue liquid. The magic research lab was conveniently located next to the alchemy lab, handy for both the crossover applications and easy access to items like this.

Aisha watched me carefully and I lifted the potion to my lips and swallowed it in two gulps.

Her eyes widened as first one, then another duplicate stepped out.

“Hi Aisha.” The first said. “Nice to meet you.”

“What the hell is this?” She stammered.

I held up the empty vial. “Duplication potion. It makes two copies that last about twenty minutes.”

“You can just make something that does that? For anyone?” I could see the implications she was putting together.

“Nope.” The second said. “Those only work for him.” He indicated towards me. “Also can’t stack them. Nasty side effects. Need to run their course or pop.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Pop?”

“They aren’t that sturdy.” I answered. “One hit and they're gone.”

Aisha nodded slowly. “So they’re like those bugs? Just energy constructs or something?”

Before I could answer I felt the Forge move again, connecting with the Knowledge constellation. My duplicates reacted as well.

“What was that?” Aisha asked.

“New power.” The first replied.

“It’s called Analysis Tools.” I offered. “Covers how to build sensors for determining physical makeup, finding secret doors, and how to detect magic.”

“Once again.” The second griped, looking at my notes. “Get a power right after we need it.”

“Hey, it’ll be good for confirmation of results. And monitoring the transmutation.” The first offered.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Aisha raised her hands. “You all have his powers? Like, even new powers? You can just make more of yourself?”

“It’s not like we last very long.” The first commented. “But we help out while we’re here.”

“Hold on.” She added. “You have all the same gear, right?” She looked at me, then at the duplicates. “Were you two in the suits at the Uber and Leet fight?”

“No.” Said the first. Aisha relaxed slightly. “Those were the last guys.”

The girl stopped moving. “What?”

“The last guys? From the potion before us?” the second clarified. I was just watching the exchange with more amusement than was probably appropriate.

“What do you mean the last guys?” She asked a little desperately. “You are the guys made by the potion, right?”

“By this potion.” The first offered. “Different every time, depending on what he’d done since then.”

“Right.” Said the second. “We’re copies of Joe, or I guess that should be Apeiron Prime.” He shared a snicker with the other duplicate. “So we’re the same as him when the potion goes down.”

“So what happened to the last guys?” She asked with concern.

“Oh, they’re gone.” The first thought for a second before clarifying. “Well, one is gone, one is frozen in a time bubble in the process of disappearing.” I felt him check the sensor logs from the time stop. “Should probably finish vanishing around October, 2864.”

“So you’re just going to vanish? Like, you’re here now and are going to be gone forever?” She gave me a concerned look.

Looked down at her. “I’ve already had that discussion. They’re fine with it.”

“We are.” The second added.

“Also they get time off at the end of their duration to do whatever they want.” I added.

“You like the TV room?” The first asked.

Aisha nodded. “I thought that might have been a little out of character for Jozef.”

“Hey, they’re my copies. It’s still me building that stuff.” I contested. “I’m just the one who also has to deal with it after.”

Aisha nodded slowly. “So…” A smile crept onto her face. “What kind of stuff do they build?”

There was a conspiratorial smile between my duplicates that I did not like at all. “Guys?” I asked. “Back to work?”

I did manage to get my duplicates back on task, and Aisha moved remarkably fast from existential concern to coconspirator. I had a feeling I was going to have to closely monitor 20% time whenever Aisha was involved.

We did manage to pull together a basic magic scanner, not a high quality nuanced device, but the type of thing we could assemble in a few minutes. It could detect presence and absence of magic and detect the directed use of parahuman abilities.

Aisha didn’t actually radiate magic if she wasn’t using her power, and I’m betting that’s the case with most parahumans. It effectively shot down the idea that I could track down the ABB through mass scans. I might be lucky and catch someone when they activate their power as a civilian, but that would require a level of surveillance that I wasn’t ready to roll out safely. Setting aside the unwritten rules, which the ABB was currently setting on fire, the last thing I needed was the Protectorate up in arms about a drone army.

The entire endeavor moved into the Alchemist’s lab for my second attempt at a major transmutation. Unlike the previous precisely arranged set of reagents and symbols the primary focus of this endeavor was Aisha sitting in the center of the room holding a jar of water.

“So, just activate my power? Nothing fancy?” She asked, seeming a little disappointed.

“The binding array should take care of most of it. Just drop the effect when you see a change.” I reassured her as my duplicates made the final adjustments to the ritual.

“Right.” She looked down at the jar. “So what am I looking for?”

Frankly I had no idea. I understood the mystical composition of River Lethe water, but the physical appearance was still a mystery. The best I could say was that it would be different. There wasn’t a lot more than that for me to go on. These powers were running that ‘skill and understanding’ thing, not ‘experience and memory’.

“Just watch for any visible difference.” I assured her. “Once you see a change pour it into the basin so we can bind the effect.”

She nodded in understanding. “What’s he doing?” She asked, gesturing to the duplicate working on the potion station. “That have something to do with this?”

“Nope.” He quipped. “Making more duplication potions. Lack of Materials lets the quality increase as long as we don’t skimp on ingredients. Figure we might get up to half an hour.”

Which would be great in terms of crafting and research projects and terrifying in terms of their 20% time. Six minutes of free time with two copies of me doing whatever they wanted or thought was amusing…

Maybe I should get Survey to add that to the list of S-Class threats I've accumulated.

“Right,” I said, checking over the final work. “On that note we should get started so we don’t run into the end of the potion duration again.”

“Hey, do I get a little cape?” Aisha asked, pointing to the mantels the second duplicate was handing out.

“These are condensed alchemical robes.” The duplicate explained. “You don’t need one if you’re not participating in the transmutation.”

“So are they magic or something?” she asked.

“No.” I explained. “Just tools.” Actually that was a thought. These had been designed and constructed before I got my Arcane Craft power. They were good quality, but otherwise mundane. By rebuilding them as proper focuses, especially with Elven Enchantment and the benefits of Lack of Materials, they could greatly improve our ability to transmute materials. It might be enough to finally make transmuting cybertonium a possibility.

That was something I’d have to prioritize. I’d been way too general with my upgrades. There were particular applications that hadn’t been relevant, just because of the timeframe I’d been under. Between new abilities and everything happening in the city I hadn't had a chance to fully apply my powers.

Arcane Craft would really need to be explored. It wasn’t limited to magic, so had the potential of providing a means of channeling any ‘mysterious forces’. That extended much further than I imagined, potentially even to parahuman abilities.

It was a thought for later, but not something I could put off indefinitely. However, right now I had a transmutation to complete.

“Everything’s set up.” I confirmed after a final check. “You can activate your power.”

Aisha nodded and closed her eyes. I was impressed she hadn’t accidently flickered her power since the call. It meant it was becoming easier, or she was displaying a tremendous effort on my behalf. The way her expression relaxed as she let out her power led me to believe it was the second one.

And suddenly I was standing in my Alchemist’s Lab with two duplicates and a complete ritual space. We knew what this was supposed to be, but there was something that made it impossible to connect it with the idea that Aisha was here.

“Okay, magic sensor is reading her power, centered on… somewhere.” One of the duplicates confirmed. “Can’t actually tell where, even with it on the readouts.”

Survey provided a focus location for us, despite the fact that I was absolutely sure there was nothing there.

“God damn that’s a strong power.” One of the duplicates muttered.

“Aisha says that she knows and asks how long this will take.” Survey’s hologram informed us from where’s its drone was projecting it at the edge of the ritual space. “Though her exact dialogue contains significantly more profanity.”

“Thank you Survey, and Aisha?” I asked, though it felt distinctly odd. “We’ll get through this as quickly as we can.”

At that the duplicates began lighting candles and burning the reagents. Despite there being no visible focal material the energies could be seen moving towards the center of the circle. The second duplicate began the chant and the rest of us picked it up.

I realized shortly after that I was essentially singing in front of an audience. The thought made me seriously uncomfortable, but my duplicates reassured me digitally and I was able to maintain the chant through the process. Finally, seemingly out of nowhere, a cloudy liquid appeared in the central basin.

We moved in carefully and continued the ceremony, adding binding agents to the mixture and sealing the arcane energies to the liquid. When the ritual reached its peak the fluid turned milky white and expanded massively in volume, nearly to the rim. All three of us took a careful step back.

“Holy shit. We actually did it.” One of the duplicates gasped.

“Did what? It worked?” Aisha was suddenly next to the basin and leaning over it.

“Aisha!” I called back. “Careful!”

“What?” she asked, but still retreated.

“It worked. That’s true River Lethe water. That means complete memory erasure on contact.” I warned.

“Shit, seriously?” She looked at the milky water. “I didn’t know it was that big a deal.”

“Well, your powers might have some weird interaction or shield you somehow, but I wouldn’t want to test that.”

“Good plan.” She nodded, but her attention still seemed to be drawn to the basin. “So, aside from god metal you can just mind wipe people now?”

“Hey, we could do that before.” The second duplicate quipped. “This is just easier than mucking with memory filters.”

“You have memory tech?” Aisha asked.

“We have a lot of tech.” I admitted. “More than I’ve been able to fully roll out.”

“Spoiled for choice, I guess.” She commented. “So what now?”

“Now?” I smiled. “Now we forge.”

It actually took a fair amount of time to get to the caldera of the volcano. It wasn’t a friendly environment, but Aisha insisted on coming and was observing the process from the back of an oversized drone constructed for the purpose. I was on a new set of duplicates, probably the last ones who would be made with a twenty-minute duration, and standing knee deep in lava, working an ingot of infused bronze in the heat of the volcano.

It was excessive, but I wanted to get through this. Being knee deep in lava was unpleasant even if Fashion’s reinforcement made the heat a non-issue. The main problem was lava wasn’t like water. It was molten rock, and was actually denser than the human body. You couldn’t really swim in lava because you’d float like a pool toy.

As such walking into a lava pool was more like digging aside heavy mud to make holes for your feet. It really diminished the grandeur of working to forge divine metal inside an active volcano.

Still, we had everything we needed. Divinely infused metal, a volcanic forge, and, after careful tending by a trio of masterfully skilled divine smiths with expert tools, a basin of magical water to quench the red-hot ingot.

One of the duplicates took on that job, fully covered in case of any splashed as the water sputtered around the searing bronze. Even with all the protections he was able to communicate feelings of discomfort from the fumes and splatters, providing as much mental data as his implant could convey. It seemed there was serious risk associated with making a metal this powerful.

The duplicate lifted the completed ingot from the water, Workaholic now making it twenty five times the mass it was before. Fleet directed my motoroid to secure the Lethe water and move it to a containment vessel. It was another incredibly powerful item I was going to have buried in my workshop.

The three of us trudged out of the volcanic pool, brushing off cooling lava as we went. I held the unnaturally perfect ingot of bronze and felt the power within it. My mind spun with the possibilities it presented.

I looked out over the mountain as the Forge missed a connection to the Alchemy constellation. This was a big step, probably the biggest step next to cybertonium. It opened up serious enchanting, stronger weapons and armor, truly magical applications, and even fully independent automatons. With Divine Child and Unnatural Skill there was so much I could accomplish.

I shared a smile with my duplicates as the oversized drone we had built for Survey approached. It also looked like there was a platform on it, which was a little odd as far as design decisions went, but not exactly debilitating.

And then Aisha was on the drone looking apologetic.

“Sorry, got caught up in things.” She had a sheen of sweat from the heat radiating from the volcano and was shielding her eyes from the open caldera. “So, what are you going to make first?”

I looked at the girl and conferred with my duplicates. We understood her problem, and how much effort to put into managing her power, but it was still annoying. The constant mental jaunts as I had to recontextualize everything I was doing wore on me.

Then I thought about what I’d been considering before, the potential of my abilities and applications I hadn’t tapped into yet. And I considered the celestial bronze in my hand. Incredibly magical, actually even more so in this case thanks to the enhancement from Lack of Materials. If there was anything that could manage this project, it would be this.

“I think I have an idea.”

It turned out there was a big difference between an idea and a completed project. This wasn’t something where I could just pull a design out of my head and make it work. I was in new territory here, and even with all my resources it was proving to be a challenge.

But that was the point. I hadn’t been pushing what I could do. The forge gave me skills, and I applied them at their base level. No ambition or creativity. I’d basically been doing busy work that had luckily kept me ahead of my enemies. This was something I needed to explore and develop properly, but also something that would yield real benefits.

It took well more than the duration I had left on my duplicates. They benevolently decided to take their 20% time on related projects, actually digging into the Magic Lab and related materials.

I handed Aisha off to Garment, and no doubt she’d come back with a new wardrobe. It reminded me of some other projects I’d need to address for her, though thankfully these were more rote work than experimental projects.

The work crept on into the late evening. It was probably the most ambitious project I’d attempted since my computer throne, but what it could accomplish would be worth it. I was alloying celestial bronze’s magic into mithril and working that into an act of arcane craft and enchantment I’d never considered before. The difficulty was such that I was actually making mistakes. I can’t remember the last time a crafting project was difficult enough to actually push my skills.

But I made it. Finally, after a full night’s work, multiple extended duplicates, and an unbelievable amount of research and experimentation I had it. The implications of what this could mean to the world rivaled some of my most ambitious projects, and I had done it.

I took a case containing my masterwork and a few other items to meet Aisha at the entryway. The girl was out of her ‘cape costume’ and into a more casual outfit of Garment’s design. She also had a backpack, also of Garment’s design, almost certainly full of additional clothing.

Garment was behind her with a large duffle bag and seemed to be trying to convince her that Aisha should definitely attempt to carry a bag of clothing roughly the same size as her. The girl was brushing her off, and I wondered how long that particular conversation had gone on for.

Aisha smiled when she saw me and hurried towards the entrance. “So, vacation over? You kicking me out?”

“I’m afraid so. I don’t think your family would appreciate you staying here.” I replied.

“Shame. Nicer than either my dad or brother’s place.” She quipped.

“Don’t even start. Not even joking about that stuff.” I cautioned. I had enough trouble with the mess with Taylor. I didn’t want to dive into another one.

“Yeah, sorry. Kind of force of habit.” She apologized.

I nodded. “Okay, serious time.”

“This the Simurgh stuff?” She asked.

“Unfortunately, we’ll need to get into it.” I gestured at the entrance. “Once you leave the workshop you’ll be past the bulk of my defenses. The best way to counter precognition is really to follow my lead.”

“What, that’s it?” She asked skeptically.

“Basically.” I confirmed. “I base my actions off when my power expands, which shouldn’t be predictable. You wait on me and it should cover you as well.”

“That’s all it takes?” She looked up at me. “I figured there’d be containment procedures, or implants, or some crazy time magic.”

“This is basic protection. It’s not perfect, but it should scramble long term models. Just hold off until you get my signal.”

“Right.” She nodded. “What about the case?”

I held it up and opened it. Inside was a delicate wrist watch and a decorated hair clip. Aisha stared down at them blankly while Garment displayed her complete approval.

“So, I’m guessing this isn’t just jewelry, right?” She asked.

I nodded. “This is the first of your equipment. Start with the watch.”

Aisha lifted it from the velvet case and carefully put it on her wrist. She twisted it back and forth, appreciating the design. “So, what’s the deal with this?” She asked.

“Survey?” I called out the A.I.’s name and a sheath of orange mass fields appeared around Aisha’s forearm, including a display screen showing Survey’s waving avatar.

“Hello Aisha.” She spoke through the watch's audio.

“What the hell?” Aisha started frantically twisting her arm, watching as the fields followed it’s relative position.

“It’s an omni-tool.” I answered. “Fully functional, if a bit scaled down.” Thanks to my gadget training I was good with watches. There was a lot of technology stuffed into that device, and it was effectively scan proof by any conventional metric.

“Wait, that thing you have that makes things and shoots fire and stuff?” Her eyes were glowing, and I lifted a hand to stall her.

“Advanced features, including all combat applications, are locked behind Survey’s control. Which brings me to the second point.” Survey helped by displaying the new component of the watch.

“Uh, what am I looking at?” Aisha asked, as she stared at the design blankly.

“That,” I said with pride. “Is a miniaturized QEC, a Quantum Entanglement Communicator.” It was a major project, not on the level of the second item, but it had taken multiple duplicates dedicating their 20% time to the work to get the machinery for producing it up and running.

“Okay, I get that this is big, since it has a word like ‘Quantum’ in its name, but I could use a little more context.”

“Right, so it works by separating particles while maintaining quantum entanglement between them allowing relative changes to be conveyed through the link instantaneously.” I saw her expression and dialed things back. “It’s a communicator that doesn’t use radio and never loses signal.”

“Oh, okay. That’s how it’s talking to Survey?” She asked.

“A truncated copy of my program has been installed on this device. Additionally the QEC provides a link to the workshop computer core, allowing access to my full functions whenever the workshop is not isolated from reality.” The A.I. answered for herself.

“Wait,” Aisha began to put the pieces together. “So this means I can talk to her whenever I want? Like, even if my power’s on I’ll have someone to talk to?” Her voice cracked slightly at the end and Garment rested a glove on her shoulder.

“Uh, yeah. That is the case here, but about that…”

“What?” She asked. “Is there some problem with it? Something wrong?”

“No.” I answered quickly. “No, it’s fine. You’ll be able to talk to her when your power’s out of control, but you probably won’t need to.”

“What?” She scrunched her brow. I sighed in response.

“Okay, I’m doing a bad job explaining this.” I took a breath. “Uh, context? I have this power called Arcane Craft. It’s about making items that channel magic and other forces.”

She nodded. “Like what your wand and shield do?”

“Same principle, but a bit different. It’s stuff that I can design, not just what my power gives me.” She nodded again and I continued. “The thing is, this works with pretty much anything supernatural, even if my power doesn’t count it as magic or something.”

“Okay…” She trailed off, not understanding what I was getting to.

“Right, so I realized when we were transmuting the water that I could potentially make an item that alters or helps with the expression of a parahuman power.”

I watched her face as things fell into place. Her eyes locked onto the hair clip. It was precisely forged out of celestial bronze infused mithril, the most magical material I had access to. The clip was decorated with a cluster of elven enchanted diamonds held in an arrangement that was both of serious thalamic significance and quite aesthetically pleasing, looking like an arrangement of leaves and berries.

I had actually gone a little overboard on the diamonds just to make it more easily dismissed as a piece of costume jewelry. Between the size, color, and number of stones the only two options were that a 13-year-old had several million dollars’ worth of gems in a hair clip, or she had dropped $5.99 for an overdressed trinket at Claire’s.

I hadn’t quite succeeded in making the clip look embarrassingly tacky, but I had given it my best attempt.

“What does it do?” She asked in a shaky voice.

“Okay, a focus like this would have to be on the head. Normally a diadem or something like that, but one of my powers helps with miniaturization. You shouldn’t lose any effect as long as it’s attached to your hair. I used the metal I just made alloyed with an earlier project and specifically enchanted gems…”

Aisha leaned forward. “What. Does. It. Do.”

I took a breath. This seemed like a brilliant idea when I started the project, but handing it over untested to someone who desperately needed it was causing anxiety to bubble up. I felt reassurance from my passenger and received assurances from both duplicates who were on 20% time, as well as an assurance that the fire was under control…

I elected to send Fleet to help with that.

“This is new ground for me, and it’s untested, but it SHOULD help you develop control of your powers.” I watched her reaction as her face contorted through shades of desperate hope.

“How… How does it work?” She asked in a small voice, and I noticed she was leaning into Garment’s support, possibly subconsciously.

“You put it on and it should help you learn to regulate your powers. I tried to make it a development tool rather than suppression or something like that. If it works properly eventually you won’t need it.”

“It will work.” Her voice was unflinching. “You built it. I know it will work.” She gently picked it up and looked at the delicate metalwork. “Does this have a name, or is that just something they do online?”

“Ren.” I answered. “Its name is Ren.”

That had actually been the biggest step forward in its manufacturing. I desperately wanted this to work. That meant pulling out all the stops and pushing powers further than I had before. I wasn’t ready to sing to the unseen, but I could use words to define the aspects of an item. It had been a first try, but I could feel the power bind when the word came to my lips.

Ren. The word of power for Remembrance. My first attempt at the second kind of Elven Enchantment.

Aisha lifted the hairclip and secured her purple lock with it. As soon as it was in place I could see a wave of tension leave her body. It was lucky Garment was there to support her.

“Holy shit. It’s so easy.” For a second I was standing in the entryway with an empty case looking at Garment, then Aisha was back, faster than ever before.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” She was almost crying. I was having flashbacks to Weld, and feeling distinctly uncomfortable with how much of this might be in my future.

But this was a significant event. Not just for Case 53s. Anyone with uncontrollable powers, I would be able to help them. That had the potential to make a world of difference, even if things like this were a lot more time consuming and difficult to produce than most of my technology.

Aisha was still marveling at the focus I had made. “This is just so huge. I can’t imagine anything bigger than this.”

“Oh,” I asked, lifting a beautifully made thermos. “So I guess you don’t want this standard sized thermos holding twelve gallons of elf tea?”

Aisha took one look at the item in my hand, then at my expression, and broke into a dry laugh. I couldn’t even take credit for this. It had been a project from one of my duplicates’ 20% time, combining the size reductions possible with Tinkerer with the mundane super science of Simple Scientific Solution. The result was a beautifully made thermos, slightly on the heavy side, but able to carry an immense amount of liquid.

Well, mundane liquid. It had been designed using Simple Scientific Solution, which meant it could get a bit weird about household applications. There was no problem with Tea, even magical tea. I might be able to get away with some potions, but using it to carry delicate solutions, reactive chemicals, or molten metals was just asking for a spectacular failure.

That was just the nature of the power. It made mundane issues trivial, but didn’t lend itself to larger concerns.

“Okay, thank you.” She greedily took the thermos. “For that, and everything else. I mean…”

“Don’t.” I assured her. “It’s fine. Just try to be careful. Are you going to be alright out there?”

She nodded. “I’ll be fine at my dad’s place. Need to get it ready for when he gets out of the hospital tomorrow. Probably going to move in with my brother sometime soon, but that’s still being sorted out, and that might get pushed until Dad’s back on his feet or something.” She shrugged.

“Do you need a ride or anything?” I asked.

The girl shook her head and ran her fingers over the clip in her hair. “I can manage. With this thing my power is like a light switch. I can sneak out no problem.”

I was glad to hear that. “You’ll have Survey if anything happens.” She looked down at the watch, with its mass fields collapsing, the last being Survey’s avatar waving goodbye. “As long as the workshop is open you have an unblockable line. Even if that’s cut off the omni-tool can still use regular EMF or the cell network.”

“I’ll be fine. I mean, thanks for worrying, both of you, but this is more than I could have asked for.” She put the thermos in her backpack then, after one last hopeful gesture from Garment, took the heaving duffle bag of clothing.

“Uh, do you need some help?” I asked as she struggled with the bulk.

“No, it’s not that heavy, just bulky.” Right, Garment wouldn’t risk clothing getting damaged by overpacking.

“Alright.” I sighed as I thought about the next few days. “I’ve got a lot to deal with over the next couple of days, but I’ll get some work started on your equipment. We’ll need to sort out training and gear…”

“What?” She asked.

I had dropped off as the Celestial Forge made another connection to the same cluster of motes that provided Skills: Physics. There was enough reach to secure two more. The first gave a shocking comprehensive understanding of the physical sciences, biology, chemistry, geology and even ecology. It was a bit oddball, and would have been of dubious use if not for how comprehensive and advanced it was.

The second mote covered combat skills. It gave a comprehensive understanding of hand to hand combat and training techniques. Really comprehensive, covering a truly insane array of weapons and possible opponents, some of which were just bizarre, but still somehow effective.

“New power.” I answered. “Knowledge of natural science and hand to hand combat.”

Aisha scrunched her nose. “You get some really weird combinations.”

I sighed. “Believe me, I know.” I looked back towards the door. “I’ll be in touch. You good to go?”

“Yeah.” She shifted the bag slightly. “You want me to flicker my power again, for the throne thing?”

“That would be helpful.” I replied.

“Right.” She moved towards the exit. “Uh, Jozef? Sorry that your sister is such a bitch.”

I didn’t respond to that, instead retreating to the command throne. To be fair, the reason for my lack of response was forgetting her almost immediately and only remembering her statement when she flickered her power a few minutes later.

It wasn’t a great note to end on, but at least it came from an honest place. My family drama wasn’t over, but I had probably kicked it down the road a bit. At least I got something out of it. Aura would be huge if I could get a handle on it, and Alena’s call had pulled back a lot of the bullshit I’d been using to distract myself.

On top of that I had new skills to manage. My personal combat skill was significantly better, but the real kicker was the physical sciences. The level of biological and chemical knowledge contained in that ability was breathtaking. It could make a real difference in trying to help Weld and other Case 53s.

It also further expanded my Alchemy lab with a bunch of chemistry equipment that looked like it came out of Star Trek.

All that would be a project for later, like so many things that had built up. Right now I needed a shower, some food and sleep. At least my powers ensured that those would be pleasant. Food and sleep. I could deal with the rest of this tomorrow.

*************

Addendum Mike

Mike walked down the familiar path. It hardly seemed to have changed. It must have, but his mind wasn’t connecting to the differences in details that had built up over the years. It was a blur of recollection plastered on top of the landscape, dragging him into the past.

When was the last time he had been here? All he could think was after Jess’s funeral. He knew he must have walked this path, approached this door, at some point after that, but it wasn’t coming to mind. That was cemented as his final memory of this place, his last recollection before moving on to another life.

He pushed aside old memories and closed the final distance. At the sound of the doorbell he could hear feet moving from inside, the twitch of a curtain, then saw the door swing open.

The girl in the doorway was older than he remembered, but that was the cost of years. He smiled down at his niece as she looked at him in confusion.

“Hi Vicky.”

The young woman took a second to process things, and he could watch them fall into place through the shifts in her expression. There was the flickering uncertainty in the back of his mind, the effect of her emotion power deciding how to express itself.

“Uncle… Mike?”

He smiled at her and in an instant she had launched herself off the doorstep and engulfed him in a hug. Luckily Vicky wasn’t one of those brutes who went around accidently crushing her family with every hug, but he could tell there was an emotional weight behind this. Things weren’t right. He should have come back sooner.

“It’s good to see you too.” He assured her. “Are your parents home.”

Vicky broke the hug and floated back down. He could tell how agitated she was with a glance. “Mom’s upstairs. Dad’s out.” She looked back at him. “He’s been doing a lot of night patrols, you know, with the city like this…”

She trailed off and he didn’t push it. He’d seen the transcripts. He knew damn well why Mark would want to be out of the house. He only hoped the man didn’t do something stupid when out there without support. It worried him, but he had other things to deal with.

“Oh, please come in.” Vicky stepped back, and then cringed at the state of the house. He knew what it meant. Carol was a much bigger control freak than he was, and worse, unlike himself, she was completely oblivious to that particular character flaw. If she let the house deteriorate into this level of clutter things were really off the rails. “Can I get you anything?”

He gave her the most sympathetic smile he could manage, and the teenage girl relaxed slightly. “Don’t worry about me. It’s great to see you, but I just need to talk to your mom.”

Vicky nodded. “She’d up in her office. Do you…”

“Thanks, I remember the way.” Vicky showed him up anyway. It was concerning. He knew her boyfriend had been transferred. With Amy in containment and Mark avoiding the house she only had Carol. Mike wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.

The girl knocked on the pretentious oak door of the home office. Just what a lawyer would need, a way to isolate themselves in work when they couldn’t physically get away. She cracked open the door, showing a darkened office lit only by a table lamp.

That is darkened to most people. Not to him. That wonderful little note in his PRT file. Thinker 0, night vision. Nobody looked deeper than that. They figured it was the same as what you’d get from a pair of army surplus goggles. Mike was never in any hurry to enlighten them.

To him the room, well he wouldn’t say it was fully lit because that didn’t mean anything to him. He couldn’t just see in the dark. He could see despite the dark. Nothing was ever hidden, shadowed, gloomy, or the least bit obscured. In bright sunlight he could make out as much detail on the side of an object that caught the light as on the side opposite from it.

If anything, for him light was a hindrance. It was glare when he didn’t need it. He could see perfectly without it, something Beth found amusing, how when he was home alone he would forget to turn on a single light until she got back with the kids. She always said it looked like a blind person lived with them. Really nothing could be further from the truth.

Looking into the office he could see every detail of his sister’s frantic work. The scattered files, the forgotten coffee cups, the obvious shifting of computer and office equipment to facilitate a desperate work blitz. Everything she was attempting to keep some measure of control over her life.

“Mom?” Vicky called into the office. Carol’s face perked up from the desk. “Uncle Mike’s here?”

His niece’s voice was cherry and hopeful, but he could see Carol shared none of those feelings. This wasn’t a warm family welcome, but he’d gotten used to the fact that they would never have that. It was a big part of why he left. Not as big as Jess, but with Carol and Sarah he hoped they might work something out, but no. That wasn’t them.

She probably thought the shadows hid her face as she composed a mask of emotions to conceal her reaction at his arrival. He was used to seeing through that. People did things in the dark they would never do in the light. He’d be inclined to make some comment about their true faces coming out, but that wasn’t him. It wasn’t poetry, just human nature, private moments on display for him and no one else.

“Mike.” Her voice was as professional as she could make it. “What a surprise.”

“Hey Carol.” He took a step into the room as she rose from the desk. She tried to hide a look of annoyance at his act, but he was beyond caring. He wasn’t that boy who would tiptoe around his traumatized sisters, terrified of somehow setting them off. Not anymore, though those behaviors had been hard to break, especially when Carol learned to expect them.

She moved around the desk, but wasn’t able to stop him from taking a position inside the office. There was a look of annoyance and he could tell she was trying to figure out how to get him out, first out of the office, then out of the house, then probably out of the city.

She looked to be about to say something, but he cut her off by turning to Vicky. “I need to talk to your mom for a bit. Can you give us a moment?”

Vicky smiled, that emotion flowing off her practically filling him with light. “Sure, Uncle Mike. I’ll go make some tea.”

She closed the door and Mike heard her feet move down the stairs. He raised an eyebrow at his sister. “You drink tea now?”

“No.” She replied, as if the stink of stale coffee in the room wouldn’t be enough to convey that. “She’s looking for something to keep her occupied. The last few days have been hard on her.”

“Yeah, they seem to have been hard on a lot of people.” His sister shot him a challenging glance, but with the airport bombed he’d had to fly into Concord and drive in. That had given him a street view of the docks, and the impact the bombs and looting had on them. He was willing to broaden his sympathy beyond his immediate family.

“What do you want Mike? Why are you here?” Direct and as cold as ever.

“Officially, relief force.” His sister raised an eyebrow. “I’ve done some work with the local police and PRT, support work. Call went out for Brockton, I signed up.”

“So what, you’re back in the game?” She spat. “Taking back everything you said when you left?”

She was trying to dig up memories of Jess, memories of the aftermath. He’d had time to prepare for this. He wasn’t going to let her get to him.

“I help out the way I help out. It works for what it is.” He put a harsh inflection on the end of his statement and he could tell Carol picked up his meaning.

She let out a sigh. “I don’t need this now. Whatever your playing at, whatever you’re trying to pull, I don’t need it. You don’t know what I’m going through.”

“Oh, I think I might.” He smiled as she looked up at him.

“The transcript.” She growled.

“PRT affiliate. And that thing has made the rounds.” He watched as she glared at him, waiting. Waiting for the accusation, the condemnation, the character attacks and ‘I told you so’. Waiting for the moment when he would rub her failure, the failure of the entire venture, that he called years ago, in her face.

It didn’t come. Watching that realization play out, the knowledge that not only has she fucked up publicly and undeniably, but her ‘fuck up’ brother wasn’t even calling her on it, it was wonderful. Being the bigger person could actually be a deeply satisfying experience.

Carol let out a long breath and leaned back against the desk, exhaustion practically dripping off her.

“You’re not here to rub it in, and you’re not here to help.” He didn’t even bother trying to correct her on that point. “Why are you here?”

This was the moment where the real satisfaction would come. He did his best not to be overly blatant about it.

“Amy called me.”

Carol’s eyes shot open and she launched herself away from the desk. “What?” Her voice was a half screech and her eyes were manic.

“She phoned me when she was getting her cast taken off, before the debrief.” He replied calmly and directly.

“Damn it Mike, don’t you know what happened? She was exposed to influence. She could have been… set up? Coerced to make that call. You should have reported it, not flown half way across the country.”

He had. He’d checked in with his local office, gone through full screening, even spent a night under observation, with apologies from the director for the excessive handling. The Brockton paranoia was becoming something of a running joke in other departments, which wasn’t helping the city get support when it desperately needed it.

“I’ve been checked and cleared, and I think you know those accusations are excessive.” That was a particularly sharp barb, considering Carol had set off the evaluation that started this whole mess. The more the locals tried to blame Apeiron for everything the worse they looked on the national stage, with New Wave being at the center of the circus.

Carol chewed on her lip as she considered her next move. “What did she want? What was the call about?”

He had the sense this was more damage control than concern, but he dove in anyway. “She wanted to know about her father, and what happened between him and New Wave.”

The color drained from Carol’s face. “Mike, you can’t…”

He cut her off. “I promised her when I got a chance I’d fly out and tell her, face to face.”

“Why?” She half begged. “Why would you promise something like that? You know what it could mean.”

“What could it mean Carol?” He asked. “You think Amy’s going to go off the handle if she finds out who her father is? You should have told her years ago. You.” His sister bristled under the accusation. “Or are you worried about the rest of the story? What it will mean if people find out New Wave’s biggest collar happened because they broke into a house and nearly killed a six year old girl?”

“Mike, you can’t do this.” She spoke it more as a command than a request. It was a tone that brought up unpleasant memories from his childhood.

“It needs to be done. What, do you want me to hold off for the sake of the team? You think that’s going to make a difference now?” New Wave ended when Jess died, when they lost Fleur. After that the initiative was over. No one took it seriously. They were just another corporate team with a public identity gimmick.

“No Mike, I mean you can’t do this. I won’t let you.” Carly corrected, that haughtiness creeping into her tone. “Amy is my daughter. I can keep you from speaking to her.”

“You’re serious?” He asked. “That’s the card you’re playing? Right here? Right now?”

“I’ll do what I need to protect this team and family.” She spat. “I’m actually willing to make those sacrifices.”

“Sacrifices.” His voice was cold. “You’re talking to me about sacrifices?”

The tiniest shade of regret flickered across his sister’s face. “Mike, we all loved Fleur...”

“Jess. I loved Jess. You loved how she played peacemaker between us. She was holding this mess together and you didn’t even notice. No surprise there.” He felt his blood rising, and focused to keep it under control.

“Don’t do this Mike, not now.” She couldn’t have sounded more condescending if she tried.

“We should have taken Amy.” He spat.

“What?” She gasped. “You? You weren’t ready. You were just kids. You barely had a job, you weren’t even married.”

“We could have made it work.” He countered. “We talked about it, after you and Sarah had made the decision for everyone. Jess wanted to challenge you, I said you knew what you were doing.”

He put as much accusation on the final word as he could muster.

“Mike.” Carol drew herself up as far as she could. He’d been taller than her since his mid-teens, but she always held onto the idea that she could tower over him. “You will not be speaking with Amy.”

“I think you’ll find…” He pulled out a document. “…that I will.”

The paper was snatched out of his hand and her eyes darted over it.

“You’re working for the Youth Guard now?” She accused

He shook his head. “They’re just overseeing things. This is a M/S evaluation.” At the confused expression he continued. “They need to evaluate what portion of the readings were due to external influence as opposed to personal concerns. They want a new set of tests after Amy learns the truth.”

He could see her mind spinning. “That means…”

“That means it’ll be in an official record. The whole thing, out in the light, forever.”

“Mike, don’t do this. There… there are other things in play. I can’t talk about them, but you don’t know what’s going to happen. Think about what this will do to Amy.”

“I already told her she can stay with me and Beth if she wants. The kids want to finally meet their cousin, and I think she could use some time away.”

“No.” Carol snapped. “She can’t go now. Not with everything happening.”

“I think that’s exactly the time she needs to get away.” He answered calmly. “If this city can’t stand for a few days without Amy propping it up then then it clearly has bigger problems. And it will be her choice. She’s old enough to make those now.”

His sister’s expression shifted to a look of pure scorn. “Does Beth know about this? That you're trying to make things up to your old girlfriend? Is she alright with this?”

Mike steeled himself. “She loves the idea. Beth’s the most supportive person I’ve ever met.”

“Well, she’d have to be.”

He gave Carol a hard look before speaking. “I’m meeting with Amy tomorrow afternoon, in case you want to check in on your daughter. I know Vicky would appreciate seeing her.”

“Vicky is not going anywhere near this mess.” Carol declared.

Mike took a breath. Of course, couldn’t tarnish Carol’s perfect image. Though looking at her now, that didn’t seem tall a pedestal as it used to.

“I should go. It was nice seeing you Carol.” He turned towards the door.

“I wish I could say the same.”

The crudeness of the barb made him pause. It was less elegant than Carol’s usual attempts. Things really were falling apart.

Well, that had been the case for years. There was just no papering over the cracks anymore. The team wouldn’t last, there was pretty much no hope of that. He worked his way down stairs and said his goodbyes to Vicky. Her bewildered look was amplified by the uncertainty of that aura. He hated leaving her, but she was in a better place than most of the family. He still had to check in with Sarah. From what he heard things were even worse there.

He sighed as he stepped out into a night that held no secrets, not from his eyes. Family was complicated, powers just made it worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Lack of Materials (God of War) 400:  
> Times are tough in this land. Forces beyond knowing, monsters that roam the lands, and gods who are as petty as they are powerful. With chaos such as this, there are times you may not be able to get everything of what you need. But you've learned to make do. You can get the most out of your materials, using two bars of metal where you might need four, or three hides when you needed six. Of course, if you DO have all the materials required you can use them to make your creations more effective in quality and capability as well. So maybe it doesn't hurt to put the extra mile in.
> 
> Analysis (Adventure Time) 300:  
> You have the skill and insight to make powerful analytical tools. Such tools are capable of showing you the physical makeup of the things you come across, detect magic and alert you to hidden doorways.
> 
> Skills: Physical Sciences (Star Trek - TNG+DS9) 100:  
> Understanding of the natural laws which govern the physical world. Biology, chemistry, geology and ecology. Again, you may want to rewrite a few of these books while you're here.
> 
> Skills: Combat (Star Trek - TNG+DS9) 100:  
> Hand to hand fighting is an ancient and quintessential skill for every soldier no matter what time period.


	39. 33 Morning Training - Preamble James - Addendum Youth Guard

Preamble James

James walked through the main hall of the private clinic. It was a place he had become familiar with through his careers, both of them. The Empire was fortunate that its business connections were more extensive and with more utility than the usual combination of brothels, drug houses, and front businesses that supported a typical gang. Then again, the Empire was anything but typical.

Depending on who you asked it was either a foothold in America, a political movement, a throwback to better times, or a façade used to dress up petty crime. James didn’t concern himself with mission statements or the conceptual direction of the organization. An operation like this needed oversight to keep running, and that was what he provided. He kept the gears working in sync while other men made their proclamations and political speeches.

Speaking of which, the clinic’s doors opened admitting an imposing figure in full armor trailed by a glowing woman in white. Max had arrived with Kayden, and he was making sure to parade her through the horrible cost of the night’s operations. At this point it was mostly down to the foot soldiers who had accompanied the capes. Hookwolf and Stormtiger had already been treated by Othala, and Cricket continued her inane policy of refusing healing, a particularly asinine stance in this instance. It wasn’t as if the concussion or other explosion damage would add to the girl’s collection of scars.

Victor was also making rounds, using his lifetimes of acquired medical knowledge to tend to the injured. It was a wonderful display, and pure pageantry for the benefit of Purity. Some of this would help restore morale within the organization, but there was no way the Empire was coming out of this looking anything less than foolish. Not after losing so badly to a lone cape.

It was telling how a single change in circumstance could upset all previous conceptions of the balance of power. That seemed to be a developing theme within the city recently.

Still, watching the progression was like seeing a master at work. Max did know his craft, that was something James never doubted. He strode through the rows of beds looking as invincible as ever, his most powerful lieutenant once more at his side. He held just the right balance of distant grandeur and personal concern, stopping long enough to receive reports from the wounded and accepting their apologies with grace. It was the artistry that allowed him to transform the Empire into a cult of personality following Allfather’s death.

He knew his role in this performance. This wasn’t his way of command, not in general and certainly not with his subordinates, but he could respect the results and worked with his friend to facilitate the carefully crafted scene. As Kaiser and Purity reached the end of the treatment room Krieg stepped respectfully forward. Purity greeted him like an old friend and he altered his posture slightly to acknowledge the personal gesture.

As Max led the way into the clinic’s office James could see the craning heads from treatment beds watching the scene. No doubt when they were back on their feet the word would spread through the organization with no prompting from the top. Purity was back. The officers were united. The Empire was at its peak, and more than ready to crush everything that stood before it.

Not exactly true, not in any respect, but a useful sentiment. Max was good at that. But there was the issue of balancing the appearance of strength with the ability to leverage actual power. An imbalance could be disastrous, and the same ego that made Max a charismatic leader could also overwhelm him at the worst possible times.

If that hadn’t been the case there wouldn’t be the need for this reconciliation. 

He followed them into the office, catching the beginnings of Max’s proposal.

“You’re the only one who can do this. The Empire needs fresh blood. Strong blood. We’ve made neutral contact before, but you could actually bring her into the fold.”

Kayden didn’t seem thrilled by the idea, but she was hard to read. Even with the tinted lenses of his gasmask her power made it painful to look directly at her. James didn’t know how Max always managed to hold eye contact without flinching, though he wouldn’t put it past the man to accept damage to his eyes for a chance at power. The idea of him visiting Othala after every conversation with his ex-wife was darkly amusing in its own way.

“Max, she’s never been stable. She acts like a cartoon villain half the time, and the other half she’s going off on random attacks. Do you seriously think this can work? Even if I talk her around…”

“You will.” Max assured her, reaching out and placing a gauntleted hand tenderly on her shoulder. “I know you can do this.”

Kayden looked to the side, but didn’t shift away from his hand. “If I can talk her around, how is this going to work? How are we actually going to work with her?”

Max’s visored eyes glanced towards him and James stepped forward. “Victor has acquired extensive training on power counseling and control theory, as well as the best training and teaching skills available. With Othala providing durability he’ll be able to help Miss Stillons develop control of her abilities without her presenting a risk to himself or others.”

Kayden still looked reluctant, but Max pressed on. “It’s a short trip to Stafford. I’ve made the arrangements, and Rune will go with you.” Which would probably present their strongest chance of success. “The Empire needs this, particularly after tonight. If there’s going to be anything left for you to take over, then we need this to happen.”

James could see Kayden consider the situation, then give a slight nod. “Alright Max. I’ll do it.”

He nodded regally. “Thank you Kayden. Take all the time you need. Success is more important than our schedule.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but James knew what Max was trying to do. “I’ll take care of Theo and Aster.”

Somehow he made that statement seem fatherly rather than threatening, but Kayden still held back a flinch at the idea. She shook it off and looked up at Max. “I’ll start making arrangements. I can head out in the morning.”

She leaned slightly into his hand before breaking off and leaving the office, heading towards one of the clinic’s more discrete exits. Max’s demeanor changed slightly after she left. It wasn’t a façade falling down, the man embraced masks of office with such passion that there was almost no difference between his public and private personas. He LIKED the grandeur of his office and worked as much of it into his daily life as he could manage.

That was probably what ended up straining his personal relationships. He couldn’t imagine still being Krieg when home with Greta and the kids. But then again, for him this was a job rather than a lifestyle. His position didn’t rely on the grandeur of his image, only the efficient execution of his duties, both to the Empire and to Gesellschaft.

The leader of the Empire turned to him and nodded. “Kayden will be able to accomplish this. Damsel of Distress will be in our ranks by the end of the week.”

James considered the plan. “That may be true, but it will take more than a single annihilator cape to balance things.”

“This isn’t about balance, it’s about consequences. In all his appearances Apeiron has bled to only one attack. All negotiations involve the carrot and the stick. We cannot even approach the tinker without the capacity to actually threaten him in return.”

And it would be an implicit threat at most. The Empire couldn’t afford to fight a war with Apeiron and the Asians, not even with all their forces rallied. In fairness, the same could be said for any organization in the city. The power blocks were being redefined with frightening speed and everyone was scrambling for their piece.

“Do you think that approach will yield results favorable to us?” He asked.

Max considered, though James knew some of that was just showmanship, exaggerated body language designed to convey his personality through his armor. “We won’t be asking for anything but neutrality. I doubt Apeiron will be eager to add to his troubles. He’s made his alliances and enmities clear. If we can prove we can offer resistance to any advance on his part I’m confident we can come to an agreement.”

James considered the situation, likely for the hundredth time since the incident at the hospital with the New Wave girl. The amount of assumptions, corrections, plans, counter plans, and strategizing that had gone into this problem was mind boggling.

James shook his head. “Somehow this was simpler when people assumed he was your illegitimate son.”

Max shook slightly with mirth at that statement. “If only. I can assure you, no teenage indiscretions of that nature were unaccounted for. Just evidence of the further incompetence of the PRT leadership.”

The man looked off into the distance and James suddenly regretted bringing up the subject. “How is Theo?” He asked politely.

There was a pause before he responded, but James saw amusement in his eyes as he spoke. “You know, last night he asked if he could join a boxing gym.”

James couldn’t keep the surprise out of his response. “Theo?” He thought about some of the modern fitness centers that had sprung up near the boardwalk, basically day spas with veneer of athleticism, though that wouldn’t explain Max’s reaction. “What gym does he want to join?”

“Bay City Boxing.” Max replied.

James blinked in surprise. “Vincent White’s gym?” The boy’s last match against Jerome Malcolm had been popular viewing in the Empire, and his victory had likely been a blow to the financial stability of every bookie in their territory.

It was a powerful image of the movement, but only on the surface level. Hookwolf had been ecstatic over that particular match and pushed strongly for an outreach, to the point that James had looked into Vincent’s personal life. He kept his relationships discreet, likely to avoid retaliation from the ABB. The fact that the ethnicity of his paramour was unknown to the vast majority of the Empire had made him a popular rising star, though one that they would obviously not be looking to bring into the fold.

“Indeed.” Max’s voice was thick with amusement.

“My understanding was they were a fairly harsh environment.” James offered. “Not to imply any offence, but I’m surprised Theo would express an interest in joining.”

He could see more mirth in Kaiser’s eyes. “There was an event yesterday, the debut of a new rogue cape. Heavily publicized.”

“Ah yes, Garment?” James asked.

“Indeed.” He confirmed. “No doubt they will be swarmed with applications. Still, with their reputation and standards perhaps Theo might receive some decent instruction before he drops out.”

It was telling that Max didn’t even extend a faint hope of Theo holding to this particular activity. James couldn’t blame him. The boy was dutiful and obedient, as would be expected of growing up in the Anders household, but had clearly been overwhelmed by his father’s personality and never developed on his own. It was unfortunate that such an outgoing man had raised such a closed off son.

“I wish him the best.” James said honestly.

“As do I.” Kaiser agreed. “On more serious business, what can we expect from Gesellschaft with respect to the current situation?”

James frowned behind his mask. “I’m afraid they are likely to be fairly reserved in their support.” He saw the shift in his friend’s eyes and elaborated. “Please understand, these are people who have lived under the threat of the Blasphemies for years. The prospect of another Mad Scientist tinker on an unpredictable trajectory has them on edge.”

“Hmmm.” Kaiser grunted. “I will admit that the surface level details seem concerning…”

Despite his mask James schooled his expression. They were more than concerning. Apeiron was on a trajectory to either burn out spectacularly or create an incident on the level of the aforementioned Blasphemies. There was a distant hope that he would level out, hit some resource or time bottleneck, but so far everything had leant towards an unchecked, unstable tinker.

“…but I have information that an equal portion of the recent disruption is due to the ABB’s new thinker.” He continued.

“March?” James asked. “I grant you, she is clearly underestimated by the PRT, but you can’t hold her on the same level as Apeiron.”

“On the contrary…” He continued. “I have received intelligence that Apeiron will be prioritizing action against March to the exclusion of other conflicts, including conflicts with established groups.”

James gave Max a skeptical look. “Do you trust this intelligence?” He asked, as cautiously as he dared.

“It has come with certain assurances, mainly in the shared interest of avoiding a state of emergency being declared in the city.” Max explained.

James nodded. That would be a nightmare for any established group, and would probably be the end of at least one of the power blocks in the city.

“Besides…” Max continued. “You can’t look at tonight’s calamity and tell me there was no thinker influence at play.”

James frowned. The seemingly random encounter of Hookwolf’s team leading to an unexpectedly dire situation, causing him to need to divert his forces and reinforce the brute with Victor, Othala, and Alabaster. Though calling it a reinforcement might be a bit generous considering Alabaster was constantly bombarded with explosions and Othala spent the entire encounter hiding behind an invincible Victor while he did what he could to mitigate the disaster.

The consequence was an undefended front of territory, an extended conflict with no meaningful resolution, and what could be at best called a narrow stalemate of a resolution.

James sighed. “I must once again offer my apologies for my performance this evening…” Max raised a hand to silence him.

“If what I have been led to believe about the ABB thinker is correct there was little that could have been accomplished.” He dropped his head. “The operation was doomed once she set Hookwolf and Flashbang to cross paths.

James clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. Flashbang. Mark Dallon. The pathetic shadow of a man, exposed and betrayed by his wife. Everyone in the city expected him to wallow in his misery as New Wave collapsed around him. Instead he had opted to begin aggressively patrolling at night in order to avoid dealing with the turbulence of his own house.

The independent cape was approaching conflicts like a man with a death wish, for reasons apparent to anyone with experience with marital issues. The main problem was the man’s staunch refusal to actually find an opponent with the capacity to end him.

New Wave based their entire organization on precise coordination and power interactions. He could remember the numerous times Brandish had popped out of her breaker state to scatter Flashbang’s energy grenades across the battlefield, or Lady Photon coordinated her children like a crack flight team. It was everyone’s assumption that without the support of the rest of the team any individual member would wither to uselessness, as had happened with Manpower.

That overlooked one minor detail. Flashbang was immune to his own explosions. It didn’t matter if he used the non-lethal but still devastating concussive blasts, or the overpowering full force grenades, they affected the cape as much as a summer breeze. Without any teammates to worry about he could stroll into the battlefield wreathed in blasts, effectively an untouchable force of nature.

James had thought it amusing when he heard about Flashbang routing the Merchants on Saturday night. He was much less amused after living though that rain of explosions first hand.

“You believe March was able to coordinate tonight’s actions to that level?” he asked.

The armored cape nodded grimly. “I do. From my information March is the primary source of the ABB’s enhanced threat and Apeiron’s primary focus. We just have to make sure we are on the right side, and in a position of power when the tinker makes his move.”

James hoped his friend was right. It was a terrifying prospect, but explained a great deal about the past few days. It also shed a harsh light on the true conflict brewing. Of course the Empire wouldn’t wait harmlessly on the sidelines. They would make sure to be well positioned when the time came.

He could only imagine the preparations Apeiron was indulging in as part of his desperate bid for supremacy. He shuddered to think what terrifying forces the unstable tinker must be wrestling with.

Hopefully it would be something they would be able to counter, when the time came.

33 Morning Training

I woke up groggy and in a fog of slowly fading sleep. I rolled over in the admittedly incredible bed, which was both a wonder in terms of comfort and a lack of need to sleep diagonally or curled up to prevent my feet from falling off the edge. Despite the creeping exhaustion that slowly receded from my mind I smiled. This was what mornings were supposed to be like. Yesterday’s early chipperness had just been wrong. Getting out of bed was the battle that prepared you for the rest of the day, mostly by making all other conflicts seem inconsequential by comparison.

The actual reason for my lethargy was another matter. I flopped onto my back as I thought about it. One Thing at a Time had still activated, granting me great sleep in half the time. I still had my enhanced physiology, and from a physical side was still bursting with energy. I even had my various mental enhancements running in the background, including my implant which was receiving good morning messages from Fleet and Survey. No, this particular exhaustion was from a totally new form of exertion.

Designing that parahuman focus for Aisha had been exhilarating. I knew how significant it would be and I was desperate to get it to work. It was the first time I had used Arcane Craft, and I was just now realizing how strong that particular power could be. It was a power that scaled with my own skill, knowledge, and power. With the timescale I was working on I couldn’t afford to slowly develop the art over months or years, so I had taken my best swing right from the start.

I’m not sure what convinced me to try for a more advanced Elven Enchantment. I suppose that since that could only be done upon creation I wanted to do the best job I could manage. I was already working with masterful skill, divine craftsmanship, and material of a quality beyond anything I could have hoped for. Still, I wanted to do everything I could, and that meant digging into the vocabulary of words of power and trying to redefine reality through Naming.

It had worked, but the process had taken more out of me than I expected. I had a sense this was an art that was traditionally developed over a lifetime. Diving into it full force within a day of gaining the power clearly had exposed some rough edges. Other forms of ‘magic’ had a kind of refilling gas tank, with that pool of magika that came with the Skyforge being the best example. Others were kind of just a fixed output that could be directed at anything with enough skill. Elven Enchantment was different.

It was an art that drew from some kind of spiritual strength. The first level, pouring energy into my creations, was trivial. Whatever was expended was recovered before the crafting process was completed. Using words to redefine reality was a different story. That had been a serious effort, and one I didn’t pick up on until the effects settled.

It wasn’t like something had been drained or taken away. It felt more like I had pulled a muscle in my soul. Like I tried to lift something too heavy for me with bad form. It wasn’t permanent damage or anything crippling, but it was clearly the kind of work I’d have to be careful about. I couldn’t casually redefine reality at a whim, and singing to the unseen was clearly well beyond me at this point. Actually, if not for my new ‘demigod’ nature I doubt I would have been able to pull it off.

That was the price of making an item that powerful. All the power I had extended was just enough to enchant a tiny item. It was Workaholic enhancing the size that brought the focus to full strength. And it was strong.

It was a tool specifically attuned to Aisha’s power allowing her to enhance her control. And there was no limit on how far it could take that. With enough work Aisha could go from someone who could barely manage to hold back her power to having more precise control than virtually any other parahuman on the planet. It was the kind of growth without limit that really drove home how powerful my abilities could be when properly combined.

How many powers had come together in that single item? Arcane Craft, obviously, and also Elven Enchantment. Divine Child for magical work, helped by Dwarven Craft and Smithing. Do One Thing at a Time took the level of those skills and doubled them. Engineer helped in the design process and the Micromanipulators improved the quality of my craftsmanship down to a microscopic level. Gadget Master let me reduce a headband-sized focus down to a simple hair clip and Analysis let me ensure a complete lack of defects. Deranged Alchemist had made the magically resonant materials possible, facilitated by my Alchemist’s Laboratory and further enhanced by the Skyforge and Volcano. The Volcano in particular had let me apply the magical properties of high grade celestial bronze to the already mythical mithril, and then further enhance the end result with the quality and capacity boost from Lack of Materials. Workaholic enhanced the size, and therefore power of the final product, producing an item with a density of enchantment I never would have been able to manage. It wasn’t related to the strength of the item, but Bling of War, Decadence, Stylish Mechanic, Beauty in the Arts, and Tailor Made all improved the appearance of the final product.

Wow, it’s no wonder my soul felt like it had run a marathon. I really hope I didn’t give Aisha the impression that was the kind of thing I could churn out on a whim.

Still, I needed to actually get up. Even if it was barely 3:30am, I had slept enough that my mind was racing; it was only the weird existential non-corporeal part of me that felt worn out. It was quite reminiscent of all those times I’d have to pull myself out of bed after a terrible night’s sleep. Kind of a weird situation of not being comfortable staying in place, but not really wanting to get up either.

Eventually Survey’s constant status requests drove me from the covers and I crawled into the shower. The hot water helped with whatever strain my foray into higher level enchanting had caused, as did a steaming mug of perfectly made, natural energy infused Elven enchanted coffee.

The second cup helped even more. I was seeing diminishing returns on the third, but my consumption had momentum behind it at that point, helped by a hastily prepared but still excellent breakfast. By the time I poured my fourth cup I was ready to face the day.

Walking out of my apartment into my early morning workshop only served to pull back the comfortable fog that had kept me from dwelling on the events of the previous day. March was still a massive threat. There would be repercussions for how I handled that call with Alena. I could do nothing to resolve the mess with Taylor except wait for her call and hope I could work things out when I saw her. And the ABB was still a looming problem that I had agreed to avoid.

I reached out to Survey for an update on that particular situation. Rather than provide a digital transmission her avatar appeared on a nearby terminal and began presenting a summary of events.

“There have been reported conflicts involving the ABB, Empire, Merchants, and Coil’s forces during the previous night. Lung made an appearance against the Merchants, singlehandedly routing the combined forces of the gang’s capes and driving off a Protectorate response force. Several suspected Merchant assets were destroyed in his rampage.”

She cut away to display a series of crime scene photos, mostly of burned out buildings in some of the worst parts of the Docks. The Merchants didn’t have the most valuable territory in the city, but they still had enough assets to sustain a large gang and fund a tinker. I didn’t know if this was a territory grab or some kind of scorched earth tactic.

“Oni Lee was responsible for three targeted bombings within Empire territory. Empire response was delayed or prevented by conflicts with Protectorate forces or independent heroes.” There was a photo, no doubt front page for the morning’s paper, of Dauntless raining lightning on Fenja and Menja while Miss Militia opened up with a machine gun in the background. It looked like it was taken from some recording system, probably on a PRT trooper, and cleaned up for release. Meaning someone had hunted through a pile of footage to find the shots that cast the Protectorate in the best light.

The fact that the encounter had no captures was evidence that things hadn’t gone as well as they would have hoped. That wasn’t an unusual turn of events for this city. It seemed most clashes ended with one side slipping away rather than a clear victory, and even the victories seemed to have said cape break out before long.

God, how long has that stalemate been drawn out? And how long have the people of the city just accepted that meaningless and destructive cape fights were part of the background culture?

Sadly, those meaningless and destructive fights were probably responsible for the entirety of Brockton’s tourist industry. It sucked if you were living in them, but from a distance the mystique of heroes regularly participating in showdowns against villains drew people to this city. There were cities with stronger Protectorate branches that didn’t have cape tourism, mostly because they didn’t have the villain presence that let their heroes show off on a regular basis.

Goes to show, even with a shit dynamic people will find a way to make things work.

“Additionally, there have been reported sightings of March…” I refocused my attention on the screen. “Engaging Coil’s operatives with the support of unpowered ABB forces.”

There wasn’t any footage of the encounter, but the reports Survey transferred were interesting enough. Coil’s forces rarely took open action and had a reputation for excellence. It seemed whatever coordination they were under was either being compromised by March’s power, or the ABB thinker had forced Coil’s hand somehow.

The fact that the ABB forces were not mowed down was particularly telling. They didn’t get away unbloodied, not if the reports were accurate, but take any rank and file gang member and put them against a trained mercenary with tinker tech and you normally won’t even have a contest. From the looks of things this was something of a bloody stalemate, and likely one the ABB could absorb more easily than Coil.

I didn’t like staying out of this, but Tattletale was right about the ABB keeping things limited to engagements with other gangs. While I would have loved to swoop in and deal with March the engagement would have been over by the time of the first report, and there was a real chance that my presence would escalate things in a way the city didn’t need. The gangs could bleed each other out for a few days while I got a handle on my tech.

I turned towards the screen’s video sensor. “Thank you Survey.” The A.I.’s avatar made an excited nod, then winked out.

I took a breath and considered my current projects. The A.I.s needed another check-up, plus the scheduling of their parameter expansion. I also needed to check on Tetra. The fibers had been extremely excited about my new physiology, and I wanted to work out those interactions before I got into the field.

Actually, that kind of thing bore my own investigation. The Physical Sciences knowledge from my last power was as comprehensive as Skills: Physics had been. The in-depth understanding of biology presented my best chance for figuring out what the hell had happened to me.

It could also mean a world of difference to the Case 53s that would no doubt be showing up any day now. I really didn’t want to have to turn away people desperate for help, and that meant properly diving into biological technology.

After all, it wasn’t wet tinkering if you looked at it from a purely research standpoint.

I worked through my coffee as I headed down to the textile area. Apparently one of the duplicates had expanded it to include what could pass for a modest television studio. I watched as Garment demonstrated stitching techniques for invisible seams while Survey managed multiple cameras in what was apparently a live stream with better production value than most edited videos.

A quick check to Garment’s Youtube page confirmed she had produced a frankly staggering amount of content since I okayed her sharing media from inside the Workshop. She was putting out more video in a night than most content creators managed in a month.

Checking the comments on one video it seemed people liked the lack of dialogue. Survey added captions to some of the videos, but the majority of it was just quiet workmanship. That was a popular opinion given fan playlists with names like ‘3 Hours of Zen Sewing’ or ‘Thread and Fabric Rustle Highlights’.

I was glad Garment had found an outlet, I just hoped this wouldn’t cause any problems at a later date.

I waited for her to finish the video while drinking the last of my heavenly coffee. It really did fill that morning spiritual void, no matter what people might say. When she finished Survey directed her to me.

“Nice job on the videos. I saw your channel. It’s looking really good.” Garment preened slightly, then gestured towards one of the screens Survey was using. The A.I. pulled up a document from Youtube. I took a moment to read it over as well as checking it digitally.

“Uh, that’s nice, but I’m pretty sure you need to get your accounts finalized before you can get ad revenue.” Garment made a flippant gesture and I got the sense it was more that she was proud about qualifying than actually interested in monetizing her channel. I mean, she didn’t really need the income, provided the start up loans could cover her initial expenses. Something to look into later, I suppose.

“I need to check on Tetra again, and deal with the core updates. I thought I’d take care of them at once, if you can help me with that?”

Garment gestured excitedly, then hurried over to hunt for something in her rows of outfits. I had a sinking suspicion regarding what she was going for.

“Yes to the training outfit, no to the barbarian outfit.” I called out as sternly as I could manage. Garment wilted slightly, but gestured her agreement. I left her sorting through clothes while I headed up to the Alchemist’s Laboratory.

The room had taken a notable shift towards the technical side since I’d last worked there. The lab automatically scaled with my level of skill and knowledge, and the science fiction level chemistry and biology from Skills: Physical Sciences had added a serious amount of high technology. Scanners, synthesizers, incredibly precise lab apparatus, and a host of support systems. It really did look like something out of a science fiction show, complete with touch screens on the terminals.

It was seriously useful for a host of applications, but I couldn’t deal with them right now. Fortunately I had other options, meaning ‘I’ didn’t need to be the one to deal with them. I grabbed one of the recently completed duplication potions and downed it in two gulps. The copies stepped out from me and turned around.

“Thanks for taking the potion before Garment put you in whatever getup she had planned.” The first said with a smile.

“Yeah, well I thought you’d appreciate that.” I assured him.

“Right,” the second drawled. “And it had nothing to do with the fact that our twenty percent time is now six minutes long and you were afraid of what we’d get up to if you deliberately annoyed us?”

“I am not going to answer that.” I stated impassionedly.

“You don’t need to. We’re all the same person.” The first offered. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty to keep us occupied.”

“Right.” I replied as the Forge missed a connection to the Resources and Durability constellation. “What’s first?”

“Genetic examination?” The first offered. Between my cybernetics and biotics workshop and the upgrades to the Alchemist’s Lab we had all the equipment we needed for an in-depth examination, particularly with my new power for constructing comprehensive scanners.

“Should also upgrade the nanotech lab.” The second offered. “Haven’t really touched it since before the ABB attacks started, and we’re going to need everything we can manage if we’re going to take down March.”

I nodded. “I’ll get Tetra to the computer core and check on the A.I. development.” The core would also need to be upgraded soon. It was good enough for the moment, but that was something where ‘good enough’ didn’t really cut it. Too many systems were based on my ability to process data and coordinate work that it was probably the most direct powerup I had. Not enough to chase it with every new power, but a high priority when the general upgrades rolled around again.

“After that we should do some life fiber combat training.” The second offered. There was a digital exchange between the duplicates.

“Uh, are you sure you can keep up?” I asked. Maybe if we duplicated the motoroid, but I had been able to throw it around with a much more basic level of life fiber exposure.

The duplicates exchanged a grin, then there was a gray flash and a voice came from behind me.

“I think we can manage it.”

I spun to find both of my duplicates smiling at me, and noted the fading gray light around them.

“Aura?” I asked. My mind spun. I had only just started to grasp at that power without using the horrible weapon as a focusing aid. The idea of just pulling it out at will was insane.

“All that stuff we have to dig into to use it properly?” The first said. “Turns out it’s a lot easier to deal with if you’re not going to be around to dwell on it.”

I blinked. That was a grim way of looking at things, but apparently whatever the safeguards were that kept my duplicates from freaking out over their limited existence also let them deal with the identity dependent aspects of Aura more easily.

“Well, that’s… great?” I offered meekly.

“Oh, don’t be jealous.” The second scolded. “Go get your alien parasite with Garment and then we can have a giant superhero martial arts battle on top of the volcano, or something like that.”

Okay, there was literally no way a person could stay glum in the face of a statement like that. After giving a quick blood sample for analysis I headed towards the Laboratorium, stopping in the entry hall to change into Garment’s chosen workout outfit.

It still could have used a couple of square yards of material, but was decidedly better than advancing the field of Barbarian Chic.

Before I went into the Laboratorium I glanced at the tiny locker containing my wand. I twitched my fingers slightly, remembering the feel of power and comfort from holding that object. I had no idea if I could manage anything more than sparks with it, but I had a magic laboratory now. There was definitely a chance.

I made a note to follow through on that and then trailed Garment into the Laboratorium. The skulls were still working through Bakuda and Leet’s technology, though had progressed to a fairly high-level analysis. We were near the point where destructive testing would be the only way to get additional information. Fortunately the items were small enough to be duplicated by my potion, meaning I could just copy them and hopefully tear them apart to my heart's content.

The skulls once again greeted me upon my arrival and I replied through my implant, using the interface protocols I’d learned from the throne supplemented by the intuitive understanding that had come with my new demigod status. It gave the place a much warmer feel than the cavernous architecture would indicate, with older machine spirits overseeing the rudimentary programs in simple tools and managed by the direction of the skulls.

Garment was waiting by the life fiber’s stasis field with her gloves raised. I pressed against them and she folded her gloves over my hands. My awareness expanded as I shared Garment’s skills, only now I was able to feel the exertion of her power thanks to the Dragon Pulse. As her gown was ‘removed’ and handed to the same cyber skull as before, who seemed to have now accepted that this was going to be part of its regular duties, I disabled the stasis field around the spool of fibers.

Immediately I could feel the pulses of excitement radiating from Tetra. There was a slight pull from the fibers towards me, gently restrained by Garment’s power. Once again Garment wove the fibers into a delicate pattern across my body, holding them just above my skin.

It was interesting experiencing the process while being able to gauge Tetra’s reaction to it. I’m not sure if this was a new aspect, perhaps related to my Divine Child power, or if the fibers had always reacted this way and I was only just now aware of it. The point was, the sensation I was getting couldn’t have been further from the terrifying sense of desperate consumption that had come from that first unfortunate experiment.

Most of what I was sensing was eagerness. It was that boisterous excitement that you see in children experiencing the world for the first time. Tetra wanted to go and do stuff with me, and beyond that the enthusiasm was fairly general. I don’t think the fibers had transitioned fully to sapience yet, but there were definitely complex mental processes going on.

It made sense. From the fibers’ perspective every encounter with me had meant food, growth, and new experiences. The only detrimental experience was the exposure to the neural interface, and Survey had been able to mitigate the issues around that while simultaneously strengthening the connection. I was kind of proud of the way I had handled this. Tetra was the first lifeform that the Celestial Forge had produced and I wanted to handle it right.

Once Tetra had been settled in place I bid the Laboratorium goodbye and headed for the throne. Through my implant I received various updates from my duplicates on the status of their projects, assisted by Fleet and Survey. I acknowledged the information and moved to sit on the throne.

The first thing I did was resolve the remaining concerns Survey had from my call the previous day. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been, but there were still some unanswered questions and less than sound theories being run to explain the severity of the reaction. The process was harder than I thought it would be, basically amounting to ‘yes, family has bad reaction, because reasons’. Not the most comprehensive explanation, but good enough to resolve the lingering concerns.

Besides, I really didn’t want Survey performing comprehensive analytics on my family dynamics.

Following that I moved to update the parameter expansion of the A.I.s based on new powers I had received. That was less of a concern with the privacy curtain in place, but it served the purpose of staggering their development to allow periods of stabilization rather than unchecked exponential growth. I had seen enough maladaptive strategies in the course of their development to learn how bad an idea that could have been.

After that I dug into the core programs of both A.I.s to assist with optimization issues. They were reaching a point of impressive advancement, but the combination of my skill level, throne, and time powers let me get a handle on the shape of their code and recognize any counterproductive adaptations.

At their level of development there was a genuine sense of relief and gratitude at the optimization of their algorithms. It was tied both to current performance and projected development. That was another important thing. Both Fleet and Survey were aware of their growth, and had real excitement concerning what they would eventually be capable of.

It wasn’t anything concerning. No ‘rule the world’ Wargames or Skynet stuff. Fleet and Survey had broadened from their original purpose, but were still quite focused on the tasks they had been designed and worked to optimize themselves for. Survey wanted more information and analysis, Fleet wanted more vehicles and operation experience. It was a kind of endearing objective. The idea that Fleet could become an S-class self-augmenting A.I. and dominate the world to achieve his end goal; becoming the autopilot and drive assist in every vehicle on the planet.

I think that was the primary reason I had never seriously considered a combat A.I. as one of my projects. There was a difference between someone like Fleet who operated weapons as part of a separate objective, and creating an intelligence only for combat. It might be useful, but there would be a time when you wouldn’t need to fight. Do you just explain that the A.I.’s purpose is no longer relevant? It’s better to start from another point and broaden into areas than make battle the sole focus of an intelligent creature’s life.

On that note, throughout the entire process the life fibers were once again shunted away from their physical state of absolute universe warping power and crammed into a mental space that was fundamentally alien to them. The difference was that this time instead of having to rely on second hand reports of a delayed image of my own brain I could directly feel Tetra’s reactions to the process.

From the start Survey and Fleet were making contact and exchanging information. Well, in Fleet’s case it was more informing the life fibers what portions of Survey’s information deluge could be safely ignored, much to the annoyance of the other program. It proved to be a much less drastic experience than the last time I attempted this, with me providing an emotional link and the A.I.s providing a contextual framework.

By the time I was ready to disconnect, having burned through most of the duplicates’ duration, Tetra was remarkably collected and showing signs of increased mental complexity.

Before I disconnected, Survey contacted me directly. “Tetra communicates gratitude for this exercise and wishes to express her desire to be included in further update cycles.”

I restrained my surprise as I absorbed the message. “Her?”

There was a sense of gratification from the A.I. as she replied. “I was able to convey the recent development of personal identity and my justifications for my choice.”

Which would explain the significant amount of data that Survey had been directing to the life fibers. It was impressive how much information Tetra could absorb, but the real notable thing was Survey’s apparent satisfaction at finding someone who would happily entertain presentations of her most detailed analysis.

“She agreed with my assessment of optimal gender expression for prospective personal interactions.” Survey concluded with a sense of pride.

“She wanted to be included so followed Survey’s lead.” Fleet’s interjection was unexpected both for its length and the level of insight it provided.

There was also a minor sense of annoyance from Survey, but that was quickly brushed off. It was really interesting how the dynamic between the two, or I suppose three, of them was developing.

“Thank you Survey, and Fleet. Please convey to Tetra that I would be happy to include her from now on…”

I paused my communication as the Celestial Forge made a connection to the Toolkits constellation. The power was called Tool Kit. It gave me a tool kit.

Specifically it gave me a tool kit with a very specific purpose. It was specifically designed to allow the maintenance and modification of Veritech fighters. It was an unusual power, and incredibly specialized, completely useless without an actual Veritech to work on.

Fortunately this power came with a few extras, such as a simple emergency space suit and basic training in the use and operation of Veritechs. For some reason the set also included massively enhanced singing skills as a somewhat mystifying addition. Oh, and we can’t forget the VF-2SS Valkyrie II main variable space fighter that just appeared in my Workshop.

Having this happen while connected to my interface was an experience. My computer core was able to track the shifts in my neurons as the operational knowledge and the still mystifying musical skills were downloaded into my brain. I had a slow-motion awareness of the shifts in the composition of the workshop, though no sensors were present in the new area as it appeared. Oh, and I was able to watch the normally sedate Fleet absolutely lose his shit.

Even before I could take a single action Fleet was directing every one of his drones to the new area. There was practically a traffic jam of miniaturized high end race cars as he rushed to see what the Celestial Forge had brought us. It was like a kid running downstairs on Christmas morning, only with more burning rubber.

When the drones reached the new hanger the A.I. became practically inarticulate, barely managing basic communication along the lines of “Go.” And “Now.”.

I really didn’t need much prodding in that department. After a final check I disconnected from the interface throne and rushed towards the new expansion.

The more I thought about this new power the more things were falling into place. Well, not about the singing, that was still incredibly odd. What I meant was this power was the last in an association that had gone back to nearly the start of my cape career. Just like other powers that shared an association, Tool Kit was related to Bling of War, Fingers of Silver, Savvy Sultan, and Ambrosial Artificer. While a lot of those powers had seemed specialized when taken individually, they were coming together to create a more detailed picture.

It was probably the training power that took things over the top. That united stray hints of technology into a cohesive thread that I could follow, follow all the way to the monument that stood in my new workshop bay.

It would have been more impressive without the horde of cars cluttering the floor beneath it. That said, the helicopters actually were a nice touch. I don’t know which duplicate built Fleet a set of 1/20 scale Apache attack helicopters, but he certainly seemed to be enjoying them.

The helicopters in question were circling a forty-five-foot-tall robot standing in a dedicated bay just adjacent to the aerospace division of my workshop. It stood, gleaming white and gray with red highlights, but a clear indication in its design of its alternate form. It turned into a space-capable fighter jet.

I had a transforming robot fighter jet. I didn’t think it was possible to get something cooler than my F-18, but then the Forge dropped this into my lap.

I turned to see my duplicates rushing in after me. They were supposed to be on their 20% time, but had clearly aborted their personal projects for a chance to see the Veritech fighter. The exact nature of those 20% time projects was as concerning as ever, given the first duplicate had splatters of cooling molten gold across his clothes like a Jackson Pollock painting and the second was missing his left shoe for some unknown reason.

Survey had no explanation for me, but happily deployed drones to reassess the Workshop.

“We have a transforming robot fighter jet.” The second said, looking up at the absolute beast of a machine. I returned his grin alongside the other duplicate and moved forward, stepping over the traffic jam of miniature high-end race and sports cars.

“I guess this means we don’t need to do anything drastic to the F-18.” I pressed a hand against the robot’s chassis. I could feel the technology inside, not just from the familiarity granted by the set of related powers, but through my new innate connection to all things technical. I had a fundamental understanding of the technology. Honestly, I probably didn’t even need that operation power to fly this. I could probably handle any vehicle on the planet to its peak level with this kind of insight.

“Thank goodness.” The first replied. “Hey, when we got that jet did you ever think it would end up like a collector’s project rather than a military asset?”

“What, tinker with it in our spare time, keep it pristine and only take it out on holidays and when we’re going to car shows?”

I grinned at the second as one of the cars pushed its way to the front of the pack. Its headlights lit up, causing a hologram of Fleet’s avatar to materialize next to me. Once again, not sure which duplicate was behind that, but it was a nice touch.

The hologram mimed the action of looking reverently over the newest addition to the workshop, then turned towards me.

“When are you installing the A.I. control system?” There was a pause, then he continued in a hopeful voice. “You are going to install an A.I. control system?”

“Of course we are.” The gold splattered duplicate assured him.

“Yeah.” Echoed the second. “We just need to get a look at the internals first.”

I nodded. “You’re getting that sense right? Now that all this is together?”

“Definitely.” The second replied. “Just like the Engineer gear. Hybrid tech. Part human part alien.”

The first laid his own hand on the robot. “Is it just me or does this feel kind of military-industrial?” He asked.

I looked over the vehicle, my Analysis power screaming at me regarding every design and manufacturing defect. “You mean that sense that it was built in the shortest timeframe by the lowest bidder?”

“That’s it.” The second echoed. “Stuff like this showing up has to be multi-universal effects, it’s just the detail doesn’t really line up with multiverse theory.”

“Yeah.” I admitted. I had been quick to assure Aisha, but the truth was a lot of this made zero sense. Still, zero sense was better than the negative sense necessary for the idea that I was pulling stuff from cartoons and young adult fiction.

I found the jet’s interface frequencies and opened the cockpit. A quick look inside showed there was a simple enough modification to the autopilot that would make it able to load a remote copy of Fleet. The A.I. quickly tested the range of motion before shifting through Guardian and Jet modes before returning to robot form.

“Okay,” The first duplicate called from the ground. “Definitely some disparate technology at work.”

I checked his image in the robot’s sensors and sent an inquiry through my implant. He just smiled and tilted the newly built visor.

“Thought we should actually have some tactical use for the new Analysis sensor, so we finally updated the visor.” I looked at the image of my duplicate standing there with a rebuilt portion of my costume. He provided a sensor feed, and it was actually a fairly impressive range of information, something I had badly needed for a long time. I just had one question.

“Why does it look so angry?” I asked.

“It’s not angry.” The duplicate defended. “It’s angular.”

“Right.” I drawled. “It’s clearly more aggressively shaped. Is there any reason for trying to make us look more villainous?”

The duplicates just sighed. “Aura.”

My stomach fell, but the second raised his hands in placation before I could respond.

“Look, there are protectorate heroes with edgier elements to their costumes. This works with the previous design, and frankly it might be the only way to stop Garment from pushing for a complete redesign.”

A slight tug from the Gloves on my hands suggested that would be a temporary reprieve at best.

I wanted to argue more, but damn it they were probably right. I could see from the data that it was an excellent scanner, something I’d needed on a personal scale for ages.

I didn’t even have to ask about Aura. Just from looking at the thing I could tell it was more inline with the type of personal expression that made Aura easier to work. I didn’t have my duplicates’ advantage of being able to dive into everything I held back and take refuge in the fact that I wouldn’t have to deal with anything that got dredged up.

I sent a reluctant acceptance of the idea. I didn’t like it, but the world was legitimately at stake. I could deal with some uncomfortable costume elements for that.

“Hey,” The second called. “Do you think we could get this thing into the Laboratorium? It might be able to drive home that whole multi-tech question.”

It turned out the answer was yes, provided you had three people modifying doorways with Alkahestry and an intelligent A.I. willing to navigate a meandering route to one of the Laboratorium’s larger entrances, back towards the scanning bays clearly designed for vehicles. The process wasn’t exactly fast, and did burn through the last of my duplicates’ duration, but we got there.

It was always a little off putting seeing the duplicates disappear in front of me, which made the fact that they were usually off on their own projects something of a blessing. When they vanished so did every item they had duplicated, meaning the gold splatter and visor dropped to the ground when the first duplicate vanished, and the disappearance of the second duplicate also took his missing shoe with him.

I wonder if that piece of footwear suddenly vanishing had anything to do with the sudden calamitous settling of machinery in the automotive manufacturing area of my workshop that happened at the exact same time? Probably, but not something I could get into as I was coordinating transporting the Veritech to the Laboratorium.

At this point I should probably be used to the impromptu celebrations from the skulls and systems of my Laboratorium, but this was the first time I had experienced it with my new technokinesis. And apparently the first time I had brought a religious icon.

It seemed my Laboratorium really liked large complicated machinery, especially if it was human shaped. There was something about a machine in human form that hit all kinds reverent notes for the skulls and machine spirits. When they found out Fleet was piloting it things jumped to a whole new level as they rushed to greet the new ‘Questor Imperialis’.

They quickly assisted in preparing one of the largest scanning bays for the Veritech while I assured the older machine spirits that I did not know what Knightly House the robot belonged to. Fleet moved the robot with dignified deference as he stepped into the bay and took position under the sensors. Once the initial scans came in I got a proper look at what was happening with this technology.

The scanner from my Analysis power was wonderful when it came to providing a detailed picture of something's physical makeup and tracking any magical energy at play, but its effects stopped there. It didn’t actually have the capacity to process the information it collected. That was an area where the Laboratorium excelled, and I was reaping the benefits now.

The Veritech was clearly the result of two different technology bases. One was clearly human, and I’m not counting a quarter for that because that’s exactly what it was. There was evidence of design elements and computer structures that were in use today. The other technology was substantially different, and it was like a handful of principles had been identified and grafted over the human technology.

This ‘Over Technology’ included a kind of energetic armor that took waste energy from the engines and used it to strengthen the fighter’s fuselage. This was also the technology that got around the structural limitations of building a robot on this scale. There was also a set of high-power quick response motors facilitating the fighter’s transformation and mobility in humanoid form. There was more evidence of the advanced technology in the Veritech’s computer and weapon systems, but all of that paled in comparison to the vehicle’s power core.

In jet-mode the Veritech looked like a conventional aircraft, but that was only skin deep. The thrust was provided by a pair of thermonuclear turbine reaction engines. I could not overstate the significance of this discovery. With the breadth of my technological knowledge I had more than a dozen ways of building a fusion engine, but none of them approached something like this. That was because, unlike every other kind of fusion engine, this didn’t require reactive materials as fuel.

The engine had a coil of dimensionally-altered ‘folded’ carbon that allowed the generation of a heavy quantum effect that manipulated a plasma stream through super dimension spatial effects. The principles had been hinted through my related powers, but it was only through the full scope of what I’d obtained from the forge that I could properly understand the effect.

By using super dimension spatial manipulation the engine could induce pair-annihilation of mundane elements with no residual materials. It was beyond perfect nuclear fusion, generating nothing but energy, and it was used in a jet engine.

Well, currently used in a jet engine. I could already see the applications of this technology, from FTL systems to power generation to weapons of incredible power. It was an entire new field that I’d been skimming along, but finally opened up when I had a real example of the technology to examine.

The Laboratorium was excited about the discoveries, but they had more pressing concerns. Namely that the robot was naked.

Well, naked by their standards. From what I could tell, they regarded a machine like this with an armament of only one pair of anti-aircraft lasers as the equivalent of going out with a hand towel wrapped around your waist. I had to repeatedly assure the skulls and machine spirits that I would be increasing the amount of installed weaponry. And that no, I still did not know which Knightly House the Veritech belonged to.

The subject of redesigns also brought about action from more specialized skulls. Of course they insisted on applying another wax seal to the robot, but apparently there were a host of other banners, tabards, and accoutrements that they deemed necessary.

I beat a hasty retreat before Garment could start providing input on that particular project. If she decided that robot fashion was now a thing I didn’t even want to imagine what the end result could be.

I downed another potion as the Forge missed the Magitech constellation. My duplicates looked down at their abbreviated training outfits, but didn’t comment on them. Instead we took a moment to settle tasks and review updates from the previous duplicates. That lead to a rather perplexing set of results.

“What the hell am I looking at here?” It was more of a general inquiry since neither duplicate had any additional insight.

“Uh, well, it does seem like we still have a fully human genome, just with, you know, extra stuff.” The first duplicate highlighted the results of the gene sequencing.

The ‘extra stuff’ he was referring to was some kind of metaphysical component to my genotype, apparently stapled on as a complete addition to my previous genetics. There was a physical manifestation of it as some kind of component of my blood, a kind of divine ichor that now represented a significant portion of my biology.

“So what does this mean in terms of genealogy?” I asked.

“Well, we could be whole human and half god, so you know, one hundred and fifty percent there. Or it could be a half god stapled on top of who we were before.” The second offered.

“Wait,” the first asked. “Wouldn’t that mean that we are technically the child of Hephaestus and… our previous self? I mean, it doesn’t look like we lost any genetic material, so how does the parentage work out?”

We shared a long glance between us before the second said what we were all thinking.

“So, everyone in favor of completely ignoring these questions?”

“God yes.”

“Seriously.”

“Not like it makes an actual difference.”

“Right.” I said. “Putting uncomfortable questions behind us, what’s next?”

The second checked the master list with his implant. “Aisha’s armor, Aisha’s training, key equipment upgrades, which now include the Veritech upgrade work. Research on new technology, including stuff from Physical Sciences and that Overtechnology. Oh, and with Setup Wizard we can now use Elven Enchantment to enhance technical components.”

“Interestingly, if we just use the first level it only counts as magic during the enchantment process, after that it’s just a highly perfected product, so good to know for any potential magical interaction.”

I nodded at the first. “Alright. What should I handle?”

They shared a look. “You should go train.”

I blinked. “What, again?”

“It’s not like we can be too prepared, and this other stuff is all busy work.” The second interjected. “Also, if the divine aspects are going to interact with Tetra we need to know before we end up finding out mid-combat.”

“You’re also tying up Garment, so if you're not going to train it’s not really fair to her.” The first gestured to the gloves, but a slight tug suggested there weren’t any ill feelings.

“Right,” I conceded. “So general physical training again?”

“Well…” The second drew out the word. “We do have that volcano, and the active lava flows. And I know we’ve been thinking about it.”

I wilted slightly. The thought had occurred to me, but I passed it off and assumed that some duplicate would probably try it during their 20% time. With both staring down at me I couldn’t really deny the appeal of the concept. I relented under their gaze. It probably wouldn’t be that awesome anyway.

I was wrong. There was nothing more awesome than this.

If I tried it with conventional materials there might have been some issues, but in addition to its other properties mithril was nearly frictionless when properly polished. A slight adamantium enhancement was enough to more than survive the heat exposure without any build up. Any lack of skill at the task was made up for by Do One Thing at a Time and the physical enhancement of my life fibers.

Seriously, it was the best time of my life. Something normal people could only dream of. I shifted slightly, and the mithril board turned lightly skimming over the thickly flowing liquid. The slope wasn’t that extreme in most places, but there were points where I could shift between flows. After spending the duration of multiple duplicates, running back to the lab to refresh them between runs, I was familiar with the best routes. Still, that didn’t make it any less exhilarating.

I kicked off a cooler patch, launching into the air along with a spray of rapidly cooling lava. The way my reflexes were enhanced meant I could perfectly control my descent as I guided the board back into the flow. There was a whole art to following areas of higher temperature based on the viscosity of the flow, something my demigod senses helped with immensely.

Tetra was also enjoying herself. I was still maintaining the nanite activation as a safety measure, but the drain was nothing like before and she seemed to be getting substantially more out of the connection. I leaned into a curve, sending a wave of lava against the side of the volcano before shifting for a straight run down to the Skyforge.

That was the best return route, and the most stable channel, though when it came to lava surfing down an active volcano ‘stable’ was a relative term. I kicked the board up just before reaching the Skyforge and was able to completely clear the eagle statue before landing on the platform.

At my signal Garment held off the life fibers and I shot towards the table. The drain might not have been as bad, but my appetite had expanded to a tremendous level. That might be a side effect of the divine thing. Classical gods weren’t known for their temperance. Still, I was powering through a quantity of food that would have shocked and disgusted me if I hadn’t become acclimated to this kind of experience.

It was the last run down the volcano, at least for this morning. I had other things to manage, things I couldn’t hand off to my duplicates. I got a final check from the duplicates before they began their 20% time, then returned Tetra with thanks, had Garment disengage, and left to get myself ready.

Returning Tetra was an almost non-event. Whatever resistance the life fibers had to being separated from me was no longer based on that ravenous instinct. In fact, it was more like a lingering hug that Garment slowly peeled them away from. The whole thing was endearing, and I considered if I could manage working with Tetra without Garment on ‘hand’ so to speak. Just standing by might be enough to moderate things.

I finished getting showered and dressed just as my duplicates finished their 20% time, and it seemed at least one of them spent it working to add better lava surfing routes to the mountain. I smiled at that, but I had unfinished business from the previous day to get ahead of.

That’s what led to me downing an invisibility potion, sealing the workshop, and slipping out my apartment. It was finally late enough in the day for people to consider it ‘morning’ rather than an extension of the previous night. That said, there was something creepy about a pre-six am city when you weren’t seeing it through a haze of either recent or badly needed sleep.

I hurried through the streets towards the abandoned bakery’s garage. A quick check confirmed nothing had been disturbed, so I slipped inside and opened my workshop before turning my attention back to the truck.

It looked nice. Way too nice. I needed to do something to get it into a shape that was believable for a night of work rather than what was effectively the complete rebuild and detailing that had actually happened. To that effect I retrieved the array of grease, dirty water, and other various supplies to facilitate my desperate disguise attempt.

It was actually more work getting the truck to look realistically run down than it had been to fix it, and I felt like I was basically dressing it up in makeup. The end result still had an inescapable rustic charm and looked like it had rolled out of an old cigarette commercial, but it could at least pass for a realistic product of human labor.

I took another moment to set up the garage to look like it had seen a night of work, sealed my workshop, and checked the time. Around six was a bit early, but I could leave a message, and beside Doug seemed like the kind of person who embraced the insanity of early mornings that my power had forced me into.

The call rang eight times before a groggy voice answered.

“Uh, hello? Joe?”

“Hi Doug.” I did my best to sound tired. What I didn’t feel in physical exhaustion I conveyed through mental stress and that lingering soul strain from my work on Aisha’s focus. “Got an update on the truck.”

“Jesus kid,” There was a rustling sound before he continued. “You didn’t pull an alnigher on this, did you?”

“No, no. I got it mostly squared away last night. I just came into double check things”

“Right.” I wasn’t sure he completely believed me. “So, how bad is it?”

“Well,” I said with a heavy breath. “I got it running. It should be fine for a while if nobody messes with it.”

“Seriously?”

“I’ve got everything set up. Just wanted to let you know.”

“My God. Joe, you don’t know what this is going to mean for Drew. Mrs. Gartenberg’s going to be beside herself. We really owe you for this.”

“Don’t mention it.” I really meant that. There was nothing tinker level about the work, but if someone looked too closely things might not line up perfectly.

“Seriously, thank you. We’ll talk the next time you stop by the gym.” I swallowed. That could be a problem. I could just barely hide my new build when it was nothing but excessive muscle tone. The broadening from Divine Child combined with further training meant baggy clothes wouldn’t be enough. I would need serious concealment technology.

“No problem.” I replied. “Not sure if I can get in today…”

“Don’t worry about it.” He assured me. “You just rest up. I’ll be in for the truck later. Thanks again. I mean it.”

“Yeah. I hope it all works out.”

“We all do Joe. Take care of yourself.”

I ended the call and let out a breath. Well, that was one loose end tied up. Now I just had about a dozen projects, including research into an entire new field of technology, plus potentially a whole day of waiting around for Taylor to contact me. At least I could head back to my apartment without the invisibility potion this time.

The sun was rising while I walked back to my apartment, banishing the remains of the twilight I had found myself in when I headed out. It still felt too damn early despite the fact that I had been up for hours. There was just no way around that. With One Thing at a Time I wasn’t just a morning person, I was a crazy super morning person who completed projects before sane people had even put on the coffee.

They say power always comes at a cost. I just never thought it would be this drastic.

I was back in my apartment opening the Workshop again when I felt the Celestial Forge connect to a mote from the Quality constellation. Lathe of Heaven, a rather grandiose name for a power centered in equipment crafting and material enhancement.

Not to be flippant. It was an incredible power. It may actually rival Dwarven Craft in the level of skill it represented. The power covered masterful creation of all personal equipment. Even more advanced items like guns were included.

The crazy thing was that in addition to armor it included small items, charms, jewelry, sunglasses, that could be crafted with such perfection that they could actually have an enhancive effect, boosting strength, endurance, accuracy, efficiency of energy or adding layers of protection. It would have been amazing on its own, but when combined with my other skills and resources it reached an entire new level.

That was because the power also included an incredible mastery of the materials used in any craftwork, letting me enhance them beyond what should be possible. I could use normal bone to make a sword that would outperform steel or shape gold in such a way that it would be more durable than titanium. When using the metals and alloys I had access to I would be able to create some truly wondrous items.

Which also meant more projects. At least this would mostly be limited to my equipment. The materials work would be useful in my vehicles and industrial applications, but that could wait for the moment. I hurried to my Alchemist’s Lab to down another duplication potion.

With potion duration at 30 minutes it was an easy method of time keeping. At a rate of two potions per hour the morning dripped by. Even with my time powers and two assistants there wasn’t any lack of things to do. Particularly I had research to review as well as mounting avenues of crafting to carry through with.

It was kind of a situation where the more I did the more I realized I needed to do. The Veritech needed a more complete rebuild than what I had planned for the F-18, while the F-18 was being restored to classic if technically more advanced form during my duplicates’ 20% time. I had an entire field of super dimension spatial theory to be explored and developed. Fold Carbon wasn’t an easy material to work with or duplicate, even with my skill level. It didn’t fully exist within the material universe, much like that paired lithium that was an aspect of Skills: Physics.

If I could get a handle on it the result would be infinite power that didn’t require call beads or exotic fuel, and potential applications beyond most of my current technology. As such a good amount of the morning was allocated to research on that topic.

Well, reviewing the results of research. My duplicates still had an opposition to me partaking in scut work, so I continued training, practice, and other work that would yield real results while my duplicates crafted and conducted experiments.

I was left with the regrettable task of figuring out how I was going to manage cybernetic brain surgery. A summary of online reactions to my latest appearance only cemented the fact that the Slaughterhouse Nine would be here at some point. I needed to upgrade my implant, which meant I needed to be able to handle the surgery.

I spent a great deal of time on the throne blazing through medical books and theoretical scenarios. It gave me a great deal of context, but did nothing to settle my doubts about the entire endeavor. At the end of the day I was still cutting into my own brain. Well, realistically it would be one of my duplicates, but that barely made things any better. Even the expanded biological knowledge from Alkahestry and Skills: Physical Science didn’t feel like enough for something like this. I mean, it was my brain after all.

I was probably on edge due to the fact that I was stuck waiting for Taylor’s call. The morning was blazing by, well it was actually barely nine o’clock, but it felt like it was blazing by, and I hadn’t heard anything. This meeting was something I’d been dreading even without the anticipation caused by the impending call. Letting it drag out was just getting to me, my duplicates and even my A.I.s.

When a call finally came I almost lept out of my skin, only to immediately reassess things when I realized who it was. I prayed this wasn’t another disaster as I answered the call.

“Hello Aisha.”

“You went lava surfing without me?” Her voice came from the image of the girl on the omni-tool display. The omni-watch I’d given her had video conferencing technology that she seemed to have taken to well.

“…Survey told you about that?” A quick check with the A.I. confirmed that was the case, along with a significant amount of other updates that had been provided. I would really need to talk to her about data access limitations.

“Yep, showed me the videos too.” Aisha smiled. “Didn’t know you could shred like that.”

I felt my cheeks heat up when I remembered my behavior during that particular excursion. “That was due to special circumstances.”

“Those ‘circumstances’ about that red stuff? That’s from the Uber and Leet video, right? I never asked about that.”

Honestly I was a little grateful for that. Yesterday had been full enough without getting into Tetra’s nature with Aisha.

“That’s right.” I admitted. “It’s a little complicated. I can explain it the next time you’re over.” Though hopefully I could avoid having to explain the Laboratorium along with it.

“Great.” She grinned. “Any update on when I get my cape debut?”

I confirmed that Survey had at least checked for eavesdroppers and listening devices before making this call. That was a relief, but it seemed Aisha had been playing with the omni-tool like a new cell phone. There was already a terrifying amount of ripped music on the device and a growing media library. Oh, and the maximum display size for the tool turned out to be slightly bigger than her home tv.

I backed off before this turned from a security consultation into an invasion of privacy.

“Not for a while.” Her face dropped at my news.

“Really?” She asked in a disappointed tone.

“Unfortunately.” I replied. “It’ll take at least a day before I have your hard suit ready, not to mention other equipment. Then I need to make sure you can handle it, because even with A.I. support there’s going to be a lot of power behind it.”

“A… day?” She said. “Right, power armor in a day.”

“It’s the best I can do.” I replied. “Maybe sooner if I dropped everything, but there are too many projects…”

“No, a day is fine.” She was holding back a smile. “I can wait out a day.”

I nodded. “I’ve got some meetings with the Undersiders over the next couple of days, but I’ll make sure to keep you up to date on progress and any developments in the city.”

“Right, that’s great.” She glanced off at something. “Oh, Survey’s been great, a real super help. Like seriously, thank you for this thing.” She paused. “And for the hair clip. It’s been a dream. Even comfortable to sleep in, didn’t snag or come off or anything.”

Well, not idly does craftwork such as that fall. “Don’t mention it.” I replied. “Just be careful.”

“I will. Uh, check in later, and maybe lava surfing?” Her tone was light but she replied quickly.

“Not without that hard suit.” That just made her smile wider as she waved through the display and closed the call.

I sighed. It was nice to know Aisha was holding up well and the hairpin was helping. There hadn’t been even a hint of effort at containing her power. It was just that I still had to sit around and wait for Taylor. It was kind of infuriating how much this was bothering me.

The more time I had to dwell on it the worse it got. Really I just wanted this entire issue to vanish. It was too close to my past mistakes and was horrific in what it implied. I was just grateful Taylor knew it was a misunderstanding.

Huh. I probably had Tattletale to thank for clearing up that misconception. I guess I owed Lisa for that.

The problem was only made worse when I generated my next set of duplicates. They shared a glance before stepping in.

“Okay, seriously, you need something to take your mind off this, if just to get our minds off this.” The first insisted.

I took a deep breath. “Well, I’m open to suggestions.” Honestly, I didn’t know what would be able to take my mind off of this mess.

The second raised a hand to his chin. “You know, we never had that giant superhero martial arts battle on top of the volcano.”

…Okay, that might do it.

It wasn’t something we could launch into right away. There was prep work on both sides. I worked with Garment to retrieve Tetra, though this time with her standing by rather than being worn. The result was a constant and very energetic reaction from the life fibers, but not an overpowering one. I still had the nanites activated, but I had a considerable grace period before the feeling of being drained really set in.

The setting of the stage was left to my duplicates, and turned out not to be so much on top of the volcano as in a cavernous hall that had been created with the help of Alkahestry. It was basically a mix between a gymnasium and a gladiatorial arena.

The place wasn’t wonderfully lit, though I think that was intentional to draw attention to the glowing veins of lava behind the walls. I can tell you that would be a nightmare to set up, and probably would have been impossible without the help of my recent Physical Sciences power and the innate connection to the volcano that came with Divine Child.

The audience consisted of Garment and a single survey drone. Then one of my duplicates moved to have a word with the drone, and it began projecting a hologram of her avatar. Many times over. Soon it was joined by Fleet, packing the stands with copies of my A.I.s. Survey was cheering a lot more naturally than Fleet, who seemed to be running all of his duplicates on a continuous loop of about five different gestures.

I stepped out into the arena and faced down my duplicates. They stared back at me from across the hastily constructed but still immaculate battlefield.

“Alright, just to be clear, we’re not expecting any actual damage here, right?” I asked my ‘opponents’.

“God no.” The first replied. “Enchanted volcano-wrought skyforged mithril adamantium with Juggernaut backing it up? I think we’re going to be all right.”

“Yeah, not that it really matters for us, but we’ve got a bit more durability since the enhancement from Lack of Materials, so we’re good for whatever handheld weapons can put out.” The second quipped.

I nodded. “So, just training?”

“That, and we wanted to try these out.” With a glance between them each duplicate drew a pair of mass effect pistols, the ones that had been duplicated when the first complete rebuild was conducted. With mine they made the five created by Workaholic.

“So, blade vs blade?” I asked.

“It’s more elemental than that.”

It didn’t take long to get the pun. I could already see the runes on the weapons. Specifically, the very different runes from what I used.

The first deployed his weapons into a pair of omni-blades, one with excessively flowy shape and the second with angular serrations. The reason for the design was clear as they surged with water and flashed with electricity respectively.

The second repeated the maneuver, only he had one excessively heavy blade and a second that curved in a series of angry arches. When his runes deployed his blades were wreathed in a cloud of scree and a layer of flame that was nearly painful to look at.

I took a moment to appreciate the showmanship before drawing my own pistol. As I deployed the omni-blade it hummed with wind magic, but was also accompanied by the projection structures I had incorporated from Leet’s sword. With a flash a wide blade of plasma extended from the edges of the sword. I shifted to a two-handed grip and took a low stance.

It was ridiculous. The showdown was entirely fabricated and I loved it. I really needed to do more training like this. So many ideas that had been set aside were just waiting to be tried out here, and in an environment that was safer than any boxing ring.

A fluttering drew my attention and I turned to see Garment holding up a red scarf. With a flourish she cast it to the ground. As soon as the length of fabric touched the ground we all knew what it meant.

We all had the same base condition. I was running life fibers at an insane level, but my duplicates could use their auras more easily thanks to that whole ‘not having to actually deal with things’ advantage that came with a sub-hourly lifespan. The result was a clash between two very different but intensely powerful enhancement techniques.

Life fibers were stronger than what Aura was capable of, but that didn’t mean the duplicates were pushovers. The way they moved under Aura’s enhancement was excessive even compared to the physics defying aspects of life fiber enhancement. It was like they launched themselves with no reactive force or even directional movement. It was like their Aura served to drag them in the direction they wanted to go, rather than actually enhancing their bodies.

There was also the little aspect that none of us were even trying to defend. Everyone had the same enhanced shinpad reinforcing their clothes and body. Our weapons were good, but materials defense had lapped offense at some point. Beyond exotic effects nothing was punching through.

That didn’t mean we weren’t trying. One of the duplicates had written a point system that was running on our implants charting every decent hit, driving us to throw everything we had into the fight.

Wide sweeps from my blade sent arcs of energetic plasma at my duplicates faster than they could dodge. At the same time electricity and fire rained at me. Then they shifted so one closed while the other fought from afar. I quickly realized the effectiveness of that, as well as the frustration of fighting someone with my own level of elemental mastery.

The first duplicate was combining elemental effects into something approaching full weather control, basically an interior thunderstorm that had me trying and mostly failing to dodge lightning bolts while still sparring with the second. Shifting from the second to try to end the elemental onslaught quickly reminded me what happens when you mix fire and earth.

I was honestly fighting a volcano and a thunderstorm at the same time while wielding a plasma sword the same size as myself and being cheered on by a room full of holograms. There are times I really love my life.

Even with the exotic elemental attacks Tetra’s power wasn’t to be underestimated. Repeated screaming arcs of plasma scattered lava and storm clouds, clearing a path for me to charge in. I jinked between blasts of fire and ducked in for a devastating swipe against the second duplicate.

That’s when I saw the five throwing knives bury themselves in the ground around me. At the edge of the arena the first duplicate grinned at me with his hand on a hastily drawn pentacle.

The volcanic rock beneath my feet exploded upward in a hand the size of a watchtower. Black stone fingers closed around me in a crushing grip and I pressed against them with all my might. I panted for breath and focused on the dragon pulse, both the energy transmuting the hand and the cycle of chi between me and Tetra.

With a creak of stone the fingers closed tighter. And the fibers burned brighter. The closing of the hand stopped. Then there was the sound of stone beginning to fracture.

Then my implant announced I was receiving a call.

The entire room went dead still.

That lasted barely a breath before everyone exploded into motion. The alchemically transmuted hand split open and I dropped onto the ground. Garment was rushing towards me, already peeling Tetra away from my body. The energy of the fibers left and I pushed back the mounting hunger as I drew up my omni-tool. In the background duplicates scrambled to put out fires and halt any progressive effects that could give the situation away.

I took a deep breath, decided things were good enough, and answered the call.

“Hello?” The entire arena was as quiet as a church.

“Hi, Joe” Taylor’s voice came through the line. “It’s Taylor. I think Lisa said I would be calling. Uh, I didn’t catch you at a bad time, did I?”

Behind me the second duplicate dumped rubble onto an unusually persistent magical fire. I edged away from a bubbling pool of lava formed by a badly aimed attack as I responded.

“No, perfect timing, really.” I watched another blob of scattered lava slowly descend from the ceiling like a drop of molasses.

“Uh, great. Okay.” I heard her take a breath. “Look, I wanted to talk to you about that stuff. The stuff online.”

“Right.” I stumbled trying to figure out how to proceed. “We should sort that out.”

I hated the words even as they left my mouth.

“Right.” She echoed. “Okay, uh, it’s probably best to meet face to face, right?”

“Right.” I answered lamely. God I hated this.

“So, I was thinking…” Please don’t be a restaurant. Or a coffee place. Or a park. Or… okay, I had no idea where it was appropriate to meet a teenage girl. “…we could meet at the library.”

“The library?”

“The central one? Downtown? They have reading rooms, so if we go at like two o’clock there should be one free?”

“Right. I mean, great. We can do that.” I swear, I’m blaming all of this awkwardness on the combat being interrupted and assuming I would be fine otherwise. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. “I’ll head down early and get set up. I can text you the details?” Because my God did I not want this conversation to go on longer.

Wait, that was the whole point of this, right? Okay, fuck my life.

“Sure. Great. I mean, alright. I’ll see you there.”

There was a pause where we both stood there with the line open before I bit the bullet, said goodbye and hung up.

I sagged in the aftermath of the call as my duplicates approached me sympathetically.

“Hey, it’s set. That’s better, right?” The first offered.

I sighed. “I guess.”

“Come on.” The second said. “Let's try to get ready for this.”

Right. I put this behind me and I could actually go online without fear, meaning I might actually be able to do something about this insanity around my cape identity, meaning I might actually be able to fix things for once.

Alright, wishful thinking is great. I just needed to focus on dealing with the current mess, then I could start tackling everything else I’d put my foot in.

It was the kind of thing that made me miss the times when I could just hide in the workshop.

*********

Addendum Youth Guard

Youth Guard Notations – Wards ENE

April 19, 2011

Director Piggot has complied with the terms of the Youth Guard investigation, including the assignment of a temporary oversight officer. While all policies are being followed they have been consistently precisely limited to the exact terms of what is required by protocol. Given the situation in the city this may be somewhat understandable, but additional cooperation would be advisable to facilitate a non-hostile relationship. Barring that the transfer of Ward oversight to return to the Protectorate would be advisable.

The Case 53 Weld has been reinstated in a leadership position following an extended period of holding in medical observation. A gag order has been issued for several matters regarding ongoing investigations, but requests to restrict his communication privileges have been opposed and rejected. He had been given full license to contact other individuals while under observation by a member of the Protectorate or PRT representative. This policy was opposed under right to privacy, but it is within the purview of the PRT director.

Following an incident of excessive shift work Vista has been returned home on 24 hours leave. Evaluation of staffing records show either consistent excessive duty shifts or errors in record keeping going back several years. Records sent to Youth Guard headquarters for analysis. A period of leave may be necessary to meet downtime requirements.

Shadow Stalker has been continually evasive regarding details of her patrols, probation and civilian life. Repeatedly she defers to Agent Simmons, her PRT representative. Agent Simmons has been similarly evasive in providing records of Shadow Stalker’s oversight. Ongoing recommendation is for the Youth Guard to act as a secondary representative in all matters regarding Shadow Stalker’s treatment and conduct, as well as official access to all relevant records, effective immediately.

During her latest interview Flechette has raised the possibility that the villain March may have followed her from New York with the intention of pursuing a direct conflict. She also confessed doubt as to the PRT’s evaluation of March’s abilities and perceived threat within the ABB. These issues will be raised with Director Piggot at the next Youth Guard debrief.

The Youth Guard will be present as an observer during the meeting between Panacea and Lightstar to be conducted later today. This will be a primarily support role in accordance with master/stranger evaluation procedures. Additionally there are issues regarding the use of parahuman powers from a minor in promotional and charity capacities. If Panacea has been operating as a member of New Wave during her healing activities then the level of compensation owed to her under child labor statutes would be substantial. No evidence of the creation or maintenance of such a trust can be found. A clarification of Panacea’s status within New Wave and the extent and nature of her charitable work should be conducted at the earliest opportunity.

Melissa Garrick

Youth Guard Representative

PRT ENE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Tool Kit (Macross) 100:  
> Woah now, Sonny Jim! You don't expect to fix that machine with your bare fingers, do you? Don't go anywhere without the equipment you need to make sure that tech keeps on trucking! A handy dandy set of tools to accommodate for maintaining Variable Fighters. This will make things easier if you want to keep things in shape or just want to poke around and see what's inside!
> 
> Serene Sinatra (Macross) Free:  
> You're no slouch in the singing department, that's for sure. You may not be popular idol material, but no one's going to complain if you decide to sing along to a song or randomly bust out a tune with a voice like this. Who knows, maybe you could practice and get a little better?
> 
> Basic Training (Macross) Free:  
> Piloting a Variable Fighter can be pretty complex. There's all kinds of modes and maneuvers to worry about... with this, you won't have to worry so much. You'll know which button does what, and you won't end up turning into a mech when you need a jet. ...but I reserve the right to laugh if you mess up anyway
> 
> Space Suit (Macross) Free:  
> A futuristic, spandex space suit that will let you survive for 20 minutes in deep space. It's really more in case your vehicle gets stranded, but otherwise it's pretty darn cool looking.
> 
> Basic Variable Fighter (Macross) Free:  
> Your good ol' Fisher Price Veritechs! They may be the beginning, but they're classics and were the groundwork for future generations. Editions like the VF-1A Valkyrie (or its other variants), the YF-4, VF-2SS or the VF-4 Lightning III are made available for your stay here. It can transform in the atmosphere and operate in space, but it cannot reach escape velocity on its own. Comes with basic armaments and like all Variable Fighters can transform into a Jet, a Mech, or a 'middle' form called Guardian Mode.
> 
> Lathe of Heaven (Chrono Trigger) 400:  
> We're always going to need weapons, so the way I see it, you might as well get good at making them. Now? You'll be able to give old man Melchior a run for his money. Swords, guns, armor, even sunglasses - if it's worn or wielded, you can make it a masterpiece. You'll also learn how to make use of any material, bringing out its best qualities and minimizing its weaknesses. You could make bone sharper than steel, gold sturdier than titanium, and take a legendary material nobody's ever seen before, and figure out how to forge it, what to alloy it with, and how to craft that alloy into an impossibly sharp sword or some amazing shades.


	40. 34 Little Talks - Addendum Ethan

34 Little Talks

The sobering effect of the phone call had dragged me out of the euphoric excitement of the sparing match. The prospect of the upcoming conversation combined with the drop in energy from separating from life fibers, and now an even more intense appetite than I had become accustomed to, all added up to make me feel ridiculous. The arena that had been so engaging now felt like a frivolous and wasteful indulgence.

“Hey, it’s alright.” The first duplicate approached me while the second worked to restore the arena. Garment was striding towards me while cradling Tetra in a tangled bundle and Fleet and Survey dismissed their holographic audience. “We’ve got time to prep for this. We’ll get through it.”

“And we’re doing this again.” The second called as he deconstructed the remains of the alchemically generated hand. “I know you’re getting in a mood, but this was awesome and you know it. More than that, there’s more combat stuff we need to nail down before we try it in the field.”

That was true. Looking at this like an actual training exercise rather than an exercise of messing around made it a lot easier to justify to myself. The duplicates had tried out elemental combinations I’d only theorized about, and there was a lot more that was possible on that front. Additionally we barely touched ranged combat, and I had a huge amount of unarmed techniques from that Skills: Combat power.

Some of it was really fascinating stuff. The other martial arts I’d gained had been mostly mundane, setting aside T’ai Chi Chuan’s unexpected utility once chi actually became a thing. Skills: Combat covered a huge amount of armed and unarmed techniques for use against both conventional and exotic opponents. Some of the maneuvers were just mystifying in how effective they could be.

As I understood it, the double axe handle was seen as impractical even in the context of professional wrestling. The fact that I could now actually use it to amplify my full strength and take down tougher opponents was legitimately incredible.

I missed a connection to the Clothing constellation as I worked out what my next step should be. I had a few hours before the meeting with Taylor, but I wasn’t leaving things to chance. A network search showed some of the reading rooms could be booked out. There were a handful on the upper level that could be reserved for academic purposes.

My university enrollment would have allowed me to set something up, but that wasn’t exactly valid anymore. Of course, I’d never heard about this, so I’m guessing it was to facilitate research projects or something like that.

Well, I wasn’t going to roll the dice on this. A little bit of aggressive computer access got me into the system, and a room easily booked.

Actually, I didn’t even need to commit computer fraud. They weren’t exactly rushing to keep college students from studying at the Library. From the look of things, they updated their access lists annually. I still had booking rights until the end of the academic year, so oddly this was entirely on the level.

It meant I wouldn’t need to sit around staking out a free reading room or have an unusually busy library day completely ruin this meeting.

So that was one point of stress removed. Now I just had every other aspect of this conversation to deal with. How was I planning to manage this again? I mean, outside of an apology what could I really do? I couldn’t change the minds of idiots on the internet, and somehow they had been able to set the narrative on this.

Right. ‘Somehow’. It was a mystery how this had gotten away from me and had absolutely nothing to do with me feeling so wretched over my performance on Saturday night that I had actively avoided any online interaction that could have reframed things. This was my fucking mess, I just had to figure out how to manage it.

I guess that was up to Taylor. I mean, this was primarily an apology after all. What, if anything I did from this point on depended on her.

Was that a cop out? I had no idea. I was probably over thinking things anyway.

“Hey?” The first duplicate called out to me. “We’re pretty much wrapped up here. Do you need any help with the meeting stuff?”

It was a nice show of support from… well from myself I guess. Still, it was nice as a gesture, and probably from a psychological perspective as well.

“I mean the next guys will be around to help as well, but you know…” The second made a vague gesture, but I shook my head.

“No, it’s fine.” I replied as my stomach rumbled. “I’ve got to eat something and get Tetra squared away. You guys take your twenty percent time.” I checked the countdown. “Or seventeen percent time, whatever.”

They gave me an encouraging nod, then darted off. It reminded me that while I might have had the advantage in our spar that was due to Tetra’s enhancement. They could manage Aura much better than I could and practically fled down the side of the volcano thanks to its assistance.

Looking around the restored arena I briefly marveled at how quickly it had been pulled together. Then I noticed the set of statues. Mantic conductors had been set up in the arena, using the skills from my Build That Wall power. It had arrived in the middle of my rush to rescue Aisha, so I had barely thought about it since.

The power allowed the use of energy currents within buildings and technology to enhance the properties of the underlining structure or allow fairly incredible effects from very basic equipment. The problem was the material requirements. Properly implementing this technology would require large amounts of burstone, shards, and cores. The only equipment I received with that power was a rather high-quality phonograph.

The alternative was using conductors. A cluster of four statues could circulate mantic energy through a structure, allowing enhancement without relying on yet to be transmuted materials. Normally these would be fairly bulky, but my Gadget Master power let me shrink them down to a reasonable size.

The effect of the circulated energy held the arena together in the face of our energetic training match and made its restoration fairly trivial. I wondered if this was something of a test bed before this kind of technology was tried in the rest of the workshop, or even in the outside world.

That was something to worry about later. I retrieved Tetra from Garment and took a more sedate pace down to the workshop. Survey maintained a hologram to mime walking beside us, but Fleet seemed to consider even faking the act of walking to be an admission of failure. He did deploy a tiny ATV to meet us half way up the mountainside, and I had to seriously wonder just how large Fleet’s fleet had become when I wasn’t looking.

I should probably take a serious review of the 20% time projects, but the 80% time projects were a lot more important. I could review them mentally, but Survey seemed to enjoy the act of verbally discussing them with me as we walked. I’m not sure if that was a consequence of working with Garment and having limited ability to communicate or some kind of recent development from Aisha’s influence.

It a weird coincidence that I was trying to get better at digital processing data while Survey was trying to develop her speech skills. I knew which was more important so listened to her present reports as we walked back to the workshop.

“Preliminary Veritech analysis has been complete. Duplication of fold carbon is reported as the main obstacle to widespread deployment of ‘OverTechnology’. Fabrication strategies and potential applications have been compiled in detail.” The hologram explained as we walked. Survey had greatly improved in her ability to emote and convey convincing body language. “Also, there have been seventeen additional requests for the identity of the Veritech’s knightly house.”

I took a brief moment to skim over the report she was summarizing. Fold carbon was a complicated multidimensional material that was required for just about every super-dimensional application of OverTechnology. Those applications were even broader than I had first estimated. In addition to being able to perform what was basically a mass to energy reaction in the jet turbines there was the potential for artificial gravity, internal controls, and even advanced stealth systems. In fact, any active scanners that relied on monitoring the three-dimensional universe could be completely fooled.

The problem was that fold carbon wasn’t just a super material like adamantium or celestial bronze. There was a structure to it that extended beyond the physical universe. That meant that I had to account for additional invisible dimensions in any work I did. As a result, my usual duplication process of just bashing something together and letting Workaholic do its thing wouldn’t cut it. I would end up with a jumbled extradimensional mess that would be more work to sort out than it was worth.

“We’ll have to commit resources to developing management techniques for working with that material. I’ll make it a priority going forward.” Survey’s hologram nodded at my words and made a note on a projected clipboard. It was just a representation of internal processes, but it was nice to see her embrace that kind of expression.

“Design work has begun for Aisha’s armor and equipment. As directed, I have not shared any of the concepts with her, though she has provided a list of requested features.” Survey continued. Reviewing the list, I guessed it was more along the lines of a conversation Aisha had with the A.I. that was transcribed into a feature list, at least based on the number of items that were prefaced with ‘It would be cool if…” and similar phrases. It really had the feel of a thirteen-year-old girl rattling off ideas to a friend, which made seeing it categorized like this feel a little intrusive.

“I’ll see what I can do.” I skimmed over the duplicates’ notes again. “The main priority is going to be getting her some decent ceramite.”

Ceramite was one of the best defensive materials that had come from the mental database of my Armourer power. It was absolutely incredible, and completely unnecessary for any of my own application.

Ceramite was a super hard advanced ceramic that provided some of the best heat shielding imaginable. At higher grades it could block lasers, plasma exposure, or even the thermal load from repeated reentry. The two reasons I hadn’t bothered with it was its complicated fabrication process, basically plasma bombardment of precise mixes of elements conducted under high pressure and extended timeframes, and because I just didn’t need it.

My Fashion power reinforced me with the defensive properties of whatever equipment I was wearing. That meant heat bothered me as much as it bothered the adamantium in my armor plating. I didn’t need to keep heat away from my body because, with reinforcement, my flesh could reach white hot temperatures without impairing me in the least.

Aisha wouldn’t have that advantage. I would actually need to design a suit that would protect the wearer rather than just hold itself together. Fortunately, Armourer had thousands of years of experience in that field, even if it was heavy on mechanics and light on the principles of what was being designed. Still, with a little work my duplicates had been able to stretch principles from various design and technology powers into a broad outline of a hard suit that would work for Aisha.

“I will begin fabrication outlines based on provided parameters.” Survey replied. It was a little odd to remember that I was working with more information than she was, despite her nature as a computer program. Even with multiple duplicates trying to continuously bring her up to speed there was a limit to how much information could be conveyed, and that was not even getting into the effects of my powers on the design process. With the rate I was getting powers Survey was playing catch up and constantly trying to stay on top of the capacities of myself and the workshop.

I didn’t get the sense that she resented the situation in any way. If anything, there was an excitement about learning new things. It turned work with her into a collaborative effort, rather than making me feel like I was exploiting a computer intelligence for my own goals.

“Additionally, a new variant of Dust has been successfully synthesized. The theorized ‘Gravity Dust’ has been formed successfully, primarily from a base of rock Dust modified with three secondary Dust variants and recrystallized.” Survey displayed the results of the work, a pitch-black crystal that glowed faintly purple when activated with Aura. The reaction caused it to float in the air, and advanced sensor readings confirmed that it was suspending normal gravitational effects.

I watched the display with interest while also accessing lab data with my neural implant. The Magic constellation passed by as I considered the implications of the discovery. I could manage similar things with the use of element zero and mass effect fields, but there were subtle differences in the application. Dust had its own character and nuances. There were a lot of subtle variations I could manage with something like this.

I was jarred out of my musings by Garment pulling on my arm. I looked over to see her frantically gesturing at the screen.

“What is it?” I really didn’t expect her to get this excited about gravitational metamaterials. Maybe if it was particularly striking or well-designed I could see that happening, but it was just a floating black crystal.

At Garment’s insistence Survey pulled up more test records and then documentation of other variations of Dust. Garment was absolutely entranced by the entire display. I couldn’t understand her fascination. Had she seen Dust before? She must have encountered it somewhere, but this might be her first in-depth look at the mechanics of the material.

Whatever she saw it had her incredible excited. At her insistence we doubled our pace down the mountain, barely pausing to grab some snacks before heading for the Alchemist’s Laboratory.

I ate on the move while juggling Tetra with the other hand. The life fibers seemed to be able to pick up the effects of nourishment entering my body, probably because of the properties being enhanced by Elven Enchantment. There was a regular pulsing of red light that flared from the fibers in time with my chewing and swallowing of the food.

The whole thing felt a little silly, basically walking through the halls half dragged by Garment while casting pulses of red light and trailed by a hologram and two drones. Still, whatever had Garment so interested was obviously important to her, so I pushed through.

Once we reached the Alchemist’s Laboratory Garment tore into the place looking for the Dust reserves. I felt a seed of dread in my gut as I remembered how volatile some of those could be, but that settled when Garment actually found the cases of crystals and powder. I watched in amazement as she handled the material with the exact deference and care necessary to manage it in a stable manner.

It was incredible. She was displaying aptitude for an unknown metamaterial that hadn’t even existed a few days ago. Incredible aptitude. Peak aptitude.

The same level of skill she exercised in her crafting.

Things fell into place as she retrieved a scarf from the dyeing stations in the laboratory. With precise care she lifted a vial of Burn Dust and proceeded to infuse it into a thread. I could see the tiny particles of energetic material leap from the vial to embed themselves between the fibers of the thread. It was the precise control that Garment only exerted during crafting, and it was playing out in front of me.

The bright red thread rose and started to dart through the blue silk scarf. Slowly an elaborate pattern began to form along the length of cloth. It was fascinating to watch. Complex interactions of energy were effectively being coded into the fabric, allowing the creation of a controlled expression of Dust without any skill necessary from the wielder. It was the kind of thing that I could just barely manage thanks to my power granting me mastery of elemental weapons, but designed in a way that required minimal skill and allowed rapid deployment.

There was a whole world of possibility here and I had completely overlooked it. Well, it was more that I had never considered it in the first place. This was probably a shortcut for people who had difficulty controlling the elemental material that was expanded into a precise artform. There was an entire field of applications here I would never have thought to consider.

But Garment considered them. Whatever part of her power allowed her mastery of her skills apparently applied to anything that could be defined as such. It didn’t matter that this material didn’t exist before now, or that it probably originated in another universe or something like that. Just by being presented with the existence of Dust she could use it to the peak level of skill possible. She was sewing Dust patterns with the skill and mastery of a lifetime of training in an art that was developed over generations.

And I could do it better.

That wasn’t in any way meant to diminish Garment’s skill. It was just a consequence of my own powers. I could, at minimum, produce masterwork workmanship in everything I did. I hadn’t known that this kind of crafting was possible, but now that I did I could do it to a master level.

At minimum.

That master level was before my other powers were taken into account. Dust sewing was affected by a staggering number of my powers. It was fundamentally a weapon, so every weapon customization and design power applied. It was based on the mechanical interactions of energy patterns in the sewn design, meaning everything that affected technology and machinery applied. It was also an art, meaning there was a skill and quality component that was influenced by even more powers.

My style powers would also affect it, but only from an aesthetic side. Unlike runes this didn’t get better with more detailed workmanship, only better design and materials.

Oh, and since it was a weapon, even if one with a limited number of shots, rune smithing could also affect it. As could my other enchanting powers, and anything that allowed general improvements. And all my time powers that were specific to technology and machinery applied. This was basically an eccentric form of printed circuitry, after all.

From the way Garment watched my reaction I knew she understood the implications. This was effectively a way to layer varied elemental weaponry on top of my costume. She trailed a gloved finger across the design on the scarf causing it to glow orange before launching a set of burning motes across the lab to detonate in the hall outside. The blast was strong enough that it cast the entire room into harsh shadows for a moment and drove home the potential of this power.

That was just from manual activation. Using Aura, the process could be tuned and controlled to a much greater degree. My control of Aura was not the best, but the potential of this really drove home the need to deal with that.

That was because this wasn’t just blind offence. I could manage that from my omni-tool or Evermore Alchemy. Dust included elemental representations of lightning, fire, and ice, all of which my omni-tool could manage, but also stone, water, wind, steam, and now gravity. What I could manage with a master designed, customized, and enhanced dust pattern dwarfed what my omni-tool could put out, and eclipsed even the stronger formulas of my alchemy.

From Garment’s excitement she obviously realized the most significant implication of this discovery, at least as far as she was concerned. Dust sewing would require bright patterns to be added to my costume. This mean a complete redesign to incorporate the additional color palette.

I don’t remember the last time I’d seen her this excited.

“Thank you Garment.” She preened slightly as I spoke. “Right, uh, big project, so we’ll have to prepare…”

She was already scrambling to her notebook and settling in to work on new designes. My mind jumped back to the unseen sketch she’d been working on when she saw my Aura shield and my stomach flipped at the idea.

“Designs. Prepare designs together.” She made a vaguely affirmative gesture and went back to her work. “There are a lot of ways this can be expressed and that will affect the types of Dust used and their application. If we’re not careful we might end up having to completely redesign the costume multiple times…”

And from her behavior I could see she was completely okay with that. I let out a slow breath and nodded. “Alright. Can you at least spare some time to help me get ready for the meeting?”

I took her gesture to mean of course that she would. With that settled I noted the durations of my last duplicates had expired, so moved to down another potion.

“So…” I started lamely.

“Right.” The first assured me. “Don’t worry about it. We can handle most of this.” Though from the way he looked at Garment I doubted he’d be able to do much to restrain her design impulses. “You get Tetra squared away and prep for the meeting.”

“Oh, and eat something else.” The second chimed in. “That walking snack wasn’t nearly enough. I’m not a fan of spending a limited experience with that pre-lunch feeling.”

My stomach grumbled again and I conceded his point. Just basic levels of exposure to life fibers had me eating like a cartoon character. Whatever effect being a demigod had was ramping things up for some reason. Maybe it was that ‘force of evolution’ thing the fibers did to their host being applied to someone who didn’t have a conventional genetic structure. Whatever the cause I felt like I had skipped breakfast and the clock was showing 11:50, heading in for the longest ten minutes of a person’s life.

I hurried back to the Laboratorium with Tetra in my arms. This was the first time I had returned her without Garment’s help, but also the first time I didn’t feel like I needed that security. The life fibers own senses combined with my expanded awareness of the Dragon’s Pulse meant that we at least had a sense of each other’s mood. There was no concern over a sudden, unseen risk because I had an inherent connection to her mood and status.

The Laboratorium was still busy with the remnants of my earlier tinker tech analysis and continued work on the Veritech. A large display showed a blueprint of the fighter in robot mode, highlighting all the places where there was a lack of weaponry in what the machine spirits seemed to regard as an affront to decent design practices.

I acknowledged the deficiency and, at the prompting of an eager skull, handed over my sidearm for analysis. I had integrated Leet’s plasma sword into it using Hybridization Theory and had repaired the technology with my other powers. That guaranteed that it would work, but didn’t give me a full breakdown of the effects at play.

I was rather proud of the end result of that exercise. It added a long range hard light rifle and shapable plasma blade to my sidearm. The plasma projector allowed the omni-blade to be coated in a shapable high energy field that both negated my HF blade’s weakness to forcefields and acted as a wonderful medium for shockwave runes. The combination let me throw out focused miniaturized versions of the attack that ended Bakuda’s barrage at the storage facility without needing my Energize formula.

If I actually manifested the plasma sheeting with an oversized blade enhanced by the Energize formula… Well, that was the kind of thing better reserved for use outside urban environments. Far outside. Lagrange point two seems like a safe distance.

The skulls accepted the pistol with an electronic trill that I could now just vaguely understand, then moved it to the nearest scanning bay. I left them too it as I took Tetra to the stasis bay and gently settled her into the suspension field before activating the stasis program.

I was less concerned with containment than the effects an extended period without nourishment could have on her. I really didn’t want her to end up slipping back into stasis and losing some of the progress she had made. I was actually proud of her. She had started as something completely destructive and managed to change herself, not just to a form that was tougher and more likely to survive, but to a form that was healthier, more positive, and with better support and connections. I was happy that I had been able to facilitate that.

I turned from the bay to find a skull waiting with an elaborate scroll held out to me. It was a masterpiece of calligraphy and illumination with multiple attached medals, wax seals, and certifications of intent. It was written in an extremely formal version of the gothic language of the Laboratorium and I struggled to make out its meaning.

After a few minutes of effort I was able to determine the document’s purpose. I was looking at an official writ of request, to be delivered to the sector authorities, with multiple administrative codes and requirements attached to ensure correct and prompt filing of the request.

The request to know the Veritech’s knightly house.

I did not have the heart to dissuade the skulls and machine spirits, so I assured them I would see it filed at the earliest possible time, leaving out that such as action would require an entire new addition to be added to my workshop.

Okay, I really hoped I didn’t jinx myself on that one. I took the scroll and slipped out of the back entrance as the Forge missed a connection to the Magic constellation. I moved through the secret lab that came with my Hidden Hideaway house before emerging back into the living areas.

I ended up taking the immaculate document to my office and finding a place to store it properly. I didn’t know if there was anything I could actually do with this thing, but it was important to the Laboratorium so I at least wanted to treat it with respect.

With that done I moved to raid my pantry. Said pantry had grown substantially more impressive thanks to various super science home improvements. At least grocery shopping was unlikely to be an issue in the future.

That left my only real expense as rent and utilities, something my payment from the Undersiders should be able to cover for the immediate future. It might get suspicious as to where the money was coming from, but I’m betting in a city with a police force as overstressed as Brockton’s there wouldn’t be a big push to chase down someone who, from appearances, was probably just working under the table jobs.

Also, elven food was still incredible. I don’t know if I was eating more because of it, or if the enhanced nutrition meant I was actually eating less than I otherwise would. It’s not like I had a demigod control group to compare my observations to.

I was also seeing the effects of Lack of Material’s secondary power. There was an enhancement effect as long as I provided all the necessary ingredients. More than the quality boost from One Thing at a Time, this actually expanded the result beyond its original parameters. I was getting completed meals with evidence of cooking steps and ingredients that I never added to them. It was an amazing power, just from doing what I did before I got better results and bonus features automatically.

It made the process of stuffing my face all the more enjoyable. I decided to count this particular binge as lunch, though structured meal plans were kind of meaningless when combined with life fiber training. A full day of that kind of workout would have you going through enough square meals to form an eleven-dimensional hyper-cube.

I was briefly entertained by the fact that I was indeed working with multidimensional materials thanks to that fold carbon, so the idea of a tesseract sandwich was a good deal more possible than it had previously been.

I pushed that thought aside. It was on the same level as the elven club sandwich, something so ridiculous that it seemed idiotic until the moment it didn’t. I wasn’t going to tempt the Forge lest I actually end up with some ability that makes everything I craft exist simultaneously in multiple dimensions.

The same way March’s striker power does.

And just like that my good mood came crashing down. It didn’t stop my appetite, but I was digging into the tray of food with a little less enthusiasm.

Dealing with Taylor was something I needed to do, but it was a stepping stone to larger issues. I needed to try to salvage my reputation from whatever twisted form it had mutated into. That meant getting a handle on the rumors I had inadvertently caused, which meant finding out how Taylor wanted to deal with them.

After that, what was my plan? I had been taking refuge in the idea of building up until I could counter March, but that was an annihilator power. There was no way to be 100% certain about my safety. My only option was to strike first and strike hard, but I needed a target for that to work. That left me waiting around for something to go wrong and then hoping I could jump in and make a difference.

Though, that was kind of the modus operandi for superheroes. I just felt like I should be able to do better than that.

Maybe I could, but thinking on later issues wouldn’t help me with the upcoming ‘talk’. God, I was dreading this. I received a notice that my duplicates were entering 20% time and packed things up before heading back to the Alchemist’s Laboratory.

Garment had moved back down to the textiles area, but had apparently taken a large amount of Dust samples with her. Given the literal rainbow that was possible with Dust sewing and her knowledge of how I’d be able to miniaturize and modify designs I was more than a little nervous concerning the direction her designs might take.

That apprehension was shared by the next pair of duplicates, who gave me an uneasy glance after they formed.

“Alright.” The first said. “Not hungry anymore, but this isn’t exactly better”

I just gave a tired shrug. “I know I have to do this, for a lot of reasons. That doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it, or that I know how to handle something like this.”

The second stepped forward. “Look, I guarantee you are overthinking this. Whatever mess you think this issue will cause it’s not going to be that bad. You heard Taylor on the phone. Did that sound like someone who has some horrible misconception or suspicion about this, or did it sound like she was in exactly the same position as we are?”

He had a point, which meant I had a point. Or I would have a point if I was looking at this from an outside perspective and not as someone who would have to deal with it and thus was running every nightmare scenario through my head.

Did I mention dealing with my duplicates can be confusing?

“Hey,” The first offered. “It’s still probably good if you get there early. Just take some time to wrap up anything you need to personally review, then head out. Killing time at the library is probably going to be less stressful that running around here trying to figure out the perfect way of handling this.”

I gave a weak nod. That actually sounded kind of nice. I hadn’t done that since I got my Not A Stupid Grunt power and decided to check how I retained information. My abilities had expanded significantly since then, so it might be nice to see how some regular studying would go. At worst it would be a couple of hours to get my mind on something else before I tried to get through this talk with Taylor.

Having a goal, even a vague goal, made a lot of difference. I spent the next duplicate duration reviewing research, checking in with Fleet and Survey, and even reviewing things with Garment.

Her sketch book had a lot more color in it than I was used to seeing, but thankfully she put that aside to help me get ready. She was always happy to make sure my clothes were properly fitted and I had an appropriate outfit for the occasion.

Additionally, I confirmed she didn’t mind being cut off from the internet while I was at the Library. My guess was after being stuck outside the workshop on Saturday night she had decided a few hours without Twitter was worth the guarantee of that not happening again.

I had more than an hour to spare when I generated my last set of duplicates and sealed the workshop. It locked me out of other potions, but it gave an extra half hour of project work while I was in transit.

If I wanted to be really cheeky I could find a place to access the workshop at the library and renew the potion there, but it was probably better to leave things and not overstress. I was working faster than I ever imagined, I could spare a couple of hours to deal with this mess.

I texted the details of the booked room to Taylor before retrieving my Pinto from the gym’s parking lot and heading downtown. Shortly after I received a confirmation text from Taylor of the location and time, relayed through the latest addition to the car.

I had made one concession to Fleet’s requests. Despite the car not exactly being a high-end model, I got the sense he regretted not being able to work with it. I still wasn’t willing to modify it beyond standard parameters, but there were some things that could be installed without rousing suspicion. Like a GPS unit that looked completely identical to regular commercial models both in appearance and to any conventional scanning system and completely disguised the fact that it housed an A.I. with full sensor feeds of the car and surrounding environment.

It wasn’t the drive assist Fleet enjoyed, but I didn’t really need that anymore. My demigod powers had given me a sense for the operation of machines that exceeded what could be accomplished through any level of training. Between my innate understanding of the mechanics of the vehicle and an almost instinctive knowledge of its operation I was probably one of the best drivers on the planet.

Surprisingly Fleet didn’t resent the lack of control and just seemed to enjoy the chance to be in a full-sized car and receive more operational data for modeling purposes. The copies of Fleet and Survey running on the GPS and my omni-tool were shadows of their full programs in the computer core, but these smaller iterations were essential for supplying information for their development.

The fact that they couldn’t copy to another device without my assistance was one of the harshest limitations they were under. So far it hadn’t caused any grievances given that they were regularly installed in new equipment, their requests were being taken seriously, and both had accepted the benefits of tiered development with assistance in optimization. If I had just let them run freely I doubt I would even recognize the programs at this point. Staying active in how the A.I.s developed both accelerated the emergence of complex mental functions while also ensuring stability of their operation. It was more complicated and time consuming than just sticking an A.I. in a box and letting it develop, but I think the results were worth it.

I found a place to park in the general area of the library and walked the rest of the way. The Brockton Central Library was a building that had delusions of being a major city library, but didn’t quite measure up. You could see the architectural influence of someone who wanted to draw parallels to New York or Chicago, but didn’t have the budget, skill, or environment to pull it off. It came across as baby’s first civic library.

Actually, could you see that, or was it my aesthetic powers acting up again? Honestly I had never actually paid attention to the design of the building before, beyond noting that there seemed to be a lot of stairs to get to the front doors. Maybe this was something I needed to keep an eye on before I started critiquing every design I saw, like if Garment was trapped in a discount clothing store.

The Vehicles constellation passed by as I entered the building. A quick check at the desk confirmed the reading room I had booked, despite it technically being too short notice. Still, the computer didn’t say anything was wrong and with Garment helping with my wardrobe the Librarian didn’t give me a second glance.

Well, she actually did give me a second glance, but not a suspicious one. More vague interest, some questions about what I was studying, and some assistance finding the book I was looking for. I thanked her for her help and settled into the reading room with a copy of Euclid’s Elements, original Greek text with translation and notes.

The translation was absolute garbage. This was probably a consequence of being a native speaker of ancient Greek, but seeing how they butchered it into English was honestly painful. The dissonance was probably due to my Old Traditions power giving me cultural understanding along with language skills. There were a lot of nuances to how the Greek people expressed things that didn’t translate perfectly.

Actually, considering how many times these books had been copied and translated over the centuries that reaction wasn’t surprising. You have to consider the intent. There’s a difference between trying to convey the concepts in a manner that can be understood by English speakers and trying to maintain the exact tone of the original text. Plus, this was based on a 1908 translation, so there would have been some cultural dissonance just from the fact that I’m not familiar with turn of the century British academia.

Eventually I just ignored the English portions and worked through the Greek text while enjoying the quiet reading room. It was a fairly modest space, a table and six chairs plus a few shelves. It was on one of the upper floors of the library and nestled away from the open area with its computers and help desks. This part of the library was closer to closed collections and the administrative offices than the general public. There was a window that looked out onto a row of shelves filled with books on tax law, but a venetian blind provided some privacy. It was about the best location I could manage for a discussion with Taylor.

I had transitioned from detailed study to light skimming of the text when there was finally a knock from outside the room. I felt the presence of someone through the Dragon Pulse, but I hadn’t had the power long enough to tell if it was Taylor or not. I quickly shifted the book aside and called out to the visitor.

“Come in?”

The door slowly creaked open and a girl with long hair and glasses peaked through, almost like she was convinced she had the wrong place and was attempting to avoid intrusion.

No intrusion, this room was fully legally booked, and there would be no record of me ever having been here the second I was out of the building. Computer fault, old system, what can you say? Oh, a handful of booking records got corrupted? Tragedy of tragedies, however will we go on?

Yeah, it was excessive, but systems like this were basically kindergarten toys to me. I could probably have rewritten the entire system in the time it took me to climb the stairs. Covering my tracks was the pettiest of exercises.

“Hi Taylor.” I greeted her as well as I could, putting on a warm face that I didn’t really feel. It always struck me just how different her cape and civilian personas were. It was either a masterful display of acting or she had some serious issues with how she presented herself. I knew personally how putting on a mask could change the way you behaved. Half the stuff I did as Apeiron would have caused me to die of embarrassment in my civilian life.

“Hi…” She dropped off as she saw me, freezing like a deer in the headlights. I immediately felt self-conscious about my… well about my everything. I had relented to Garment’s advice on what to wear and was immediately second guessing everything. What Divine Child had done to my upper body wouldn’t be hidden by anything less than a poncho, so Garment didn’t even try. Instead she had gone for situation appropriate clothing, which may have helped with the librarian but was obvious standing out now.

I was wearing a particular combination of subtle fashion and utilitarian clothing you found in university environments. Basically, I was dressed like a grad student. Well, a particularly ripped grad student, but that was the general theme. From the way Taylor was looking at me I could tell how ludicrous the ensemble must have looked.

I bit my tongue and forced a smile to stay on my face as Taylor processed things. “…Joe?” She finally half asked.

“Yes.” I responded lamely. “Please, come in.”

Taylor shuffled slowly into the room. She was wearing a different look from the last time I had seen her in civilian wear. Less baggy and drab. Not exactly high fashion, but the kind of thing you’d see at surplus stalls at the market. She didn’t look that comfortable in the outfit, so I’m guessing it was a recent fashion change. Possibly a post-felony shopping spree.

Oh, God. I desperately hoped it had nothing to do with me. I didn’t even know how to process that.

So I didn’t. I let Taylor settle into a chair across from mine and made sure the door was shut before pulling a small device out of my jacket.

“What’s that?” Taylor asked, leaning forward.

“It generates a charged EM partial field. It should block all transmissions as well as any attempts to listen in on our conversation through mundane or technical measures.” It would also hold the door shut and resist small arms fire, but neither of those was its primary purpose.

“Are you expecting someone to spy on us?” Taylor asked in concern. “Is there anyone I should be looking for?”

There was a sense of movement and a kind of hazy web like feeling of chi through the building. Whatever effect Taylor used to connect with her bugs brought her very close to them as far as the Dragon’s Pulse was concerned. It was a fascinating sensation and I would really like to get a better look at the effect.

Later. Now I had an awkward conversation to bumble through.

I quickly shook my head. “No, it’s just a precaution. I had some extra time this morning and thought it would be a good idea. You know, to give some extra security?”

It felt like I was stumbling over my words, but Taylor nodded at me and I felt myself relax. I activated the projector and there was a slight shimmer at the edges of the room before the field settled into transparency.

Rather than prove to be a launching point I found myself sitting uncomfortably across from a teenage girl that half the internet seemed to believe I was in love with. I didn’t even know how to start this, and Taylor seemed even less inclined to begin the conversation.

When it became clear that we weren’t getting anywhere I took a deep breath and pressed forward.

“Taylor,” She looked up at me through a curtain of hair. I swallowed and did my best to press on. “About the stuff online.” God, come on. You can do better than that. “About Khepeiron.” She almost flinched at the word and I had to steel myself to avoid losing my nerve. “Uh, I want you to know, I didn’t mean for any of that to happen. And, uh, I’m sorry about that mess.”

There was a period of empty silence in the room while we both processed my attempt at an apology. I had the fun experience of replaying every word of it back to myself and cringing at the obtuseness of it. I also had the horrible realization that this level of performance was with the benefit of Do One Thing at a Time, meaning my attempts would normally have been so much worse.

Of course, that might be a case of doubling my skill not having much to work with. Zero times two isn’t an impressive number.

“It’s okay.” Taylor responded. “Well, not okay, but I mean, I understand. Not that, but, like it’s, um, alright…” She petered off and seemed to retreat further into her hair.

The copy of Survey on my watch contacted my neural implant to request clarification on the sentence structure of Taylor’s statement. I was suddenly very glad I didn’t have a direct link to the Workshop’s computer core at the moment. I did not need that kind of input and distraction right now.

I took a moment to pull myself together and remind myself that I was the adult in this situation and as such had a responsibility for sorting this out. I may have been as awkward as a teenage girl, and wasn’t that a bleak situation to be in, but I had caused this mess and I had a responsibility to resolve it. I could hate myself later, but I needed to get this cleared up.

“Taylor.” I spoke as calmly as I could while my stomach twisted into knots. “I’m sorry about the way things came across online. I didn’t mean for them to be interpreted like that, and at the time I wasn’t even considering how things would look. I should have stepped in to clear thing up sooner, but I was tied up with other projects and didn’t prioritize the public reaction until it had already established itself.” I took another breath and pressed on. “I’m sorry about how all this played out. I want to try to fix it, but I needed to talk to you first before I tried anything.”

I watched as she processed things, and they seemed to be going a little better than from my first attempt. At least she wasn’t shrinking into herself even further as she considered the situation, which I was taking as a win.

Finally, she sagged slightly and leaned back in her chair. “I mean, I understand.” She sighed. “After the bank, the stuff online got crazy.” Her voice had a bitter edge to it. “All the stuff they were saying about me, drawing about me…” She scowled. “I get it, the internet is crazy. I don’t think I realized how big this stuff could get. I guess I always figured I’d stay beneath the radar, like out of notice. There are loads of capes you barely hear about. I guess I didn’t realize how big this stuff could get.”

I nodded blankly. From the way she acted in costume I wouldn’t have pegged her as a low-profile cape. Even when she was running for her life the girl had a presence in the field. That was probably the insect control thing. With no visible control method and her bugs providing sense and location data she could act calm and focused while actually frantically monitoring and micromanaging everything. Of course, if people didn’t know about that aspect of her power she just came across as cool and detached.

Then there was the effect of my weapons on the situation. Taylor probably would have been an imposing figure just by virtue of how intimidating her power could be. Add in a real threat like my wind knife and baton and suddenly she was locked into the public consciousness.

I tried a weak smile. “I think it’s a bit late for low profile.”

That got a dry laugh from the girl. “Yeah.” She muttered. “Can’t believe I was going for that. Seriously thought I’d be able to keep it.”

From her tone there seemed to be something else she was talking about, but when she didn’t elaborate I let it go. I wasn’t in a position where I wanted to press her for information she didn’t want to share.

I took another breath. “So, do you have any idea how you want to manage this?” I asked.

She just shrugged. “I mean, what can we do? It’s already on news sites. We’re beyond shipping theories now.”

I sighed. Time to be the adult again. I couldn’t just sit around lamenting how unfair the world is. I had to actually deal with it.

“I think,” I started. “That the important thing is to have a plan.” That got her to look up. “Even if the plan is to do nothing, to ignore the issue and let people come to their own decisions, the important thing is that we decide.”

Taylor took a moment to process that as I felt the Celestial Forge connect to a mote from the Resources and Durability constellation. It was called Scrapper, and probably would have been a lot more valuable earlier in my career. It let me strip down anything that was technically possible to deconstruct and salvage any working parts for later use. Even the most complicated items would only take a few days to strip.

Well, a few days if you had no other skills and were working like a normal human. I could probably manage disassembly mid combat without too much trouble. Also, this would let me retrieve parts from tinker tech, some seriously advanced. It would make repurposing tinker tech much easier, and when combined with powers like Rationing would probably let me recover nearly everything that went into a device.

The power also came with a lab coat, laser pistol, and for some reason a bag of 100 bottlecaps. Mystery of the Forge I suppose.

I turned back to Taylor as she looked up at me. “So, seriously, what are our options here?”

The fact that she was turning to me for public relations advice was a good sign of just how screwed we were. Still, needed to be the adult here. Time to adult.

I cleared my throat. “Well, just laying them out?” Taylor nodded. “Okay, first I guess is ignore everything. Just don’t comment on it, avoid any displays that can be mistaken for that kind of thing in the future and eventually it should die down.”

From Taylor’s expression I could tell she knew how good an idea that would be. ‘Eventually’ could be a hell of a long time, on the order of months to years depending on how these cycles went. If nothing else caught the public’s eye there could be holdouts for the rest of our time as capes.

The plan to avoid displays that could be mistaken for a confirmation of this disaster was equally unlikely. Now that people had this in their heads confirmation bias would take over and every time we were in the same general area someone would swear they were picking up on hidden chemistry.

Full face masks really weren’t our friend there.

“What are the other options?” Taylor asked in an almost pleading voice.

“I guess we make a statement clarifying things, confirm that there is no personal connection and that our relationship is professional.” And that wasn’t much better. Even publicly speaking on the matter would be enough to convince some people that we were together. Then there was the possibility that they would misinterpret this as a break up, or assume it was an attempt to divert attention or a hundred other things.

We were effectively trying to change public opinion that had grown organically in people’s minds by making statements of facts. That wasn’t going to be enough for people. We were their entertainment now, and they weren’t going to accept a less engrossing narrative after they had become invested in a more engrossing one. Basically, we were stuck in a high school nightmare where the population had decided what was happening and they couldn’t be dissuaded.

Taylor’s head sank, and for some reason I got the feeling she had made the same high school connection I had. “Please tell me there’s another option.” She half begged.

I let out a slow breath and shook my head. “They’ve already drawn links between us. Really, at this point the only thing we could do is present another reason for the connection.”

Taylor slowly lifted her head and looked at me. “You mean,” Her voice had a frightening edge to it. “Like the real reason you came charging in on Saturday night.”

I felt my stomach twist against my will. Taylor was looking at me with an intensity I had never seen from the girl. I tried to crack a smile at her comment, but could tell the effort was getting me nowhere.

“Taylor, I had a contract with Tattletale…” Her expression told me she wasn’t buying it. “And I needed to stop Bakuda.”

Taylor’s expression didn’t change as she drew out the silence following my statement. Those were the eyes of someone who had seen a mountain of bullshit flung at them and wasn’t going to accept any more. I didn’t insult her by trying to push this any further.

“…and I wanted to make sure you were safe.” The admission caused a well of fear to bubble up inside me. This was the fate of the world, the fate of everything. I didn’t want to think about this, talk about this, or expose any detail of this to the world. How did you explain something like that to a teenage girl?

“Why?” She asked in a flat voice. “Why is it so important I stay safe?”

I took a long breath while I tried to figure out how to approach this. Finally, I found a route that seemed like it could be navigated.

“Taylor, what did Lisa tell you about this?” I asked. “She said something about it when she talked to you earlier, right?”

Taylor nodded. “She said it was your thinker power, the one that gives you hunches? She said it told you to do it.” She scowled. “At first she said you were doing whatever it told you, that we wouldn’t need to worry because you leaned too much on your power, that it told you what to feel.”

Okay, that hurt. It wasn’t exactly wrong. My passenger had basically helped me stay functional during the aftermath of my trigger. It wasn’t until I started seriously gaining powers and seeing how badly things could go from following his lead that I was able to distance myself.

Taylor continued. “She said she could read what your power was telling you really clearly, like it wanted her to hear it. That’s why she wasn’t worried about things until after Saturday night.” There was a bitter tone to Taylor’s voice and I got the feeling she resented how wrong Tattletale had been.

The statement raised all sorts of concerns on my end. Tattletale could apparently read my passenger, or thought she could. The idea that my passenger wanted Tattletale to read him was perfectly in line with his attitude about the thinker. I would have felt betrayed, but all it had done was create a false sense of security from her. I didn’t like the idea, but in all honesty Tattletale was going to read something from me. Knowing she had been getting my passenger’s reactions was a lot better than having her pull the details of my trigger event or family situation from thin air.

“She..” I began, paused to collect myself, then continued. “She was right. It was my thinker power, and it did tell me to protect you.”

Taylor let out a long breath. “That’s what this was all about? The knives, the special technology, the rescue and healing?” I nodded slowly. Taylor swallowed. “Why?”

It was such a simple question with such a loaded answer. I didn’t want to answer it, but Taylor deserved to know the truth. At this point I couldn’t justify keeping it from her any longer, not with this much information already in the open.

“My power…” I began. “It can give me hints about things. Some things that have happened, people’s histories, or details about them, but also, rarely, things that are going to happen.” Taylor nodded blankly and I continued. “There’s… something. Something you’re doing, or going to do, or working on, or involved with. I don’t have the details, but it’s important. Really, really important. Probably more important than anything else. That’s the sense I got. That’s why I’ve been trying to keep you safe.”

I watched as the news rained down on the girl. I felt awful about it. It was more pressure than should be put on anyone, and I had just dumped it onto the shoulders of a teenage girl. How did someone even respond to that?

The way Taylor responded when she swallowed and looked up at me was just able the last thing I could have expected.

“I… think I know what it’s talking about.”

To say I was stunned would be the understatement of the century. I could only stare blankly at the girl as she looked at me with complete confidence in her statement.

“Taylor,” I tried. “I’m pretty sure you don’t.” That was about the most polite way I could say it. Whatever she was thinking it was almost entirely 100% certainly not the problem my power had warned me about.

Instead she just shook her head. “No, there’s something. I kind of suspected it earlier, but it makes sense now. I’m pretty sure it’s what your power was reading.”

“Taylor,” I tried to keep my voice level. “I’m really, really sure that whatever you are thinking about, this isn’t it. I can’t exactly explain the scale of this, not without getting really deep into how my power works, but I can pretty much assure you it’s bigger than whatever you are thinking of.”

I watched in horror as the girl shook her head in complete confidence. “Look, I can’t talk about it. If it’s as important as you say then I need to keep the information secure.”

“No, you don’t.” I was practically shouting. “Taylor, if this is anything like what I think it is you need to tell me. And once again, I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

“I really can’t tell you.” She assured me in an infuriatingly calm tone. “And how can you be so sure this isn’t it?”

Because you aren’t screaming and weeping on the floor? Because the shear existential dread at the scope of the future of all existence resting on your actions hasn’t crushed your spirit and mind? Because there is no way I can conceive of whatever you are dealing with having the fate of the cosmos in the balance?

“Because I’m pretty sure.” Was the best I could manage.

She just smiled softly while I swore I could feel an ulcer form in my stomach, despite the fact that my entire gastrointestinal system was reinforced with magical adamantium mithril. “So am I. You can trust me.”

I swear I would have bitten off my tongue if not for the aforementioned reinforcement. The Dragon’s Pulse let me feel the calm, the reassurance she was under. That was not the reaction a sane person would have to a threat of this scale. Whatever she was dealing with it was nowhere near the fate of the world.

Then the real horror of it hit me. Of course, it wasn’t near the fate of the world. But it must still be significant if she was equating it to what I had warned her about. That meant that not only was Taylor vital to the survival of existence, but she had also gotten herself caught up in something else, and by the sound of it that was about as dangerous as anything in this city could be.

Oh my God, this girl was going to be the death of me. Seriously, didn’t I have some plan about throwing her in a stasis field until the end of the world crisis hit? I glanced at the door to the room and wondered if I could open the workshop and get her into one of the Laboratorium scanning bays before she realized what was happening.

I let out a sigh and slumped onto the table. No, that was probably a horrible idea, for like, ethical reasons and stuff. If I wasn’t willing to do it to Aisha I wouldn’t do it to Taylor. So, the only option I had was to deal with whatever nightmare of danger, crime, and probably dismemberment she had gotten herself caught up in.

The Magitech constellation passed by as I considered how to handle this. To be somewhat glib the first thing that jumped to mind when I asked myself how I was going to handle this was ‘badly’. That was it really. The girl who the entire fate of the creation rested upon was involved in something that was serious enough that when I warned her about the worst thing imaginable her response was basically ‘Oh, that thing’.

Fuck my life.

I took a deep breath and put aside my frustrations. Grousing about this wouldn’t help. Pressing Taylor for details on her super-secret deadly entanglement was unlikely to have any positive results. Really there was only one option to me.

I sat up, looked directly a Taylor and spoke in the most sympathetic voice I could manage.

“Alright. How can I help?”

That was clearly not the response Taylor was expecting. Her mouth did a goldfish impersonation for a few second before she replied.

“Sorry, what?”  
  


“How can I help?” I repeated. “Even if we’re not talking about the same thing you’re obviously dealing with something bad. What can I do to help you with it?”

She seemed at a loss. “Like help how?” She asked.

“What do you need?” She looked blankly at my question. “You said you can’t talk about it. So, what do you need?”

“I...” she stuttered before pressing forward. “I can just ask for anything? Like, technology, weapons, whatever?”

I held back my reaction at what Taylor could manage if more heavily armed. “If you need firepower I’m going to have to insist on helping directly, but technology sure. Defensive, surveillance, transportation, whatever. If you just need someone to help I can do that too. If this is bad you shouldn’t have to deal with it on your own.”

Taylor reviewed my statement with an intensity that suggested she was translating it from a foreign language. It was a harrowingly familiar sight. Blanket offers of help weren’t a common thing in my own experience, and usually came from people with strict stipulation on what would be offered and an implied obligation in return. Half the time the question was just a way to judge you based on what you requested.

I did everything I could to convey that wasn’t the case here. Rather than be reassured Taylor seemed to be put more off balance every second. Eventually she let out a sigh and sank onto the table. When I leaned forward to check on her she waved me off.

“Sorry, it’s just…” She petered out without finishing the sentence.

“It’s okay.” I assured her. “I get it.”

Taylor shot me a skeptical glare, then slowly nodded her head. “Right.” She sighed. “Sorry, I’ve been dealing with a lot. This… thing. It’s kind of gotten away from me. I’m not sure how to really manage it anymore.”

I buried the foreboding feeling in my gut and maintained a supportive face. “It’s fine. Look, if things are bad I’ll help out however I can. It doesn’t have to be specific to this.”

I mean, fate of the multiverse. That was worth making sure her life wasn’t falling apart due to all this cape insanity.

Taylor gave me a long look before nodding slowly. “Yeah, I guess.” She let out a long breath. “Things haven’t been good. I mean for a long time.”

I nodded and let her continue.

“Okay.” She rallied herself slightly. “When I was talking to the Undersiders they said people didn’t talk about how they got their powers, that it was because that only happened on the worst day of their life.”

My mind jumped back to my own trigger event, the implications of it, and my recent revisiting of everything thanks to my sister’s phone call. Taylor’s eyes widened, telling me I clearly hadn’t been schooling my expression as carefully as I intended.

I gave her grim smile before I replied. “That should probably be ‘worst day of your life so far’.”

There was a moment while Taylor processed it, then she cracked and let out a dry laugh. “Alright, I can see that.” She took a breath. “When I had my trigger event…” She paused as I held up my hand.

“Taylor, I appreciate you sharing, but that kind of thing is usually both really personal and very traumatic.” I explained. “If you want to talk about it I’m here, but you don’t have to tell me to give context or explain yourself. It’s okay if you want to keep that to yourself.”

She paused for a moment, then nodded. “When… that happened,” She took a breath. “It happened at my school, and it was bad. The situation, it had been building for a long time, then afterwards it didn’t really get better.”

I was getting all kinds of reactions from my passenger and it was frankly hard to pace the individual feelings. There was a lot tied up in this and he was seriously invested in it. What’s more I could tell he was restraining his reactions, meaning there was a serious storm of emotions behind this. Whatever this incident was, it was very bad.

I nodded and did what I could to reassure her. “I’m not saying I know what happened to you, but I get that High School can be terrible.”

She looked up at me. Specifically, up at my height, then across at my shoulders and even at my arms. I felt kind of objectified by the end of it. “YOU had a hard time?”

I was mildly resentful of her skepticism, but I pushed forward. “Okay, first off, major growth spurt that decided to drag its heels. I didn’t full level out until two years after I graduated.” She gave an understanding nod. “And yeah, high school can be terrible. I think the accepted idea is anyone who considered it the best years of their life ended up making it hell for someone else.” That seemed to particularly resonate with her. “Really the only thing that kept me going was focusing on college and well…”

I trailed off when I realized where the conversation had taken me. Taylor gave me a sympathetic look. “Uh, Lisa said you dropped out?”

I gave a faint nod. “Made it two years before things piled up more than I could handle. Since then I spent a year trying to get back on track, and another trying to get my life together.” I sighed. “Look, a lot of times you think your problems are tied to one place or one thing, but if you don’t know how to deal with them they tend to follow you.”

That seemed to make her uncomfortable, so I backed off while she broke eye contact. She glanced over at my book and raised an eyebrow.

“Were you taking math? Greek?”

I smiled. This was a marginally more comfortable topic. “Engineering, actually.” I replied. “Brockton University has a co-op program with the PRT. Fourth years get to work with tinker tech. I always regretted missing out on that.”

“Right.” Taylor smiled. “I mean, how else are you ever going to get that chance.”

I grinned back. “You given any thought to college? I mean, I wouldn’t recommend focusing on it as a way to get through high school, but…”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I actually wanted to take English. Haven’t given it much thought since high school started, but that used to be the plan.”

“Brockton U actually had a really good English department.” I offered.

Taylor looked up at me and seemed to be doing some calculation in her head. Suddenly her eyes widened and her mouth took on a soft smile. “Really?” She asked. “What was it like.”

“Well, it wasn’t my major, so I just took the required courses.” Taylor nodded. “I had a really good professor for both years I was there.” I smiled slightly and Taylor returned the expression. “She was actually my faculty advisor.”

Taylor’s face froze, but her expression didn’t change. “Really?” Her voice sounded a little strained as she asked.

“You can pick someone outside your department if you want, and she was one of the best professors on campus. I was actually lucky to get her.” No matter what my parents said on the matter.

Taylor nodded a little robotically. “She was a good professor?”

“One of the best.” I replied. “Really cared about her students, the material, everything. She was great.” Talking about it was bringing back some less than pleasant memories. Taylor must have picked up on my reaction.

“Was?” She asked. I dropped my head. I don’t know how I’d let that slip, but I had gone over this enough that I could manage it here.

“She, uh, she passed away during my second year. Car accident.” It had come out of nowhere, wake up one day in late November and hear about the memorial service.

“Was…” I looked up at Taylor. It looked like she hadn’t moved a muscle in her face since I started talking about this. “Was that why you dropped out?”

I sighed. This was very well trodden ground. While I considered how to respond I felt the Forge connect to a mote from the Alchemy constellation. It was the last small mote from the cluster that had provided Simplified Formulae and Alkahestry. This was called Advanced Formulae and, like the name implied, greatly advanced my understanding of transmutation. This took it from a bulk construction tool to a method of delicate creation with immense combat applications.

It also meant the only mote left in that cluster was the giant one, the one larger than any amount of reach I had ever built. It was an intimidating prospect, and the advantages of this power were immense, but I didn’t have time to ruminate on them now. I pushed the questions aside and focused on my reply.

“It contributed.” I admitted. “The associate professor who replaced her didn’t know what he was doing. It made it harder to get support when things started slipping.” I sighed. “I used to think it was just bad luck, you know, a bunch of things piling up at once and leading to me dropping out, but that’s not really it.”

“What do you mean?” Taylor was holding the table and leaning forward. I didn’t know why she was so engaged in this, but I felt an obligation to see it through, no matter how uncomfortable.

“It’s like I said about problems following you? I still had all the issues that made high school hard, I was just getting support so the fact that I couldn’t deal with them wasn’t apparent.” I took a breath. “My professor was great, but looking back she was a lot better at helping hold people up than making sure they could stand on their own. I dropped out because of my own problems and mistakes, not because of anyone else.”

I looked up to check on Taylor and froze. She hadn’t moved, but there were lines of tears flowing down her cheeks. I sat there like an idiot, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. When I tried to say something she waved me off and fished a tissue out of her bag. I watch dumbly as she cleaned herself up, took a deep breath and turned towards me.

“I just realized we never actually introduced ourselves.” There was a gleam in her eyes, even more than the tears would account for. I nodded at her. At this point my full name wasn’t really a secret, not with this much information in the open and a thinker like Tattletale on her side.

“Right.” I smiled at her as optimistically as I could manage. “I’m Jozef Duris.”

She gave me a smile in return. “Taylor Hebert.”

My mind froze. My mind froze, shattered, and was reassembled into a licensed Lego kit. I opened my mouth and said the first words I could manage.

“You’re Professor Hebert’s daughter?”

********

Addendum Ethan

Ethan made his way through the PRT headquarters, ignoring the pain that followed his every movement. He was supposed to be resting, but there was nothing restful about staying at home while his wife was out there risking her life.

Shawn may have gotten the front-page picture, but that was because the Protectorate was in no hurry to advertise how badly they had been trounced by Lung. The man was a terror at the best of times, but now he was fully on the warpath. There would have been reprisal attacks just from escaping Protectorate custody, but the exact circumstances of his capture and breakout meant that the dragon man was trying to prove something.

That was something that still burned at him, and he appreciated the irony of using that term. They’d called him ‘lucky’ after the attack on the rig. ‘Lucky’ that he didn’t need skin grafts. ‘Lucky’ that he didn’t inhale enough superheated air to damage his lungs. ‘Lucky’ that things weren’t worse.

‘Lucky’ would have been stopping Lung from escaping. ‘Lucky’ would have been actually being able to tag Oni Lee without finding out you were three clones behind. ‘Lucky’ was supposed to be a measure of success, not just gratitude that things weren’t worse.

He wasn’t technically supposed to be back at work, though to be fair this didn’t count as active duty. It was just something that needed a Protectorate official to be present for. Even with his medical status he could handle walking through the PRT building, and no matter how overblown the accusations might be it wasn’t like this was actually a prisoner escort.

“Hey boys.” He called out. “One to pick up.”

The agent on duty gave him a faint grin before entering a command on his terminal. Within a few seconds the door behind him slid open to reveal an absolutely livid teenage girl.

She stomped out of the room, shooting the agent on duty a dirty look before turning to him and freezing. He gave his best professional grin, feeling the bandages pull at his face as he did.

“Hello Amy. It’s good to see you.”

“I’ll bet it is.” She muttered, but a lot of the fury seemed to have left her. This was probably a calculated play by the Director. Most people who had issues with the Protectorate or PRT didn’t naturally transfer them to him. It was an advantage of the endearing persona he had built up over the years of his parole.

“So, let me guess.” She continued. “Everything happened exactly the way the tinker said it would, you did nothing to prepare for it, and I’ve been stuck in the tank the entire time.”

The agent spoke up from his terminal. “Revealing details of that nature would violate Master/Stranger protocols.”

The man was covering his ass, but Panacea gave him another dirty look. Ethan shot her another smile. “He’s right you know. And besides, things didn’t happen exactly the way the tinker predicted. They’re actually a lot worse.”

The girl let out a dry laugh. “Yeah, I can see that.”

And she hit the nail on the head insofar as the other reason the Director had assigned him to this role. You couldn’t request healing from a cape under Master/Stranger protocols, but if someone just happened to receive some treatment during an escort operation, and they immediately received a clean bill of health then they could be back at their wife’s side that very night.

Of course, the Director might be blunt as a hammer, but Ethan knew how to play these things. Namely, don’t ask for anything you’re not going to get. Amy was in no mood to be charitable. There was a possibility she might be in better spirits by the end of this, but that was a long shot. All he could do was play things as friendly as he could manage and maybe try to make sure the girl was alright as well.

You know, the thing he was actually here to do.

When she received no response but his winning smile Amy sighed in defeat and spoke up. “So, what’s this about? They finally testing me out?”

“I’m afraid not.” He answered. “We’ve got something else lined up.” She gave him a confused look. “Your uncle is here to see you.”

The girl froze. “Not Uncle Neil?” She asked.

“Nope. Lightstar is back in Brockton Bay, just for you.” He watched as Amy cycled through a dozen emotions, half looking like she might run back into the stranger tank.

“Hey,” He assured her. “It’ll be alright.”

“They’re going to record this, aren’t they?” She muttered. “It’s going to be like the last time.”

“No, it’s not.” He assured her. “They’ll have a camera, and I’ll be there. They’ll have a rep from the Youth Guard watching, but that’s for oversight and they won’t be in the room. The tape is related to your case, nobody is going to be releasing it or calling anyone about what’s said. If it’s not connected to master allegations or an admission of crime then it counts as a private conversation. You have every right to lock it down if you want.”

The girl swallowed and took some slow breaths. Ethan kind of hated himself in that moment. Everything he said was true, but the chances of this place keeping a lid on anything juicy was next to zero. At the very least the Director would review the conversation. She had a dozen protocols she could use to get access. There would be liability if it leaked any further, but that brought lawyers into it. Of course that ‘master allegation’ thing could be stretched to cover a lot.

Still, it was calming Amy down enough that she was able to follow him. He wished he could assure her the policies he quoted would actually be followed, but that was beyond his control. All he could do was try to help her now.

Thankfully they didn’t decide to have the talk in one of the interrogation rooms. Ethan almost had a fit when he saw that. Steel table, uncomfortable chairs, glaring overhead light, and obvious two-way glass. Sure, that would have gone over great.

Instead they were talking in one of the conference rooms. There was actually coffee and drinks on the sideboard and chairs with padding around a table that at least looked like wood. There was natural light from a frosted window and the ‘surveillance’ was being conducted through an obvious camcorder set up on a tripod.

Any tech who complained about not being able to read pupil dilation or the lack of multiple angles could go screw themselves. He remembered his own capture, and all the times he’d spent in the M/S tank. If they wanted anything but obstinance they would have to treat girl like an actual person.

When they entered a tall man with red blond hair and a star logo on his shirt rose to greet them.

“Amy!” He watched the girl take a moment to recall the figure standing in front of her before rushing in for a hug. “It’s been too long. I’m sorry for not visiting.”

“No.” She replied. “I understand. Believe me.” She muttered the last portion. “Thank you for coming.”

“It’s no trouble.” He broke the hug and they settled into opposite chairs while Ethan took a chair by the camera. He wasn’t playing cinematographer. One glance to confirm it was recording was enough. The lady from the Youth Guard could be happy with the live feed and anyone else who wanted access could go through her.

God help their souls if they tried.

“I’m sorry for all of this.” Lightstar continued. “I wish it could be under better circumstances.”

“It’s alright.” Amy glanced straight at the camera. “At least you’re here.”

The man cleared his throat. “Amy, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you all this. I really thought your mother would have let you know everything by now.” He sighed. “Anything you want to ask, go ahead.”

Amy looked at the camera again, then steeled herself and turned to her uncle. “I… I want to know about my father.” She swallowed. “I need to know if what people told me was true. I need to know what happened, what the tinker was talking about.”

Lightstar nodded. “The tinker…” He turned to Ethan. “Can I tell her his name, or will that be a breach?”

Technically they wouldn’t want anything shared, but this was so minor he could afford the slip. If they wanted things perfectly by the book they should have sent his wife. “That’s fine, it’s not locally relevant.”

“Right,” He turned back to Amy. “The tinker is going by Apeiron.”

“Apearon?” She asked.

“Apeiron. It’s Greek.” He answered. “Means boundless.”

And it also had a whole pile of terrifying mythological implications that had analysts browning their pants. Everyone was really hoping it was the math term and not the primal chaos definition.

Amy nodded and her uncle continued. “I don’t know how he knows about it, but Apeiron was right. There was something between New Wave and your father, and it was particularly bad with Carol.”

He could see a shudder go through the girl. He desperately hoped that it wouldn’t end up fodder for some new crazy theory that would have her locked away for another week.

“He was a villain, wasn’t he?” Amy looked up as her uncle nodded.

“Amy, we can go into as much or as little detail as you want here. I don’t want to make this harder on you.” The man was speaking carefully, and Ethan had the sense he was on unfamiliar ground. If he remembered what Battery had told him Lightstar had two young children, not exactly something that prepares you for a distraught teen. At least he was treading lightly, which is better than what Colin had done in the initial interview.

“No,” she replied. “I have to know this. It isn’t going to get better. Just… Just tell me what happened. Please.”

“Right.” He paused. “Before we start, do you know who your father was? Or at least suspect?”

Amy’s eyes dropped to the table. “I think I know. I mean, I have… theories.” Theories that kept her awake at night by the sound of things. Ethan knew raising kids was hard, but keeping them in the dark about something this big seemed cruel. “Can you just tell me?”

Lightstar nodded. “Amy, your father was Marquis.”

The words caused the girl to deflate like a balloon. Ethan could swear he even heard the little squeak of air escaping as she sank into the chair. Lightstar let her sit there without saying anything, just letting the silence draw out.

Finally her breathing steadied and she lifted her head. It looked like the light had gone out of her eyes. In a haunted voice she asked. “What happened with New Wave? What happened with Mom?”

The man opposite her took a deep breath. “We weren’t New Wave back then. We were still the Brockton Bay Brigade. It was your mom and dad, Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil, and me and Aunt Jess.”

Brandish, Flashbang, Lady Photon, Manpower, Lightstar, and Fleur. A crazy amount of firepower for an independent team, and one of the top powers in the city. At least until Fleur’s death and Lightstar’s retirement.

“Marquis was one of the big powers in the city. We had fought him a lot, but he always got away. He was the kind of person who could take on an entire team and make it look easy.”

Amy watched dead eyed as her uncle explained. To Ethan the description was bringing up uncomfortable associations with the city’s latest tinker. He wasn’t the first person to make that connection, particularly the lack of territory, independent nature, high power, and particular code, or at least commitment to contracts.

People would say that the last thing the city needed was another Marquis, but given the alternatives presenting themselves more than a few people were open to the idea. Just none who would voice it within earshot of the Director.

“We got a lead on him, but it was risky. We had a team meeting and decided it was probably the best shot we’d ever have, so we took it.” He explained.

“What was it?” Amy was at least becoming more engaged, if not more enthusiastic.

The older man sighed. “We found out where he lived and decided to go after him there. While he was out of costume.”

Ethan grit his teeth at the confession. That was bad. Sure, the unwritten rules were unwritten and ten years ago they weren’t that well established, but there were reasons to keep cape business out of homes.

Dread crept up his spine and his eyes shifted to Amy. Ten years ago. Amy adopted by New Wave. Something bad. He could see where this was going and he wished he couldn’t.

“That was what Apeiron was talking about?” She asked. “You broke the unwritten rules?”

Lightstar nodded. “It wasn’t as bad back than as it would be now. We talked about it and decided it was worth the risk.”

“And you caught him?” Her uncle nodded. “He’s dead? In the Birdcage?”  
  


“Birdcage.” Lightstar clarified. “He was one of the earlier prisoners. The hundred and fiftieth, or somewhere around there.”

The Birdcage. The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. Just the name of the place made Ethan’s body tense and cold sweat drip down his back. He didn’t show any reaction, he had trained himself not to. When they captured him and he offered to join the Protectorate they had laughed. A man who had devoted his life to breaking out criminals before they could be sent to that hell hole was willing to work to send more people there.

He laughed along with it and pretended he had no principles. That it had been business, and he didn’t care. Protectorate or villain, they both paid right? Let him stay free and his principles could burn.

The truth was he was keeping his principles religiously. As Madcap he had devoted his life to keeping people out of the Birdcage, and as his final act Madcap had kept Ethan out of that place. He hadn’t devoted his life to stopping people from ending up there out of some noble sense of freedom, he did it because the place was horrifying beyond belief, and there was no way in hell he would take that trip if there was any way out.

So, he became Assault. He created a new life, found new ways to use his power so nobody would suspect anything, and most of all he stayed out of the Birdcage.

From the transcript of Apeiron’s conversation with Panacea and his talk with Weld and Director Armstrong people had dug through everything they could. One thing people were pretty sure of was the man had some college education, just from the terminology he used when describing parahumans and triggers. People sitting in a lecture hall discussing the mechanics of parahuman abilities used different phrases than what you get in the criminal underworld. Generally, there’s a lot less precision and a lot more profanity outside of a university environment.

One bit was interesting. That thing about Trigger Theory. Ethan had looked it up when on bed rest. The idea that your powers were an expression of how you triggered, different types of situations creating breakers, tinkers, thinkers, and so on.

Ethan wondered if anyone considered the kind of event that would give someone mover-striker powers, and why that person would be averse to people being trapped in a subterranean hellhole?

Best not to think about it. Madcap was behind him and right now he had about as much of a chance of ending up in the Birdcage as Panacea did. He turned his attention back to the girl as she began to speak.

“What…” Amy took a breath and continued. “What about mom? What did she do?”

Ethan could see the discomfort spread through Lightstar. The man clenched and unclenched his fist before responding.

“That fight was hard. Even with all of us there, even with the element of surprise, we weren’t winning.” He sighed. “It was a bad environment for us. We were tripping over each other. Nobody could open up with their powers. The fight was turning into a disaster.” He reached up and rested a hand on his shoulder, rubbing it gently.

“How did you win?” Amy asked.

“Your Aunt Sarah was the first to notice it.” He spoke slowly. “He was protecting something during the fight. He would take hits rather than let any attack get close to the door of one of the closets.”

Ethan watched as Amy’s eyes widened and flickers of recollection seemed to dance across her face.

“He was getting away. He could do that, burrow with his power. It was almost impossible to chase him. That’s when your mom decided to attack the closet door.” The man stopped talking for a moment to give the girl an apologetic look. “And your father jumped between it and her. She stabbed him through the shoulder.”

“Why did he do that?” Amy’s voice was small as she spoke.

Lightstar looked at her for a long moment and Ethan knew why. He had seen the recollection on her face. She knew the answer. He did too. It made perfect sense. To any parent it made sense.

“He did it because someone was in the closet.” He replied. “Because…”

“Because I was in the closet.” Tears were leaking from Amy’s eyes. Ethan rose to retrieve a box of tissues from the sideboard and passed them to her. She took one without looking at it and made no move to wipe her face. “Marquis saved me from mom. From Carol.” She didn’t sound like she believed the words that were coming out of her mouth.

Lightstar sighed. “She didn’t know you were in there, but that’s one of the reasons this kind of thing became part of the unwritten rules. It’s dangerous, and bad things happen.” He shook his head. “Afterwards he, Marquis asked us to take care of you. To keep you safe from people who would try to hurt you or use your power.”

“And Carol got stuck with me?” She said in a bitter tone.

Lightstar shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. Your mom was the best person to look after you. Aunt Jess really wanted to take you in…”

“Really?” Amy asked, looking up.   
  


“Absolutely. We… we weren’t in the best place to look after someone. Your mom and aunt knew it, and I went along with them. But Jess would have loved to have you.”

That brought a slight smile to the girl’s face. It was fleeting, but at least they weren’t ending on a completely sour note.

“Is there anything else you want to know? Anything at all?” Lightstar leaned forward as he asked, but Amy shook her head.

“Uh, maybe later but no. Not right now. Thank you, but…”

He nodded. “Alright. I’ll be in the city for a while, and I meant everything I said when you called. Let me know if you need anything.”

Amy glanced back in the direction of the cells. “If I can.”

There was still a slightly bitter edge to her voice, but at least some humor had crept in. Ethan let them say their goodbyes before escorting Amy back towards the M/S unit.

“So…” He started. “Since I was front row to that I think I’m entitled to ask, how are you doing?”

She blew out a breath. “My father’s a villain. One of the worst villains in the city’s history. He killed people. And my mother almost killed me trying to kill him.”

“So that’s a bad?” He asked. “Really bad? Really bad with the addition of a bunch of words PR doesn’t want me to say?”

That drew a smile from the girl. “I’ll go with the third one, thanks.”

He smiled back. “Okay, he was a villain. That’s bad, I won’t try to sugar coat it. But it doesn’t say anything about you.”

“Really?” She asked sarcastically. “Nothing?”

“No…” He drew out the word. “I guess this does mean you are the evil villain’s beautiful daughter who turns to the side of good. That’s got to be a step up.”

That got a snort from the girl. “You make it sound like being a villain is a joke.”

He shrugged. “Being a villain is a joke. Being a criminal is serious, but villains are all costumes and pageantry. They’re still criminals, but that’s the serious side. The joke side puts on pajamas and runs around trying to rob banks.”

“Sure.” She said bitterly. “It’s just a light switch. Doesn’t mean anything at all.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” He admitted. “But it’s not hard and fast. Heroes have gone bad and villains have ended up working for the Protectorate.”

“You’re kidding.” She gasped up at him. “Why would a villain work with heroes?”

He slowed his pace. “There are reasons.”

“Like what?” she snapped.

He let out a breath. “Sometimes it’s a second chance. Sometimes they were villains because they believed in something that seemed right, but wasn’t. Sometimes they found someone who decided to give them a shot and they don’t want to disappoint them.”

He realized he’d been looking off to the side as he talked. He quickly schooled his expression and turned back to Amy, who was looking at him with wide eyes. “Are you…” She asked.

He cut her off before she could finish. “Well this is your stop. Let me know if you need a refill on junk food and magazines. As a person committed to bed rest I recommend the Haagen-Dazs double mocha chip. Really fills the void.”

She looked like she wanted to say something, then nodded. She turned towards the man at the terminal, then swung back towards him.

A hand reached up and caught the exposed skin on his neck. He felt a rippling in his body as burns vanished and internal injuries disappeared. Amy pulled her hand back and looked up at him.

“Good luck. It sounds like they need you out there.” She smiled as she spoke.

“Thanks. And good luck to you as well.” She glanced back as the agent opened the door and gave him a sad nod before disappearing back into the tank.

Ethan smiled and flexed his arms. He was back. He needed to get these bandages off. He needed to report to the Director.

And he probably would need several hours of evaluation before they actually let him into the field. Thank God for Haagen-Dazs double mocha chip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Scrapper (Fallout 4) 300:  
> You have the capability to dismantle and repurpose objects for your own creations; even ones that you might not fully understand. So long as it’s not hopelessly beyond your understanding, indestructible, or ridiculously big, you’re capable of taking most things and reducing them to their base components, salvaging any working parts with only a few days of work at the worst.
> 
> Starting Gear (Fallout 4) 0:  
> You get faction appropriate clothing (normal clothes for Drop Ins and Railroad, a uniform for BOS, lab coat for Institute, and a hodge-podge of leather and scrap metal for Raiders) and your choice of a 10mm pistol, brass knuckles, a security baton, a machete, or a laser pistol (regular or Institute), as well as 100 Caps
> 
> Advanced Formulae (Fullmetal Alchemist) 100:  
> Alchemy comes to you as breathing does. Your greater understanding allows for the creation of more complex alchemy. You can combine with Simplified Formulae for multipurpose combat alchemy


	41. 35 Closing Words - Addendum Chris

35 Closing Words

The first though that went through my mind was ‘Taylor can’t be Professor Hebert’s daughter. Professor Hebert’s daughter is in eighth grade.’. That’s right. Professor Hebert’s daughter was in eighth grade and would be going to Arcadia next year, wouldn’t she?

Next year. That particular ‘next year’ was two years ago. Of course she would be in high school now. The rest of the world didn’t stop just because my own life was falling apart. The last two years had been such a fog that it was incredibly easy to forget any time had passed. When you didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with your life you kind of lose track of time.

My second thought was ‘What happened?’. Professor Hebert’s daughter hadn’t been a common topic at our meetings, but whenever she mentioned her it was always some story about this inquisitive, outgoing, friendly girl. Taylor couldn’t have been further from that image.

And of course the answer to the question of what happened was obviously ‘Professor Hebert’. I felt horrible for even thinking it. As if losing someone like Professor Hebert could have been some minor event. ‘What happened’ was Taylor lost her mother and I was looking at the consequences of that.

And suddenly I was replaying the entire candid conversation in my head, every statement made without the slightest tact or sensitivity. I had been rambling about her mother like it was nothing, like I actually knew her in some significant way, compared to the girl she had raised.

And then my third thought hit. Professor Hebert’s daughter was a supervillain. I didn’t even know how to process that. Thinking about Professor Hebert, and then thinking about her daughter turning to a life of parahuman crime… I think my brain was actually returning an error code at the idea.

To be honest, I wasn’t exactly clear on Taylor’s motivations for taking up villainy. Her basic equipment was better than the other Undersiders, meaning she at least had enough money pre-villainy to cover the elements of her costume she couldn’t make herself. She obviously had bad experiences at school, but I wasn’t getting the sense she was doing this out of some resentment for society.

To be honest, I didn’t have the best understanding of how a person ended up as a supervillain. There were the obvious causes, like triggering with horrible powers in a bad situation and ending up doing something you can’t come back from…

Putting that thought aside, there were all kinds of psychological and sociological reasons for a person to turn to crime, even beyond the effect of their powers and passenger, but I didn’t see them in Taylor. Or I didn’t know enough to see them in Taylor.

Before this point, not knowing the particular criminal motivations behind the Undersiders was a minor concern. I had vague senses from my passenger about backgrounds, specific events, or broad senses of objectives. That was general stuff, and not something I was particularly concerned with. Of course, that was before I realized Taylor was Professor Hebert’s daughter.

Professor Hebert’s daughter was watching me as I floundered through this whole mess of a cognitive process. There were still shades of grief and the spiked emotions I had triggered with my blundering description of her mother, but she actually seemed to be a little amused at how much this revelation had thrown me. Of course, I had dumped this on her first so this was probably one of those ‘turnabout is fair play’ things.

I was feeling increasing pressure to say something, anything, if just to fill the silence. Nothing was coming to mind because I was suddenly sitting across from Professor Hebert’s daughter. I had not started this day prepared to meet Professor Hebert’s daughter. I had no idea how I was supposed to handle this. This was a meeting about clearing up online confusion and planning a way forward, not dealing with something like this.

Online confusion. Oh God. People thought I was dating Professor Hebert’s daughter. They actually believed I was in a relationship with Professor Hebert’s daughter.

Is it weird that the first thing that jumped into my mind was ‘How am I going to explain this to Professor Hebert?’.

I swallowed and tried to get my mind back on track. Turning to face Professor Hebert’s daughter I took a breath and started to speak.

“Taylor, I…” I dropped off as I realized I didn’t really have a roadmap through this conversation. What the hell was I supposed to say here? What did people say in situations like this?

“I’m sorry, about your mother.” That was good. Well, no. That was a tragedy, but the sentiment was good. What else? “And about what I said earlier, when I didn’t know, I’m sorry. About how it came off, and if I said anything…”

“It’s okay.” She cut me off. There was a sense of… I don’t know, maybe relief, or a release of tension from her? This was a complicated situation with complicated emotions and I didn’t know how to handle it. “It actually is.” She sniffed slightly. “I know you didn’t realize, but it was… it was nice hearing someone talk about her. Like that.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Why had I held onto the idea that Professor Hebert’s family would be lavished with support, sympathy, and constant kind words about her? The idea that my own bumbling half compliments buried in the story of how I crashed and burned out the local engineering program was something special, something unusual for Professor Hebert’s daughter just seemed insane.

Forcing myself to take a step back and look at things it did make a horrible kind of sense. Professor Hebert was a great teacher, but more than half her students would have graduated by now. The faculty had to move on, and it was understandable that no one was really close enough or in a position where they could check in on her family.

For some reason that made me really angry. I don’t know, maybe it was guilt for not doing something, or just the fact that a wonderful person can vanish and leave a gaping hole with nobody caring enough to check up on it. I had worked through some of this stuff with Dr. Campbell, mostly to shoot down the idea that the problems I ran into at university could be traced back to one specific thing.

But that wasn’t important now. Fuck, I was realizing every problem with Taylor was now a problem with Professor Hebert’s daughter. Professor Hebert’s daughter was essential to the safety of the universe in some vague but unquestionable way. Professor Hebert’s daughter was involved in something else that was bad enough that she thought it was what I was alluding to when I mentioned the doomsday prophecy. Professor Hebert’s daughter was Khepri.

Professor Hebert’s daughter was in the Undersiders.

Professor Hebert’s daughter had robbed a bank.

Professor Hebert’s daughter held people hostage with black widows.

Professor Hebert’s daughter hospitalized Panacea.

Professor Hebert’s daughter vivisected a Ward.

Professor Hebert’s daughter was in a blood feud with the ABB.

Professor Hebert’s daughter had a violent history with Lung.

I think my mouth may have been goldfishing a little as I tried to process everything. The situation with Taylor had been difficult. The situation with Professor Hebert’s daughter was looking impossible.

Okay, going in circles about the situation wasn’t getting me anywhere. I cleared my throat and started again. “Taylor, when I talked about how… your mother… helped people, I didn’t mean to give the impression that I had any real insight. That was just me looking back on things. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

She gave me a long look before responding. “That thing about her holding people up?” She asked. I gave her an awkward nod. She let out a breath and her face shifted to a bittersweet expression. “You might be right…”

“Taylor, I…” I stopped myself as she shook her head.

“Mom,” She paused. Just saying the word seemed to send a twinge through her. “Mom, she liked helping people. It was what she did. The fact that she wasn’t working to prepare everyone for… everything? That’s not bad. It’s not a bad thing to say.”

I nodded. Right. She was a wonderful teacher and supported everyone around her. The fact that she didn’t dig deeper than that isn’t any kind of mark against her. The fact that I needed more help and didn’t realize it was my own fault.

“Once again Taylor, I’m really sorry about your mother.” It felt like a lame offering, like more was needed, but I didn’t know how. I had a general sense of how I was going to handle things before this. Nothing about the situation had changed, but suddenly it felt like everything I was planning had to be redone.

“Thank you.” The reply was sincere but Taylor looked… I wanted to say worn down, but Taylor had been showing a kind of subtle frustrated weariness since I met her. A kind of tension that wasn’t obvious until it unwound. Taylor looked worn down, but it was in a completely different way. I don’t know how to exactly describe it. Maybe like she had set something down rather than collapsing under it?

Wow, that was a lot more poetic than I intended. I really didn’t know how to manage what was going on here. This was not anything like the kind of emotional stress I’d been preparing myself to deal with.

That was probably what I was seeing from Taylor as well. She didn’t know how to handle this and was just kind of riding out the aftermath. One random connection had turned into a landmine for both of us.

The silence stretched out, possibly worse than my clumsy start of this conversation. I was trying to find a way to transition the conversation away from the current obviously painful topic to what we were actually here to deal with, hopefully without putting my foot in my mouth. Eventually Taylor saved me from having to navigate that particular issue.

“It’s crazy that you knew her.” I give her a surprised look. “I mean, outside my family and my dad’s friends I guess I never really expected…” She trailed off. I took a breath as I considered how to respond.

“Given the size of this city there are probably a lot of people who knew Professor Hebert. They probably just don’t recognize you.” Like I didn’t. A professor was a weird mix of personal and professional relationship. It was closer than what you got in a business environment, but there were very clear boundaries, especially in a university setting. I think Professor Hebert may have mentioned her family a couple of times in class, but it wasn’t like people really saw her outside her professional role. “Or they didn’t want to intrude.” Which I felt like I was doing now.

God, how weird was that? I had supplied Taylor with magical weapons, rescued her from a gang attack, healed her multiple times, but talking about her family felt like a step too far.

She nodded along with that and I hunted for some way to continue the conversation. It seemed like we both wanted to simultaneously bail out and see this through, and that was less of a contradiction than it seems.

“Taylor.” I started. She lifted her head to look at me. Her emotions seemed to have settled by this point. Not lifted, but not stirred up either. It was better than it had been. “I… I meant what I said earlier. I want to help with this thing you’re dealing with.” I was certain it wasn’t the disaster my passenger was warning me about, but restating that at this point didn’t seem like the best idea. “And with anything else you need.” I sighed. “I don’t want to intrude… I mean more than I already have, but from what you said, even outside of cape stuff, if there’s a way I can help, I want to.”

It felt like a lame offer, but Taylor seemed to be at least considering it. “That stuff at school? I don’t know if there’s anything. It’s not something you can tinker your way out of.”

I nodded and didn’t press the issue as the Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Magic constellation.

“The, uh, the other stuff? The cape stuff?” She continued. “I still can’t talk about it, but thank you. That was good to hear. I mean, it’s good to know that I can, you know, count on you. For that.”

I nodded again as she awkwardly finished speaking. “This thing?” She glanced up. Again, just from her expression I was completely convinced we were talking about different things. “Is there anything you can tell me? Anything that I can help with now?”

Taylor slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not until things calm down.” She glanced back at me. “About that…”

Her tone had an accusatorial edge to it. I eyed her a little nervously as I responded. “Yes?”

Taylor steeled herself, wiped something from her eye, and took a breath. “Look, all this stuff, everything you do? I know you’re probably not going to want to talk about it. I get that. But the way you’re going, it has Lisa concerned. Really, really concerned. And… I think she might be right.”

I cringed at that, but made myself push forward. “What… what did Lisa say about me?” Taylor gave me a nervous glance. “Taylor, I’m not stupid. I know she set this up. She was trying for something. Can you please tell me what it was?”

Taylor looked conflicted. She looked at my face, about to say something, then faltered. After letting out a sigh she began to speak. “She said you were really worried about March. She was concerned you were going to try something, and that would send things out of control.” She paused before speaking again. “She also said you might start using more dangerous technology. Self-replicating or S-class stuff, things that would bring down a strike team.”

I shifted awkwardly at her words. Tattletale was the most powerful useless thinker I had ever met. She couldn’t predict her enemies or give me a simple target for moving against Bakuda, or counter the dead man’s switch, but she apparently had at least something of a read on what I was capable of.

“Taylor, I’m not going to use any technology that will get an S-class response or get me sent to the Birdcage.” I assured her. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Do you have that kind of stuff?” She asked me directly.

I took a breath and considered how to approach this. “I have some dangerous technology. Most tinkers do, or have something that can be developed in that direction. Aside from really specialized tinkers there is usually some technology they choose to stay away from.” Taylor wasn’t looking particularly reassured by this explanation. “I haven’t built any self-replicating technology, and I’m not going to deploy anything S-class inside this city.”

Taylor watched me and nodded slowly, seemingly unaware of just how technical that truth had been. Survey’s growing list of S-Class threats were only S-Class if deployed without limits. As long as the A.I.s were on staged development and couldn’t install themselves in new hardware they were only potential S-Class threats, as were most of my other technologies. While there were things in my workshop capable of self-replicating I hadn’t built them. Tetra and the Imulsion had been supplied by my power. My other self-replicating technology was still just a set of plans inside my head.

That didn’t change the fact that I meant what I said. Even if I didn’t bring down the entire Protectorate on my head, that kind of display would be an invitation for the Simurgh, not to mention other crazy people like the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Fallen. I had been adamant about avoiding that kind of technology and I had no intention of breaking that now. My ‘normal’ technology was powerful enough that I should be able to manage without going out of line.

Taylor smiled slightly at that, and I felt like crap. I was lying to Professor Hebert’s daughter. What’s worse, I was lying to Professor Hebert’s daughter because I couldn’t trust her with more information, both because of the abstract threat of the Simurgh and because of her criminal entanglements. The criminal entanglements of Professor Hebert’s daughter were affecting what information I could share with her.

Is it possible to blow a circuit within your own brain, or is that just a fancy way of saying aneurysm? Somehow dealing with Taylor had gotten even more stressful following this revelation.

“But you are going after March?” I nodded. “What is it about her that’s so bad? I get she’s dangerous. I mean, I was there on Saturday night. I saw what Bakuda did once March was helping her.” One of Taylor’s hands clenched into a fist and shook slightly. I reminded myself that I should really check on her recovery. The girl cleared her throat. “But compared to Bakuda, or like the ABB as a whole, what is it that makes her so bad?”

“She’s more than dangerous.” I replied. “She’s trying to do something, something bad. On like, a couple of levels. Everything I’m getting from my power says I need to deal with this as soon as possible.”

Taylor looked uncomfortable. “March scrambles thinker powers, right?”

I nodded. “That’s what I heard. And Tattletale seems to still be having trouble with her.”

“Are you sure about this?” She asked. “You didn’t have anything on her before the press conference, right?”

I let out a slow breath. This was a bit more detail than I would have preferred to share, but I could afford it to settle the issue. “My power doesn’t work like some perfect precognitive machine. If I’m not looking for something it won’t show it to me. That’s what happened with March. ‘ABB Thinker’ wasn’t enough to trigger my power. Once I learned about her from the PRT press conference things fell into place.”

Taylor didn’t look convinced. “Lisa, she thinks you might be getting the wrong message. Like, March’s power is throwing yours off and it’s going to cause problems.”

I took a long look at Taylor as I considered what I was going to say. Tattletale wasn’t coming from a completely unreasonable angle on this, at least with the information she had. I needed to clear this up, just to assuage any major concerns.

Of course, to properly assuage concerns would just bring a new pile of concerns to the forefront. It probably wasn’t a good idea to bring up that sense of distant doom March triggered in my passenger. At least, not in terms as specific as those. Instead I stuck with the facts, as much as I could.

“March is very dangerous.” I answered her. “This whole thing with the ABB? I have the sense that it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad without her pulling the strings. But even if that’s not the case, even if I’m somehow wrong on that point, I’ve seen how strong her thinker power can be. Not just from the initial attacks, but in all kinds of other applications.”

“What do you mean?” Taylor asked.

“Okay,” I began. “You know that thing where I went after ABB assets?” Taylor nodded. “I could only do that because March was setting up a trading scam and roping conscripted stock brokers into it. She was pulling it off under Watchdog’s nose. They might have caught her eventually, but that didn’t change the fact that she managed to scam the most heavily monitored market in the world.”

Taylor’s eyebrows rose at that.

“There’s also the heists from Saturday night, setting off the blackout, coordinating ABB forces, and probably the only time Coil’s mercenaries have run into something they seriously couldn’t handle, and it came from them clashing with basic gang members.” I took a breath. “And then there’s her striker power.”

Taylor blinker. “Striker power? What about her striker power?”

“It’s strong.” I answered.

Taylor gave me a nervous look. “How strong?”

“Extremely. Probably something that could take down top tier brutes.” I explained.

“Like Assault? Glory Girl?” She asked.

“Like Alexandria.” Taylor’s mouth dropped open. “That power, it’s some kind of explosion that extends through multiple universes. I haven’t seen it in action, but from recordings and what analysis I can put together it’s a serious annihilator effect.”

“What does annihilator mean?” She asked in a small voice. “I get with a name like that it’s not good, but how bad…”

“Siberian.”

Taylor’s mouth closed with a click.

“I don’t have hard proof that it’s that strong,” I shook my head. “but everything I’m getting from my power and my own analysis tells me that’s the class we’re talking about.”

“How are you going to deal with something like that?” Taylor looked at me with concern.

“Mostly?” I responded. “Don’t get hit.” That at least got me a ghost of a smile from the girl. “Find her before she finds me, hit first and don’t leave things open for a counter attack.”

“Is that possible? I mean, with her thinker power…” Taylor let the silence draw out between us.

“There are… standard ways to deal with thinkers. Mostly limiting information.” I sighed. “Actually, Tattletale asking me to step back might help with that.”

“Really?” She asked.

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t like leaving the gangs to fight each other, but this means March will have less information on me, on what I can do. Depending on how her power works that could make the difference.” And even if it was precognitive or clairvoyant it wouldn’t be getting anything from my workshop. I just needed to let things deescalate and wait for the ABB to overextend themselves.

Taylor nodded slowly. “So, that’s your plan? Let them fight it out until you can do something against March?”

I sighed. “It’s not a perfect plan, but Tattletale had a point when she suggested it. I... I haven’t been thinking things out as well as I should have. This whole situation has built really fast and I’m trying to get a handle on it.”

“Because you’re getting more powerful.” It was a statement, and one with no question or doubt behind it.

I looked at her for a long moment before nodding my head once. “I can’t explain the exact details, but yes. I guess it’s obvious.”

“Only a little.” She quipped.

“Yeah, well, I’m figuring things out faster now. A lot of stuff I couldn’t handle before is opening up, but it also means I need to spend more time managing everything. I’m split between dealing with the ABB mess and trying to build what I need to deal with the ABB mess.” I explained.

Taylor gave me a look that made me feel uncomfortable, though in a completely different way from the misconceptions we’d come here to address. I had admitted I was basically Dauntlessing my way through things. It wasn’t exactly a revelation based on my past performance, but having me confess to it was another matter.

Thankfully she didn’t ask any follow-up questions, not about how fast my power was advancing or what I was capable of or what I would be able to do. I don’t know if she picked up on how I felt about it or just didn’t want to put me in a position where I’d have to refuse to answer. Instead she changed the subject.

“You’re meeting with the rest of the Undersiders tomorrow right? About the debt?” She asked.

“That’s right.” I answered. “Tattletale is setting something up. Going to call after we’re done here.”

Taylor looked pensive. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but a lot of them aren’t taking it well.” She confessed. “I mean, owing that kind of money.” She looked up sharply. “Don’t get me wrong, everyone is really, really grateful that you showed up, and for everything you did, but the Undersiders…” She paused and seemed to considered her phrasing before continuing. “They aren’t that hard as criminals go. A lot of them are just there because it’s a place for them, because it’s helping them out. I guess what I’m saying is a lot is going to depend on what you want for that debt.”

I considered that question. Basically what I wanted was for them to sit on their hands until I had dealt with everything. Preferably absolutely everything, including the ‘Taylor/end of the world’ mess. Unfortunately, I didn’t see that happening.

They had a benefactor who would want to keep them in play, or if that wasn’t possible would take steps to minimize the threat they could pose to him. Even them admitting to his presence could be enough for him to try to silence them.

Brian was caught up in the reputation side of the cape scene and would want a show of strength sooner or later for the sake of his team. He also had some kind of other obligation, but my information on that was from my passenger and thus vague as hell.

Alec was, well, Alec was messed up. My passenger could confirm that and once I got past the rage at Bakuda’s escape I could tell there were serious problems in play. If the Undersiders were some kind of coping or support system for him then upheaving it could see him jump ship.

Rachel obviously was devoted to the team, at least at a high level, and my passenger seemed to indicate she had some kind of obligation that would quickly come to a head if her jobs were disrupted. I’m not sure what a person in her situation was pouring money into but…

Dogs. It was dogs. Obviously it was dogs. Rachel was looking after dogs, more dogs than she used in her cape work, and that’s why she needed funding. Someone like Bitch with access to an army of dogs should have been the kind of thing that triggered a massive alarm, but that wasn’t the sense I got from my passenger. These were just normal dogs that she was looking after.

The parahuman villain with a murder charge was running an animal rescue. I would need to modify my demands on the debt to make sure the puppies didn’t starve.

As I was thinking over things I felt the forge make a connection. My reach had built to peak level, but once again I connected to a mote that only consumed half of it. It was a mote from the Resources and Durability constellation called Robust Engineering, and it was connected to my Decadence power.

This power concerned building technology that would last a ridiculous amount of time. On its own this would let my work hold together for centuries. The thing was, I already had Built to Last and Reliable Invention, both of which extended the life of my inventions indefinitely. You would think that kind of thing would make this power useless, but there was one significant difference.

This power wasn’t just about a something not breaking down for centuries, it was about it lasting for centuries. As in, continuing to function. And a device can’t function without power.

It might seem minor, but this technology gave an understanding of how to stretch power sources to a ridiculous duration. It couldn’t do anything with ammunition or propellant, but any form of battery or self-contained power source could be extended over a duration approaching the life of the Roman Empire.

For moderate draws, anyway. More power intensive uses I might have to cheat with capacitors and recharge cycles, but it would still be self-contained and operational for centuries.

I put that aside as something to work with later and turned back to Taylor. She had been watching me contemplate the situation with the Undersiders, which seemed to have blended into the contemplation of my new power. At least it saved me from needing to explain zoning out in front of her.

“Taylor, I don’t want the Undersiders to splinter, but a lot of what I’ve done has been based on holding to my agreements.” It was a convenient cover, particularly when concerning the Undersiders’ mystery boss. “I don’t want this to cause problems, but I can’t just walk away from it. Not at this point.”

She nodded. I think she got the idea of having something attributed to you and having to deal with it. Actually, we both did. What the hell were our reputations outside our supposed relationship? I had excessive contract loyalty and advanced technology. Oh, and extreme showmanship thanks to how the circumstances of my appearances kept lining up. Taylor had terrifying brutality, cool demeanor under pressure, and the general impression that she was in a different league than the rest of her team.

I think only two of those were my fault.

“So, do you know how you’ll handle it?” She asked.

I shrugged. “Not with cash. I have a general idea of how much this is going to come to, and I don’t want the Undersiders trying some insane heist to try to pay me back. Probably the same thing as Saturday night, jobs, assistance, maybe help with research.”

Taylor nodded along. I think she had the sense that was how this was going to go, but it was probably good to have it confirmed. She considered something and cracked a smile.

“You know, we never actually came to a decision on how to handle things online.”

I stared at her, then let out a brief chuckle. “Right. I guess it got kind of overshadowed.” I let out a breath. “It’s still in your court. How do you want to handle it?”

Weirdly, completely out of nowhere we had ended up with another explanation for our connection. I didn’t know how I felt about using Professor Hebert and an explanation to the public, even with all the details left out. What would that look like? Family friend? Debt to her parents? Owed her mother?

Actually, none of that would work. There wasn’t much that could dissuade something like this once it got going, and claiming any kind of connection that could be romanticized would just dump gasoline on the mess. The only thing that could be worse than people assuming I was in a relationship with Professor Hebert’s daughter would be people assuming I was developing a relationship with Professor Hebert’s daughter. That would somehow take things from watching the ‘relationship’ to cheering it on.

I was left with the feeling that I needed to apologize for all of this to somebody, I just didn’t know who.

“I think,” Taylor began. “It’s probably best to do something between the first and second options. Like, deny if someone asks, but otherwise don’t comment on it?” She let out a breath. “I know it probably won’t make things better, but that seems like the only thing that won’t make things worse.”

I nodded and got the sense we were both drawing from the same experience. Highschool, in a lot of ways, was so bad because it was basically a concentrated version of the worst aspects of society in general. It takes a whole pile of things that are extremely trying to deal with, then makes you encounter them multiple times a day with no option to opt out.

This online mess was basically a high school rumor taken to the level of national social media exposure. I hadn’t liked dealing with that kind of thing, and Taylor was still clearly struggling with it. Still, she had a point. Lack of comments and flat denials, or just a statement about the assumptions being wrong, might do something to starve the fire. At least it would probably keep it out of official channels. Idiots could be idiots online as much as they wanted as long as they weren’t influencing the policy of major branches of government.

“I can do that.” I said. “I’m going to start reaching out online soon. I can take that policy.”

Taylor nodded. “What about the other thing? You’ll really get me whatever I need?”

I nodded slowly. “I want to help. And I’m trusting you here.” Actually, I wasn’t. Or I was acting like I trusted her while still having massive reservations, so was that really trust? Was trust a set of actions or an intention? Eh, not important right now. “If you need help I’ll be there, and if there’s something I can make that will help just let me know?”

Taylor’s eyebrows rose as she replied. “Anything?”

I did not like the look in her eyes as she leaned forward, so I quickly clarified. “If it’s anything that would require weapons then I’m coming in as well, non-negotiable.” She nodded to that. “I can set you up with other equipment, but that might have its own problems. Anything too flashy or obvious is going to draw attention, especially compared to the other Undersiders.”

Not to mention it would just reinforce the public impression I was trying to downplay. I wish I could say the fate of the universe was more important that whether I was assumed to be perving on a teenager, but I couldn’t. Oh, academically I knew it was, but in terms of personal importance I wanted this impression dead and buried as soon as possible, and that was before I learned it involved Professor Hebert’s daughter.

“Is there anything that you could do without it being obvious?” Taylor asked.

I considered my spy tech, all those years of training in miniaturization of function that had been loaded into my brain. Totally fabricated training, complete with British accents for that real spy feel, a secret agency in the background, and personal tutelage from a man named Major Boothroyd who ran the entire show like a master. As my powers went it was one of the less disruptive mental alterations I had endured.

The important thing was that power did open up a lot of ways for both miniaturizing and disguising technology, and that had additional potential when it came to outfitting someone.

“I have an idea. I’ll work on it tonight and might have something for the meeting tomorrow. It should cover a lot of the basic issues.” Taylor smiled at my response.

“Uh, sorry if this is a bit personal…” I waved her off. I think we had kind of looped past personal at some point. “Right, so I wanted to ask about, you know, this.”

She gestured vaguely at me and it took me a while to figure out what she was talking about.

“What, my fitness? Build?” I lifted an arm and gestured to it. Taylor’s eyes tracked my bicep as it rose and flexed visibly through my jacket. I quickly lowered my arm.

Taylor looked uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. Still, she pulled herself together and looked up at me.

“Lisa said you might be getting into tinkering with living things, wet tinkering?” I tensed and Taylor paused at the reaction, but she kept going. “I know you said you’re not building anything that would bring down the Protectorate on you, but if it’s something dangerous or unstable…” I shifted uncomfortably, but Taylor continued. “Look, if it’s as important as you said, and as dangerous, I’m going to need a lot of help. Is… is that something I could use? Safely?”

I took a moment to parse through everything Taylor had said, picking out the fear and shadows of my own concerns towards wet tinkering. The Forge missed a connection to the Vehicles constellation as I considered the situation. Getting a handle on exactly what Taylor was asking, the answer became clear.

“Of course you can.” I replied simply.

Taylor’s face brightened but was still edged with concern. “It’s not anything dangerous or like, painful or something?”

“Well, no on the first one.” I tried to put some levity into my tone but it obviously didn’t land. Her expression flickered but she forced herself to stay adamant. I took a breath before continuing.

“Taylor, this is from exercise.” I explained.

The girl blinked at me. “What?”

That was predominantly the truth. Tetra stressed the body the same was as an intense workout, so the bulk of the changes were due to accelerated training. The changes due to divinity and life fiber induced evolution were more complicated, not something I wanted to get into, and things I either couldn’t or wouldn’t inflict on another person.

“My healing technology, the one I used on Saturday?” Taylor nodded. “It completely restores the body. That includes damage from exercise. All this, all these changes? They’re due to the fact that I can do an intense workout, heal, and then get right back to training. It lets me get through months of training in a single day.”

Taylor gave me a skeptical look. “It’s just normal exercise?”

“Well, I have some methods of increasing the intensity of workouts.” I admitted. “Those speed things along. They can get a bit unstable and have to be monitored closely, but besides that it’s just a compressed training regimen thanks to not needing any recovery time.”

She nodded slowly and looked a little disappointed. “So, it’s not something that I could do. Not without that healing technology.”

My mind suddenly jumped back to the tiny nanite sample I had started harvesting way back on… Friday night. Man, this had been a busy week. But every possible application of nanites was still out there, and with those particular nanites that ignored conservation of mass and energy… I smiled. Nanite enhancements were something I had abandoned due to the time they would take to set up and program properly, but that wasn’t a concern anymore. This was something I needed to take advantage of, and something that would go a long way to making sure Taylor stayed alive.

Not just because of the end of the world thing. I really wanted to help Taylor. Something had obviously gone terribly wrong for her. That could be said about any path that led to a trigger event. I guess you could say the same about the Undersiders or any teen parahuman, but knowing at least part of the story with Taylor, that made it personal. I wanted Professor Hebert’s daughter to be alright, and she clearly wasn’t.

“You would need ready access to healing. There might be something I can do about that, but it’ll take a while before I can nail it down.” She looked hopeful, but also a little uneasy. “Until then, I could help you train. Really just healing after a workout will mean you can push yourself harder and not worry about any damage or injury.”

She smiled a bit at that. “Thanks. I’m not sure how we’ll work something like that out, but I appreciate it.”

Right, different lives, different schedules, and the whole adult interacting with teenage girl thing that I desperately wanted to distance myself from.

“We can figure something out.” I assured her. “Until then, how have you been holding up? Any lingering dizziness from Saturday night?”

She shook her head. “Maybe a bit for the first couple of days, but it dropped off pretty fast. And everything else was fine, so it was just…”

“Just what?” I asked.

She took a breath. “My powers? They’ve been a bit… different since Saturday.”

I felt myself tense. I still didn’t have a good handle on how to heal a corona pollentia. Okay, maybe between Skills: Physical Sciences, Setup Wizard, and Do One Thing At A Time I had a significantly better handle on it than I did back on Saturday night, but it was still something that posed a major challenge rather than a problem I could just leave my healing powers to take care of.

“Different how?” I tried to keep my voice level as I asked.

“Well, I can sense through my bugs.” A small cloud of flies flew out of her backpack and held position in front of her. “I could always tell where they were, but getting anything else was a mess. They don’t have good eyesight, and the other senses used to be all garbled.”

“Used to?” I asked in a flat voice.

Taylor nodded and the flies returned to her bag. “I’ve been able to sort of hear through them. Not well, but enough to tell when there’s sound and some general characteristics about the kind of noise. It’s getting clearer, really slowly but it’s getting there. I think eventually I might be able to listen through them,” She frowned. “Providing this isn’t a sign that something is going wrong.”

This was not something going wrong. My passenger was very clear on that. As far as he was concerned this was a good thing, a very good thing, and a good thing to come earlier than was expected. It was like this was some vital piece of what made Taylor so significant in his eyes.

Remembering Taylor’s range, precision, and multitasking skill, I kind of had to agree with him. Providing she was able to simultaneously process information on that level… well there were people with clairvoyance powers weaker than that. I still wasn’t seeing the ‘save the world’ angle here, but this could be a major step up. Would be a major step up.

I spoke carefully as I replied, making sure not to convey any of my passenger’s enthusiasm. “I think it’s alright. The corona pollentia develops connections as a parahuman gets a handle on their power, so you get a stronger link to both your own brain and your passenger. If it’s alright with you I’d like to use my healing again to make sure things are okay?”

Taylor nodded and I stood up. She rose and met me half way around the table. At her prompting I rested a hand on the sleeve of her shirt. The electronic sound started up as blue circuitry lines spread from my hand over her body and clothing. She looked down and seemed like she was going to ask about them, but her question went in a different direction.

“You mentioned my passenger? I tried to look that up, but there wasn’t a lot of information on it, and everyone uses different words to describe things. What did you mean by that?” Her voice had a cautious edge to it, and I wondered how long she’d been building up to this question.

I gave her the most reassuring nod I could manage while I reviewed the information from my nanites. I decided it would be best to give her the high-level version, without the more harrowing details. “Powers are really complicated things. There are all these extra processes necessary to make them work. It’s not just throwing around energy, even the most basic power has a lot of precision and direction behind it. More than a human brain can handle.”

“So that’s what the passenger is? The thing that manages your power for you?” She asked.

My nanites made a few incidental repairs and filled me in on the state of her brain. “They kind of offload and manage aspects of a parahuman’s power. The corona pollentia is your connection to your passenger. There’s some extradimensional stuff involved in the link and how the passenger functions.”

That made Taylor look up sharply. “So they’re this thing in another dimension that manages your power?”

I nodded and Taylor looked like she really wanted to ask a follow-up question. Instead she shook her head and went with a different topic.

“You also said something about getting closer to your passenger, when Bakuda built that big mortar thing?”

I gave her another nod as I reviewed the state of her brain and corona pollentia. It was a lot easier to understand now than it had been on Saturday, but any repair work would need to be personally directed. There was no autopilot for healing this kind of multidimensional neural structure.

“Sechen ranges. Since your passenger connects under the conditions of your trigger anything that brings you closer to that state can strengthen the connection.” I put on a weary smile as I continued. “It’s the kind of thing that messes up a lot of capes.”

“What do you mean?” Taylor didn’t look too comfortable with this topic, but clearly wasn’t willing to drop it.

I examined the particulars of the corona pollentia’s protein structures as I replied. “Power is a big thing for capes. Pretty much the biggest thing for most of them. If something makes them stronger, or at least feel stronger, they’re going to keep doing it. And since conditions similar to their trigger can bring that out, and triggers aren’t exactly nice…”

“They keep seeking out bad situations.” She replied, putting together the pieces.

“Right. It’s a big reason why capes, especially villains, take stupid risks that don’t make sense from an outside perspective.” I did my best to keep that from sounding like an accusation.

Or course, the other reason was that their passengers were sapient and actively trying to promote conflict, but when all you needed to do was tweak the tap on someone’s power to drive them into conflict extra pushes weren’t usually necessary. Not when you considered the kind of people who triggered in the first place.

That wasn’t something I was ready to explain to Taylor. In addition to the horror of having a giant meat computer hooked up to her brain there was the whole issue of how I knew about it. What I’d said so far was information present in public theories, even if those theories were a bit obscure and not universally accepted. Going from that to what I’d learned from my own experience wasn’t something I wanted to get into, both not right now and not in general.

Taylor looked like she had some follow up questions, but whatever it was she either lost her nerve or decided this wasn’t the time for them. I was more than a little grateful for that and I pulled back my nanites.

“Your brain looks good. There are no signs of damage. It’s harder to assess your corona pollentia since I don’t really have a baseline for that kind of thing, but there’s no indication that anything is wrong.” Taylor seemed relieved at that.

“Thank you.” She said. “For the checkup, and for everything else.”

“The checkup was nothing.” I assured her. “And besides the offer, I haven’t really done anything yet.”

“No, you have.” She said in a serious voice.

The tone made me feel a little awkward, so I took a step back and started going over the actual points of our meeting.

“Right, so we have a plan for the online mess, I’ll look into non-obvious equipment and training assistance and get you an update at the Undersiders meeting tomorrow, and you’ve got as clean a bill of health as I can give you. Anything else before we wrap up?”

I rambled quickly and tried to keep things as light and flippant as I could, but Taylor seemed to be considering things seriously. I wondered if there was something I had missed. Actually, there were probably a lot of things I was missing. The last few days had been a non-stop blitz of one thing after another, and that was just external issues without even touching on managing my powers.

“Um, there is one thing you could do, if you’re okay with it.” Taylor gave me a hopeful look that caused a well of dread to bubbled up inside me.

Twenty minutes later we were approaching our destination with Taylor’s optimism clashing with the overwhelming apprehension that was consuming me.

“Are you absolutely sure this is alright?” I couldn’t remember how many times I has asked that during the trip. Really, there was no level of reassurance that would properly prepare me for this.

“It’s fine. I called ahead to make sure it was okay.” She replied.

Maybe okay for her. I doubted it would go as well for me. If this hadn’t been a direct and personal request that obviously meant a lot to her I would never have gone along with it. I took a breath as I turned the last corner to our destination.

I tried to distract myself by reviewing the connection the Celestial Forge had made as we were leaving the library. Another mote from the Clothing constellation, this one called Secular Skills. It actually had nothing to do with religion in one way or the other, instead being a clothing construction power.

It let me use exceptionally basic materials and tools to produce absolutely incredible clothing, and made the clothing I produced look even better than it already did. When combined with what was already possible from the Flock’s Fleece it meant I could essentially make amazing clothing out of anything, using anything.

Garment was going to be absolutely thrilled.

The thought was enough to keep my mind off things as we covered the stretch of road and stopped outside our destination.

“You’re really okay with this?” I asked again. “I’d understand if you wanted to keep this part of your life secret.”

She just shook her head. “Lisa and Brian already know after they helped me get home on Saturday. It will be fine.”

I wished I had her confidence as I followed her out of the car, down the walk and up the steps to the porch, with one of them squeaking beneath my weight. I instinctively wanted to knock, probably as much to put this off for a few extra seconds as to be polite, but Taylor just pushed her way inside.

“Dad?” She called out. “I’m home.”

I hung back, but at her prompting edged my way inside just in time to see an older man with glasses walk out of the kitchen. He was tall. Well, taller than Taylor, shorter than me, but most people were. That put his thinning dark hair on clear display. He wasn’t what I expected Professor Hebert’s husband to look like, but then again I’m not sure what I had expected.

“Mr. Hebert?” I spoke up and tried to cover my nervousness. “My name is Jozef Duris. I was one of your wife’s students.”

When I had been going over this encounter in my head this was usually the point where I pictured everything going wrong. I felt uncomfortable interacting with someone Taylor’s age, and this whole thing seemed like an invitation for things to be horrible misinterpreted. I had probably imagined two dozen disaster scenarios stemming out from this point.

Instead the man stepped forward and shook my hand in a grip that suggested a great deal of experience with that kind of thing. The grip was firm but not crushing, exactly what would make a good impression to someone who judged people based on their handshake. Taylor mentioned dockworkers, and I could see the hints of demeanor in his behavior.

“It’s good to meet you. Thank you for driving Taylor home, and for helping on Saturday night.” He had a warm, if somewhat tired smile and I could believe his sincerity. It did a lot to put me at ease, and that was probably another skill he had developed with the dockworkers.

“It was no trouble. And on Saturday, I just wish I could have done more. I’m sorry about what happened to Taylor.” I assured him.

The man broke the handshake and glanced at his daughter. “It’s been hard for everyone in the city. I’m just glad she had people looking out for her.” He turned fully towards Taylor. “Any news from the clinic?”

Taylor had filled me in on the cover story. She was a little smug that the ‘medical checkup’ part wasn’t actually a lie. “Everything looked good. They recommended a few more days of rest, but apparently I’m recovering well. Should be able to stop the medication.”

I could see tension leave the man. “That’s great news. And please thank Lisa again. This has been incredibly generous on her father’s part.”

“I will.” She hefted her bag. “I’m just going to drop this upstairs.”

“I have some tea in the kitchen. Come down and join us when you’re ready.” She nodded and slipped up the stairs while Professor Hebert’s husband led me to the kitchen. The house was comfortable, but had a sense that something was missing. Most of the little touches that brought a home together seemed off somehow, like they were out of date or out of place. I would probably be right to assume losing Professor Hebert was to blame.

Professor Hebert’s husband guided me to a chair at the kitchen table where some cups and a plate of cookies were set out. He retrieved the teapot before starting to speak.

“So, do you work for Lisa’s father?”

It was the expected interrogation, and one I was prepared for. He might have been grateful that Taylor was alright, but he wasn’t a stupid man. This was a sensible level of precaution to take.

“Not regularly. I’ve worked with Brian more often. Honestly I’m not really that close to the group.” He nodded and I continued. “Mostly I do odd jobs and repair work, so we’ve crossed paths a few times.”

“Taylor mentioned you dropped out of school?” He pitched the question as delicately as possible, and at least gave the impression that there wasn’t any judgement attached.

I nodded as he poured the tea. “In my second year. The program wasn’t working out for me, and I ran into some other problems…” He waved me off before I could go any further.

“That was… It was after Annette passed?” I nodded and saw the old pain in his eyes.

“I… they had a memorial service at the University, but I didn’t think… the funeral seemed like something more personal…” I trailed off rather than stammer any further.

“It’s alright. Things, they were bad back then. I just appreciate how much she meant to everyone.” His voice cracked slightly as he spoke, but he quickly schooled his features again. “So, you’ve been doing odd jobs since then?”

This was one of those situations where sharing information would be the best thing to put him at ease, and fortunately there wasn’t much I needed to fabricate or keep hidden.

“I moved back in with my parents in Captain’s Hill for a bit, then started working in the city.” I explained. “Part time retail, Downtown.”

The man nodded in understanding. As jobs went in Brockton Bay those positions were the most accessible and least sought out in the city. High standards and a lack of a living wage or any benefits wasn’t a good combination. The turnover tended to be pretty bad.

“Taylor mentioned you were good with machines. That a holdover from your program?” He asked, and I tried to keep a straight face at my skill level being described as ‘good’.

“The repair work pays better than retail did. It’s something I was able to pick up and develop.” That seemed to garner some level of approval from him. “I’m mostly taking stuff as it comes, but I have done some work at my gym and helped out after the blackout.”

“What gym do you go to?” He asked.

“Bay City Boxing.” I replied, and saw the recognition on his face.

“I know the place. You work with Douglas James?” He had a slight smile as he asked the question.

I blinked in response. Had I ever actually heard Doug’s last name? Or ever heard him referred to as Douglas? “I’ve helped Doug out with stuff around the Gym, but I train with one of the other coaches. Mr. Laborn.”

Mr. Hebert nodded at that, and he seemed to relax further. It looked like he had put something together. “Is that mainly where you work?”

I shook my head. “I’ve helped out around the place, but I’ve done deliveries, other repairs, and some auto work for one of the people who coordinated things after the blackout. Mrs. Gartenberg.”

That got an immediate reaction from Mr. Hebert. “Is that Miriam Gartenberg?”

I blanched. “I’m not sure. I don’t think anyone ever mentioned her first name. She’s a short, older woman, uh, she managed a lot of the stuff and baked…”

“Miriam Gartenberg.” He said with confidence, and there was a knowing look in his eyes. Oh God, was he going to call to check up on me? From his expression I’d bet he was. At least I think I was safely within Mrs. Gartenberg’s good books, but it did leave me wondering just how well connected and respected was that woman?

His demeanor shifted slightly and I got a sense the interrogation portion of the discussion had concluded. “Thank you again for helping Taylor. She’s not been having the easiest time lately and I’m glad people have been there for her.”

“It’s no problem Mr. Hebert. Uh, I’ve only seen her a few times, and I didn’t even know her last name until today.” I admitted.

“I could tell it meant a lot to her, hearing about her mother like that.” He smiled softly. “And please, after everything you’ve done, call me Danny.”

There was a pinging sensation in my brain that felt like a piano wire snapping. “Uh, Mr. Hebert, I’m not sure I can do that. I’ve even been having some trouble not referring to Taylor as ‘Professor Hebert’s daughter’.”

That brought a smile to his lips, not the sad nostalgic smiles he’d been wearing, but something with actual mirth. “Really?”

I nodded in embarrassment. “To be honest, when I found out who Taylor was I realized I’d still assumed she was in eighth grade. Your wife only mentioned her a few times, and I never really thought about what happened.”

A bit of sadness tinged the mirth, but didn’t banish it completely. “I might be a bit guilty of that myself. Kids seem to grow so much when you aren’t looking.” I caught an edge of regret in his tone.

This was a delicate topic, but I probably wouldn’t have a better chance to ask. “Taylor mentioned she was having trouble at school. She didn’t go into details, but there was something bad a while ago?”

The man’s face turned suddenly ashen. “I understand her not wanting to talk about it. She’d been having trouble for a while and at the start of the term there was an incident.” He spat the last word. “Taylor was in the hospital afterwards, and the school promised to step in and make sure things change, but I don’t think…”

He trailed off and I understood why. Trusting a school administration to manage things, to correct a situation they let develop in the first place, that was a serious long shot. Without legal requirements or the threat of serious litigation nothing would be done.

“Mr. Hebert, if there’s anything I can do to help… I mean, with anything, please let me know.” I swallowed. “Anything I can do, even if you just need a mechanic…”

“Thank you. I appreciate that, and it’s… It’s good to know Annette still means that much to people.” His voice wavery, but he seemed calmer than when I first saw him. He glanced towards the door and smiled.

“Come in Taylor. I’ll pour you some tea.”

The conversation shifted to lighter topics, small talk, and discussions of Taylor’s other ‘friends’. Mr. Hebert would be going back to work tomorrow, no doubt facilitating Taylor sneaking out to my meeting with the Undersiders. The talk was lighthearted, and I mostly took a back seat and let Taylor catch up with her father. They even shared some stories about Professor Hebert, and somehow I got the sense that was a significant event for the pair.

Taylor saw me to the door as Mr. Hebert cleared up the dishes. “Thank you.” Professor Hebert’s daughter looked both relieved and uncomfortable at the same time. “I know it was awkward, but I think… I mean, it’s been hard for…”

“I get it.” I assured her. Whatever problems were in play something like this wouldn’t fix them, but it might be a step towards something healthier for both of them. “I’ll call Lisa later, check in about things. She’ll probably fill you in.”

“Right.” She nodded. “I’ll see you later. And thank you.”

It felt weird being thanked for something that also seemed so minor. I didn’t really do anything but show up and exist. I got the sense the dynamic there wasn’t that healthy. There was a sense of the parental distance that comes from not knowing how to handle something. I was familiar with that particular dynamic and the problems it could cause.

As I pulled away the Celestial Forge missed a connection with the Knowledge constellation. I drove out of the residential area of the Docks towards my own neighborhood and left my car at the gym before returning to my apartment.

I felt drained from the entire experience, but also kind of lighter. It was intense and not exactly comfortable, but it had made a difference. Things that had been bothering me, constantly lurking on the edge of my consciousness while I avoided looking at them because I had no idea how to deal with them? Suddenly they seemed manageable. Not everything had been dealt with, but enough had that I was feeling confident in my ability to at least manage the rest of them. I actually felt like I could handle my problems.

When was the last time I had felt like that? Everything had seemed so insurmountable for so long, with fresh hell getting piled on top of slightly less fresh hell. Now I had a way through. I had a hard road ahead of me, and not everything had an easy solution, but I at least felt I could deal with it.

It wasn’t until I opened the workshop that I realized the big difference. That strained feeling I’d had since I woke up was gone. Whatever spiritual equivalent of overexertion I’d been laboring under, the events of the day had addressed it.

I wasn’t sure exactly when the feeling had departed. There was definitely still a good amount there when I left the workshop, but it wasn’t as bad when I woke up. Was that the events of the morning, or just a natural recovery? Either way, the discussion with Taylor and her father had addressed things. I don’t know if that was actually some kind of ‘spiritual revival’ thing, or if interacting with people had some kind of equivalent nurturing effect, but I did know I felt like I had recovered.

More than recovered. I felt better. The exact way Elven Enchantment worked was a bit nebulous, but there was a metaphysical component. Not like a gas tank, more like a kind of spiritual strength. The sight of those trees, the unbelievable, unearthly beauty of that light, that was my biggest source of that kind of strength, but it wasn’t my only one. I could draw strength from other parts of my life as well.

It seemed this was another situation where dealing with my shit was going to have to be a priority. You couldn’t exert spiritual strength if you were an unfocused indecisive mess. If I ever wanted to be able to sing to the unseen I would need to get comfortable with myself.

Also get over my fear of singing in public. Serene Sinatra may have drastically increased my singling skills, but I still wasn’t secure enough to actually try it out. Maybe once I was confident enough in my spirit to be able to attempt the third level of enchanting I could give it a try, but for now I wasn’t ready to start belting out the top 40.

Opening the door reestablished the link with my computer core, allowing Fleet and Survey to update themselves with newly collected data. Through my neural link I was able to review the status of the workshop. It seemed my last set of duplicates had spent some time improving the networking of different systems. I could remotely access critical pieces of the workshop equipment, both the Garage and Hangar, and even some of the labs.

There wasn’t a hard link to the Laboratorium at yet. Those ancient computers were still frighteningly advanced and even though the machine spirit A.I.s present weren’t the kind to exponentially advance themselves and run out of control, they were still incredibly sophisticated and optimized programs. The rest of my systems weren’t really ready for that kind of exposure.

Also, they could be really opinionated at times. Like, really opinionated. Cantankerous would probably be the way to put it. I guess that comes with running several thousand years of optimization routines on a confined system, but there was a real sense that the sun would burn out long before I could shift a decision made by any of the older machine spirits in that lab.

I picked my way into the workshop, taking the familiar route to the Alchemist’s Laboratory. It was the familiar pattern of getting a set of duplicates out as quickly as possible, then figuring out what we were supposed to do. It was a weird division of responsibility considering I was just pawning off decisions on other versions of myself.

I stopped dead when I got to the lab. I knew the lab upgraded itself based on my skill level. As my powers granted me new knowledge and abilities the lab grew larger, added equipment, and even supplied additional reagents. I had seen it upgraded with everything from interior gardens to space age chemistry equipment. I knew I should expect an upgrade to account for the possibilities of my new alchemical knowledge.

I just hadn’t expected the cages.

The section of the laboratory with the transmutation circles had expanded substantially. Simplified Formulae had given me a basic understanding of the craft, mostly focused with improving the efficiency of the transmutation arrays. Alkahestry granted me an entirely new way to sense the world, allowed healing, and facilitated ranged transmutation that was possible to use in combat. Advanced Formulae covered the rest of it.

I just didn’t expect it to be so horrible.

Human transmutation, hell, the transmutation of any living creature was a massive risk in all schools of alchemy. Alkahestry dipped its toe into the concept with the sensing of life energy and healing arts, but there was basically nothing I could do to a living creature when I just had Simplified Formulae. They were too complex and advanced to even dream of attempting a transmutation.

Advanced Formulae opened things up immensely. I wasn’t limited to basic shapes and recombining simple compounds. My understanding of the three stages of transmutation, comprehension, deconstruction, and reconstruction, had expanded to the highest levels of the art. I could create machinery in an instant, use alchemy in combat, and even affect living beings.

That was what this lab was set up for. There was a higher-level aspect of this art that used living creatures to produce something of immense importance. I didn’t know what the end goal was, but my skill was enough to work towards it, meaning my lab was set up to accommodate the research. And from the shape of the equipment I was willing to bet it was intended for humans.

To say I was uncomfortable with this was an understatement. Even the small area clearly designed for animal subjects was stomach churning to look at. I had been happy about this power. Instant fabrication, shaker-like combat, and the ability to seriously advance production on every level. Instead I was greeted by this.

It was apparent my power didn’t take moral stances. It wasn’t asking me to use this equipment, it was just providing the opportunity. Really, I couldn’t even tear it out. The lab was fiat backed and would restore itself if anything was removed. At best I could rearrange it to minimize the implications.

I tore myself away from the deeply unsettling addition and moved to down a duplication potion. When my duplicates stepped out the first looked back at me and said what we were all thinking.

“Fuck.”

I let out a single dry laugh. “That’s about it. Damn it, I was actually feeling optimistic before this came down on me.”

“Yeah, I get it.” The second added. “But it’s not that bad. Fucked up, sure, but unethical science is all over the place. Just because we have the facilities for it doesn’t mean we’re under any obligation to entertain the idea.”

“He’s right.” The first added. “At our level transmutation is strong enough without whatever that crap is working towards. We don’t need to entertain it, and we’re not avoiding a power this useful just because the higher-level stuff is twisted.”

I looked over at a ten-pointed circle with chains attached at each point. Twisted was right. Still they, or I, had a point.

“We’ll clear this up as best we can.” The second offered. “You go check on Garment, maybe take care of the call with Tattletale?”

I nodded and left them to the lab. Through some mercy my duplicates were only insufferable during good or at least neutral times. They never moved to kick me when I was down, which I appreciated. As much as my duplicates’ tendency to mess with me gave me concerns about my mental state, the fact that they knew when to stop was also reassuring.

I found Garment in her textile area working at a newly added set of monitors with some complicated editing software being run by Survey. When she saw me, she waved me over and made some inquiring gestures.

“Oh, it went really well.” I considered if I should share details, then decided Garment was probably the safest confidant. “I actually knew her mother. She was one of my professors in college. My faculty advisor.”

Garment made an interested gesture, then signaled something to Survey which resulted in a series of video clips being reshuffled.

“She died in my second year. Car accident. I think it hit her and her father really hard. I don’t know all the details, but it probably had something to do with the lead up to her trigger.”

Garment looked sympathetic and gestured for me to continue.

“I’m going to try to help her. Like, both with the other stuff and in general. We’ll see how it goes after tomorrow’s meeting.”

With that Garment excitedly gestured to the screen and survey brought up a bunch of screenshots from Uber and Leet’s Saturday broadcast. Specifically, still shots of the Undersiders during the later stages of the fight. She drew attention to Regent’s burned costume, Gure’s shredded and incomplete motorcycle leathers, Tattletale’s costume with large portions missing, and Taylor, who looked the most collected of the group, but who Garment obviously had some issues with.

“Oh, I don’t know if they’ve replaced their costumes yet.” Garment perked up in excitement. “But even if they haven’t, I’m not sure you’ll be able to do it.”

It hurt to see Garment’s expression of confusion at the idea.

“Look, you’re just getting set up…” Survey pinged my implant and displayed the same information on one of the screens. Garment’s account had been set up, along with official I.D.s and legal paperwork that could be collected at the central office. I guess proof of identity wasn’t a big concern for her. There was also a note about approval for various small business loans and inquiries from a local real-estate company.

Garment somehow managed to look smug in the face of the information.

“Alright, you’re mostly set up, but this is a delicate period. If you get started making clothes for supervillains that could taint you by association.” She made a nebulous gesture and I got her meaning. “Doing it anonymously might work, but people have ways of digging into these things. Plus, your designs aren’t exactly subtle.”

Garment actually looked proud of that statement, but kept expressing concern towards the images on the screen. I had the feeling she didn’t want me associating with anyone insufficiently attired. Also, that no matter what I said on the matter there would at minimum be a half dozen concept sketches for new versions of each of their costumes, and probably prototypes made in her spare time.

“Look, we can come back to this.” Garment’s body language suggested agreement, but also that this was far from decided. “What are you working on here?”

It turned out Garment had taken the lack of ability to directly stream as an opportunity to move into more complicated forms of media. Specifically, edited content. What was being assembled was a near feature length YouTube video titled ‘The Construction of a Late Regency Evening Gown Using Historic Techniques (Hand Sewn)”

As I guessed, Survey had come up with the title.

I watched a little of the introduction as the Forge missed a connection to the Magitech constellation. It was fairly well put together, which I’m guessing was Garment’s influence. Survey was doing an excellent job, but this was new ground for her and she didn’t have the best sense of pacing or how to transition.

Maybe we should start doing a movie night? Hell, if we viewed them in the throne we could get through most films in less than five minutes. That could actually be really useful for the A.I.s’ development, not in terms of raw information of optimization, but in terms of giving context to situations.

I made a few recommendations to the edit of the video and left it to Garment to upload. I doubt it would be much use as an instructional video considering the speed and skill level Garment was working at, but with her showmanship there was an entertainment value in just watching a dress like that come together.

A quick check showed my duplicates were still working in the Alchemist’s Laboratory, but the worst of the additions were being relocated to less prominent positions. I would never be able to prevent my Laboratory from having holding cells, but at least we could avoid the impression that human experimentation was a regular occurrence.

I slipped into my office and found one of the duplicates had repaired the desk. And also made a few subtle improvements to the rest of the décor reflective of the change in skill level from the time it had been constructed.

Without constant upgrades there was a kind of speckled effect in my workshop from the combination of original equipment, early upgrades, and late upgrades with everything having visibly different quality. Anything that got too obtrusive was dealt with by one of the duplicates in their 20% time, but that usually involved the addition of some novelty or inside joke.

I settled into the chair and brought up my omni-tool, secured the line, and called Tattletale’s number from the emulated sim card of my ‘work phone’.

“Hello Joe.” She picked up on the second ring and didn’t sound quite as stressed as the last time I spoke with her.

“Hello Lisa. I spoke with Taylor. We’ve sorted things out.” There was a pause, then I heard a long sigh of relief over the line.

“Good to hear.” There was a rustling in the background. “And I feel weird for having to say this, but thank you for not rushing out in the middle of the night with some crazy superweapon.”

I grinned a little sardonically at that. “No problem. Happy to do nothing any time.”

There was a huff and I heard her mutter “if only” before she continued.

“I’ve got things set up for the meeting tomorrow. Are you good to come by the hideout at noon?” She asked. I got a sense she was either drawing things out, or balancing a lot of other factors.

“No problem.” I didn’t particularly like Tattletale, but I wanted this to come together as much as she did. There was no reason to make thing difficult.

“Right. And just to confirm, you aren’t going to be asking for a cash payment when you show up?” Her voice sounded confident, but not smug. She wasn’t pushing her luck on this.

“Well, is there any way you’d be able to cover even the lowest estimate for that work?” There was silence on the line. “No, I won’t be asking for cash. We can sort this out with jobs and other stuff like that.”

“I figured, but it will be good to confirm that to the rest of the team.” I suppose being indentured with a measure of freedom was better than having debt collectors hunting you down. “I’ll let you know if anything changes, but otherwise I’ll see you tomorrow.” She cleared her throat. “And please, hold off on the gangs until then.”

“No problem. See you tomorrow.” The call ended and it was nice to reflect on the fact that for once I wasn’t explaining myself to a Tattletale half an inch from meltdown. After the mess that was Taylor’s situation a high-pressure debt negotiation with a group of supervillains seemed positively relaxing.

Actually, considering my only goal for this was for them not to get themselves killed in the next few days I felt pretty good about my chances. As long as I didn’t push hard enough for the team to collapse I would be good, and I could avoid that just from creative allocation of debt.

I took a moment to review the rest of my agenda. Things kept piling up to the point where even two duplicates weren’t enough to manage them. I made a quick decision and I headed for the entryway. There I found a new locker with a lab coat and small energy pistol.

The pistol was a stubby weapon with a rounded rectangular barrel wrapped around a focusing emitter. By all accounts not a particularly impressive firearm in terms of damage, though fairly reliable even without the advantage of my powers, and easy to manufacture or modify.

The real gem was the ammunition. It was in highly limited supply, but the pistol drew power from a small yellow and black cylinder. I could tell what it was even without the advantage of my demigod senses, immense technical knowledge, or advanced scanning systems. That was because it was printed on the side.

Fusion cell.

The laser gun was powered by a tiny fusion reactor that could fit into something roughly the size of a D battery. It put out 1040.8 volts, DC, and had enough energy for thirty shots. I had other power sources, but nothing as cheap, simple, and versatile as this.

I moved into the Laboratorium where I was once again welcomed by the electronic chirps of the skulls and now the digital greetings of the machine spirits. It took barely a moment for the skulls to discover the new technology and after repeated insistent prodding I handed over the weapon and power supply for scanning.

The weapon was useful enough, though not particularly impressive by the Laboratorium’s standards. The real meat came from the breakdown of the fusion cell. It used a series of hydrogen isotopes and was able to sustain a fusion reaction and provide an electrical current from the results, all within a tiny casing.

Once again, the Laboratorium was not particularly impressed with the technology, but studiously documented it anyway. I also received compliments on the lab coat, though with the suggestion that it would look better in red.

The coat was an interesting thing. There was nothing technically advanced about it, and it wasn’t magical in any way, but there was a certain effect tied to it. Wearing the coat made it easier to focus, at least concerning technical subjects. It would normally have been too subtle to notice, but with repeated monitoring as I donned and removed the item of clothing there was definitely an effect.

It was kind of like that feeling you get when you wear a more professional outfit and you change your behavior to account for it, compared to when you’re lounging around the house in more comfortable clothes. It was like someone took that effect and amplified it to give tangible results.

I had no idea exactly how strong the effect was or if it could be duplicated. It was a useful thing to have on hand, and putting on a lab coat when entering my workshop did feel more sciencey, which was actually the entire basis of the effect. No matter how this worked, I was convinced Garment would have the entire matter thoroughly explored in short order.

After taking some time to review the rest of the Laboratorium’s findings I moved to refresh the duplication potion. The more disturbing aspects of the additions to the lab had been shifted aside in a way that made them nearly unnoticeable, and my duplicates had provided an extensive number of alchemical notes before they left for their 20% time.

The full range of transmutation available was seriously impressive, and that was just at the entry level. There were recommendations for multiple avenues of research concerning energy balances, temperature manipulation, aggressive deconstruction arrays, and rapid phase shifting.

The extent of this power’s versatility was evident in how the workshop had been continuously rumbling since the duplicate’s 20% time began. Survey was very helpful in providing me with updated maps documenting the addition of hallways, elevator shafts, and entire rooms.

I took it with good humor and downed another potion as the duplicates vanished from my digital awareness.

“Right, critical projects?” I asked them.

“Taylor’s gear and nanotech improvement?” The first replied. This close to the duplication there wasn’t much chance of having different objectives, but I preferred to check anyway.

“I’ll hit the nanotech lab.” The second offered.

“And I can start on design plans for equipment.” The first echoed.

I nodded. “Right, and I’ll…”

“Aisha would like to speak with you.”

All three of us looked towards Survey’s hologram in dread. Upgrades to the workshop’s network meant floating drones weren’t strictly necessary. Both A.I.s could generate holograms of their avatars anywhere the network reached. Survey seemed to enjoy the experience, though I’d mainly seen Fleet use it to generate holographic pace cars for his scaled down Formula 1 races.

Both duplicates turned towards me with an expression suggesting they were very glad not to be me at that moment.

“I guess I’ll take this call.” They gave me a sympathetic nod, then vanished off into the workshop. I took a breath before pulling up the link to Aisha on my omni-tool.

“Alright, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“What? Why are you assuming something is wrong?” She said in an indignant tone.

“Because you called me?” My reply didn’t go over well.

“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just…” she glanced to the side and looked apprehensive.

‘Nothing wrong’. Right. “Just what?” I asked.

“MydadwantstomeetGarment.” She blurted out the words so fast I could barely understand them.

I took a moment to process her jumbled statement. When I finally parsed it, I decided I couldn’t have possibly heard that correctly. “I’m sorry, what?”

She chewed on her lip before replying. “Okay, so my dad got out of the hospital today and, well, you know how Garment’s stuff is different from what I usually wear?”

“Just a bit.” I said sarcastically, remembering her denim shorts, fishnets, and tube top combination. Based on the logs from the emergency incinerators I think Garment might have actually burned that when nobody was looking.

“Well he noticed, obviously” she confessed.

“And you told him about Garment?” I honestly expected better from Aisha.

“Not at first, but he checked the others and saw the label. He had heard about it from the gym, so I had to come up with something.” She looked more than a little embarrassed by the situation.

I sighed. Apparently I should have expected better from Garment, though trying to stop her from taking pride in her work was probably a lost cause. “So, what did you tell him?”

“I said I ran into Garment near the gym and she made me the clothes.”

“And he bought that?” I asked.

“Not for that many outfits.” She sighed. “I told him she was opening a shop soon and wanted me to help. That’s what the outfits were for.”

That was actually remarkably believable. “And he wants to meet her?”

“Yeah, said if I’m going to be working for her he wants to meet her first.” She shifted nervously. “Probably wants to thank her as well.”

“What? Why?” I asked.

“Because he really likes the outfits.” She yelled. “Like, compared to what I used to wear. He’s complimented me on them like five times already. It’s weird.”

“I though you liked those dresses?”

“Well, not if my dad does as well.” She pulled at the hem of the fitted blouse she was wearing. “This was his least favorite, and he still says it looks smart.”

I sighed. Once again, reminded that she was thirteen years old. “Alright. I’ll talk to Garment. She can probably set something up. We’re probably going to have a location for her in a couple of days, so does your dad have a cell phone she can text?”

“Yeah, I gave it to Survey.” The hologram smiled and displayed a string of numbers.

“Okay. Tell your dad she’ll set something up, and we’ll go from there. We can probably play it as you not being a good fit for the job and get you out that way.” I offered.

“Um,” Aisha stammered. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind helping out. I mean, if she needs it and it’s okay.” She raised a hand and ran it along the diamonds decorating her hair clip. “I know it’s not a problem with Ren helping me, but it was a big deal when she could see me. If she needs help getting set up, or anything like that, I’d like to pitch in.”

I was surprised by the offer, but did my best not to show it. “I’ll talk to Garment, see what she needs. Right now, I’m not even sure what the store is going to look like, but we can figure something out.”

She smiled at that. “Thanks. And thank Garment for me too.”

“I will. I’m glad your dad is doing better.”

She rolled her eyes. “Like anything could keep that man down.”

I returned a grin. “Right. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Later.” She quipped with a smile.

I let out a long breath as the phone disconnected. This would be another mess to deal with. Was it safe for Aisha to be publicly with a cape? I mean, publicly associated? Garment wasn’t likely to be stirring many pots, and she’d probably have a few employees. I wasn’t sure what the child labor laws were or exactly what Aisha would be doing.

I turned to the hologram. I could do this digitally, but Survey seemed to be trying to develop language and interaction skills, so it felt right to indulge that.

“Could you update Garment on the situation and start compiling relevant legal codes related to operating a boutique and employing a minor?” I asked.

Survey’s avatar smiled. “I would be happy to. I will begin at once.”

The hologram blinked out and I detected activity through the network as she went about her tasks. Once again, difficult but manageable. I could deal with this. It was a good feeling, not being overwhelmed by life.

I felt the Celestial Forge move again, with the Quality constellation swinging closer. I had built up to my highest level of reach once again, but every time I’d hit this point a smaller mote consumed a portion of it, taking me back down to a moderate level.

That didn’t happen this time. One of the largest motes in the constellation swung towards me. In a horrible wrenching feeling every ounce of reach was torn away. The power involved was like nothing I had experienced before. I could actually feel the interplay of forces at work as the immense amount of energy pulled against my power’s attempts to secure it.

I had badly underestimated the strength of the larger motes. These weren’t normal powers. These were game changers. I watched the mote strain against my power like a tethered star. Slowly, ever so slowly, my reach pulled it out of position. The rest of the Quality constellation swung off into the distance and a mote of light with the force of a supernova descended upon me.

And it fell.

…there is more to the world than you would think. Even what we understand of the multiverse isn’t exactly right. The universe isn’t a single existence. There are textures to reality, the main side that we encounter every day, and the reverse side of the world. The side that exists beneath the thin layer of conventional physics that govern ‘normal’ reality.

I don’t know how I got here. I imagine I was taken, that my existence was facilitated somehow. This wasn’t a place for humans.

My presence here was a mystery, but a mystery with a purpose. The land around me was sweet. An impossibly perfect island, lush and green with distant forests and fields or untrodden grass. This was a place that had never seen the hand of man.

Until now.

That’s why I was here. My hands worked, they crafted and shaped the material under the tutelage of a being I couldn’t even being to comprehend. A being as old as time, manifested from the will of the planet itself, and solely directed towards me. The person, creature, entity, was an immense, overwhelming wellspring of will and power.

It was a faerie. One of the great Faeries, creatures that had as much to do with images of flower sprites as campfire sparks had to do with an exploding galaxy. It was beyond power, and it was here, watching me work.

This land was beyond decay, beyond age, beyond time. Not just removed from them, the very concepts didn’t exist in this place. I worked, each attempt gradually improving. My hands learned faster than my head could follow. I was learning a principle, not a practice. Every iteration, every attempt got closer. Movements shifted slightly, binding more of the impossible nature of the place into my work.

Days of spring sunlight and the smell of summer shifted into nights of autumn winds and the stars of winter. I worked through them all. This place, it was beyond sleep, beyond weariness. My tutor changed and I worked. An entire pantheon of greater fey observed my practice, offered instruction, and smiled at my improvement.

I worked by the light of twilight spilling into dawn. I worked under the pure light of midday. I worked as the sun dipped into a well of amber gold that spilled across the sky. I worked as the purple velvet of evening faded into the clear radiance of a night full of diamond stars.

And then I did it again.

And again.

There was no boredom, no frustration, no dulling of interest. That would have taken time, and time did not exist here. Not in anything like the traditional sense anyway. I worked for what might have been a week and what might have been the lifetime of the universe.

And then I was done.

I understood the result, not the process. My hands understood the process. They knew what had been done, and through countless repetitions, improvements unto infinity, they had done it. There was no more work needed.

My work was complete. More attempts than could fit into mortal memory had led to one perfect creation, an object so perfect that it couldn’t have been created by mortal hands.

Because it wasn’t.

With the confirmation of the quality of my work I was presented with the script. The Fairy Letters that could mark an item of only the highest quality. The proof of my skill in creation. The certification of my work as truly beyond the capability of mortal man.

I gasped, propping myself up on the counter of the laboratory. The memories from this power weren’t like the others. They weren’t fading. I don’t think they could ever fade. I looked down at my hands, barely recognizing them. There was power there. Unbelievable power, past what any human could accomplish.

Power that had been brutally forced into me.

I shuddered at the experience. I’d had memories inserted before, but they were just that, memories. They weren’t me. I didn’t think I actually lived as an alien robot, or fought an interstellar war, or trained for years with British spy technicians. They were fabrications that happened to involve some vague approximation of me. But this…

This had actually happened.

Not right now. I hadn’t just been spirited off to fairy land to learn how to make things properly. It was like with my implant, it showed up having been there for years.

At some point in my life I had been taken. I had been taught by faeries. And now anything I made by hand was a GREAT deal better than anything a human could make.

The power was called Master Craftsman. That name may have been the greatest understatement in the entire Celestial Forge. It applied to anything I made by hand, and scaled based on how much of it counted as having been hand made by me.

I could assemble an Ikea set and because my hand was doing the work it would see improvement. A noticeable improvement, but nothing beyond what furniture is capable of. I didn’t make the boards, I didn’t make the fasteners, I didn’t paint the parts. Every point where another hand or machine contributed to the construction diminished the effect I could have.

It was nothing like what would happen if I made something entirely by hand. With nothing else directing the tools I could bind forces that I barely understood into the construction. The result… well, it wouldn’t be human. It was beyond the work of mortals. Something no man could create. That was what the fairy letters were for. When I made something entirely by hand it wouldn’t be part of the human world anymore.

It would become a Divine Construct.

I almost laughed. I had just received a mastery of alchemy. Transmutation on a level I only dreamed of before. The ability to instantly create anything I could imagine out of anything I could understand. And suddenly, a new power made it so that the only way to achieve the true heights of my skill was to work by hand.

Alchemy wasn’t obsolete, it just wasn’t going to be producing my best equipment. At most I would be using it to prepare materials, rapidly build less critical items, or for its multitude of combat applications. It really says something about my power when I receive complete control over the shape and nature of matter and find it eclipsed within a couple of hours.

The Time constellation passed by while I was processing the implications of my latest power. The experience, an untold amount of time spent repeatedly working to try to achieve perfection, it was the kind of thing that should have bothered me. On the surface level it was way too close to a lot of personal experiences, but the actual details were a different story.

The great Faeries had no malice behind their actions. There was no derision in response to mistakes, no judgement. They knew I was human. Making human works was no mark against me. And every improvement, every success, every little victory had been noted. Acknowledged. There was no reason to diminish achievement or undersell an accomplishment. No indication that I shouldn’t feel proud of my accomplishments.

The experience was jarring due to its suddenness, its blatant intrusion into my life. In terms of what I actually went through it was less concerning than a lot of my other powers. If not for the fact that I KNEW it had happened it might have been one of the more pleasant powers I’d received. 

This was the real force of the Celestial Forge. Not slight improvements in fabrication time or scraps of mechanical knowledge. This was one of the great motes, the burning stars that dwarfed everything else. The true power.

The idea of it, the sheer number of powers like this waiting for me, it was both exhilarating and absolutely terrifying.

My musings were interrupted by the sound of footsteps moving towards the Alchemist’s Lab. I turned to see my duplicates take a few shaky steps into the room.

“Hey.” I offered lamely.

“Uh, hi.” I could see the weight of this power on both of them.

“We wanted to check, uh, you doing alright?” I turned to the second and shrugged.

“Probably about as well as you.” I quipped.

That got me a smile. “That bad, huh?”

I only shrugged in response. “I guess we knew something like this was coming. If minor powers can hit as hard as they do, then the big guns…”

“Yeah.” The first responded. “Hopefully they won’t all be like this.”

I gave a light nod and let a moderately comfortable silence settle over us.

The silence made it very easy to hear the clatter of high heels running across the workshop floor at a speed that would be suicide for anyone not independently animating their footwear. The three of us turned to see Garment burst into the Laboratory and rush over to me.

“Hi Garment.” I waved off her concern. “Yes, I’m fine. It was just a big shock. A really big shock.”

Garment looked relieved, but also somewhat anxious. I noticed she was holding her sketchbook and smiled.

“Garment, how much of this is personal concern and how much is you wanting to use my new power to make clothing beyond the level of mortal skill?” I asked in a wry voice.

Garment made an extensive show of displaying her absolute horror at the idea and probably how I should be ashamed for even suggesting it. I gave her a level look until the theatrics petered out and she reluctantly indicated that it was about 50/50.

“Right.” I gave her a warm smile. “I have a bunch of stuff to take care of, but put together some ideas and we can try them out later.”

Garment perked in excitement, but gave one last concerned gesture before she left. “Yes, I’m fine. You can go.”

“He is.” The first offered.

“Don’t worry,” Assured the second. “We’ll look after him.”

She waved in thanks to both the duplicates before departing to her personal studio. I let out a breath as she left.

“So, what’s first?” The second duplicate asked.

I shook my head. “This is a complete upheaval. Pretty much everything needs to be replanned to involve as much hand crafting as possible.”

“Won’t that be fun?” The first quipped. “Any idea how you build a quantum entanglement communicator by hand?”

“Not unless we can rig the micromanipulators to be about a billion times more accurate.” The second offered.

“Hey, can I leave that to you two?” I asked.

They nodded. “Sure, we’ll plan things out. What are you going to tackle?”

I gave them a grim smile. “I’m going online. Been leaving this too long. Time to see what I can accomplish by actually talking to people.”

The first returned my smile. “Well, it worked today. Maybe you’ll get lucky and keep the streak going.”

“Yeah.” The second added. “Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?”

I gave him a sour glare as both duplicates burst into laughter. God, he better not have jinxed me. Shaking my head, I left them to their work and headed for the computer throne.

It was time to go online.

******

Addendum Chris

Chris scrunched his nose as he trailed behind Dauntless. Three days after the fire and the rig still smelled like burning metal. He didn’t know what kind of technology had been used to upgrade the drilling platform and move it to the bay, but whatever they’d treated the structure with became especially pungent when burned.

Some of that was probably the residue of the weirder bomb blasts. Oni Lee had been keeping things more conventional than what Bakuda had used at the storage center, but there were still outliers. Parts of the rig that were melted, or looked like someone had scooped them out with an ice cream scoop. Pools of some kind of green slime, and walls with spider-like patterns of electrical burns.

This wasn’t what they had sent him here for, but it was what drew his attention. Unlike Dean or Carlos, he had never worked from the Rig. The Wards were already operating out of the PRT headquarters when he joined a year and a half ago. Maybe it would have made a difference, being in the same building as Armsmaster, having another tinker to work with.

Maybe, but somehow Chris doubted it.

Dauntless floated up to a higher level where the stairs had been taken out. Chris engaged the repulsor in his greaves and covered the distance in one leap, launching away from the stink of the lower levels. The Protectorate hero looked back at him and smiled. He wasn’t checking on him, not after this many successful jumps. It made Chris feel a glimmer of pride.

He still felt awful about the bank. That disaster and the aftermath… it was terrible. Worse, it was mostly his fault. He had been so proud, so excited to show off his Alternator Cannon. The one brilliant thing he had built after two weeks on a medication that made him a dizzy, anxious and nauseous wreck. So excited to show it off he didn’t even think.

When he read the transcripts he saw it. Apeiron called him out specifically. How he escalated things, how he was betting the Undersiders wouldn’t hurt their hostages even when he was deploying an A-class weapon against them. That they cared more about civilian lives than he did.

Maybe if he had left the cannon in his lab things wouldn’t have gone so wrong. The Undersiders could have still gotten away, but they’d still have Aegis. Maybe even still have Dean.

That burned him. The suit sliced up, all the work he put into it gone, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He was under lock down, no new construction. He couldn’t make the parts he would need to fix it even if he had the time to spare. So his friend was off trying to find a better tinker while he sorted junk.

There was the glimmer of hope. Even after his hoverboard had been sliced apart he’d been able to salvage the components, keep everything functional. His jury rigged thruster gauntlets and repulsor greaves were working better than his hoverboard ever had. He could actually move now, make himself a difficult target mid fight rather than floating above the battlefield like the world’s least effective gun platform.

He couldn’t exactly fly, but he was finding new applications all the time. After working in a couple of cores from a failed kinetic pistol he had enough strength to skim along the ground, or even water.

That’s right. Rather than be hauled out here he’d made it on his own power, riding the waterline like a hovercraft.

“Need a break?” Dauntless asked. The sun was starting to sink over the city, and it was a spectacular view from the Rig.

“Sure.” Chris replied. “I think we’re down to the communications tower, secondary power core, and what’s left of Armsmaster’s lab.”

“We’re making good time.” He settled down on an outcrop of steel and Chris joined him. “I’m glad we were able to get you out here.”

Dauntless was sincere in his praise, and Chris appreciated it, but being good at something like this seemed like a mixed blessing. It just confirmed what he’d been worried about since he was able to salvage his board.

The Protectorate needed someone to survey the damage at the Rig. Because of all the tinker systems that meant they either sent him, waited for Armsmaster to get back on his feet, or called for outside help. Apparently they decided he would be better than nothing, or at least better than something that would add a week-long delay, at best.

But looking around at the damaged systems he was seeing it. He could assess the damage, that was true, but more than that he could see how to isolate the damaged components, modify them to work together, and combine them into something new.

That really drove home what he’d been dreading. Kid Win, golden tinker, the boy who styled himself off of Hero himself, was a garbage tinker.

All the problems he’d been struggling with, the lack of focus, the dyscalculia, the unfinished projects, none of it mattered with this approach. He could take his broken tech, his half-finished projects, his trash, and combine them into something new. Looking around he could see how to do it with the Rig’s systems. It would need a little more modification, but after that he could throw it into the garbage pile and start working.

It was the horrible feeling of finally learning his specialization and being ashamed of it.

“Something bothering you?” Dauntless asked. He must have been showing something on his face. Chris quickly schooled his features, but it was clear it wouldn’t help at this point. He sighed and turned to the Protectorate hero.

“It’s just, I’ve really screwed up recently. The bank was just…” He didn’t know how to continue. His body still ached from that fall, and that felt justified. If he was responsible for that mess then it was for the best that he had missed Panacea.

Instead he’d had to get normal treatment, with all his injuries documented by the Youth Guard woman. Apparently that was standard practice, but for anything bad they’d always had Amy drop by before they needed any major treatment. He’d never even seen the major injury form before.

Of course, Amy was unavailable after her meeting with Apeiron. That new tinker, that good tinker, had been making waves since the moment he arrived.

“The bank wasn’t great.” Dauntless admitted. “But you learned from it. You’re taking your reprimand like a professional and you’ll come out of it stronger. Other than that, I doubt there will be anyone who’ll speak a word against you, not after the Gallery.”

Kid Win smiled at that. Dennis might have been the one who got the official credit, since he was leading, but everyone got glowing reviews afterwards. It might actually have shaved a chunk of time off his tinkering lock down. He’d even submitted plans for the tech that he improvised to Dragon. That was like the biggest deal for tinkers.

“I’m glad it went so well.” He replied. “We were lucky.”  
  
“No,” Dauntless countered, “You were smart. You learned from earlier mistakes and did better the next time. That’s the most important thing.”

“That was Clockblocker. I just went along with it.”

“Leaders are only as good as the people they work with. You all did your part.”

It was the kind of thing that was supposed to sound cheesy, but Dauntless could always sell those lines perfectly. It actually reminded Chris of old footage of Hero’s speeches.

“Hey, about leaders.” He asked. “Is Weld back in command, or are they still keeping him out?”

“No, he’s officially back. The time in the infirmary counts as active duty, so he had some mandatory downtime.” Dauntless replied. “He spent some time calling the Boston director and his friends in a few different cities.”

“Isn’t he under a gag order or something?” Chris had heard about it third hand. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to mention anything about Apeiron or how he got out of the bay.

“He needs to have a Protectorate or PRT agent present for his calls, but there haven’t been any issues. I was there when he spoke to a friend from San Diego and they just talked about what restaurants he was looking forward to visiting when he saw her again.”

Chris nodded. He knew there was more going on with Weld, but it felt like he was constantly three steps behind everyone else. That was a natural state of being a tinker. You spent so much time inside a lab you had to play catch up with the real world.

Unless you were Apeiron.

“Hey, the thing with Weld? It’s not about that master stuff, is it?” Dauntless looked a bit uncomfortable at Chris’s question.

“That ‘master stuff’ is under evaluation. The PRT is still collecting data and trying to contact the people he rescued.” The cape didn’t sound particularly happy with the situation.

“Right. Didn’t one of them attack the agents when they tried to bring them in? I heard some of them got injured.” Despite the serious nature of Chris’s question Dauntless smiled in response.

“Oh, yes.” He looked off at the bay as he responded. “I think that was Mrs. Masuda. Seventy-five-year-old grandmother, soon to be great grandmother. She objected when the agents arrived to take her in for assessment.”

“Seventy-five?” Chris gaped. Dauntless just shrugged.

“Apparently Apeiron can heal arthritis and osteoporosis, plus a few other ailments that used to slow her down. Nobody was expecting her to be that spry.” His face turned grim. “Also, she grew up in California. I think she was six years old in 1942.” He looked at Chris. “You know your history?”

It took Chris a minute to put together the date, location, and nationality of the name. “Internment?” He asked. Dauntless nodded slowly.

“She was quite adamant about not coming in voluntarily. It’s going to get messy.” He shook his head. “Not a good move for the department, and not what the Director needed now.”

Chris was a bit uncomfortable being exposed to information like this. The Protectorate had always kept things at least looking professional. Right now, an idiot could see things were falling apart. HE could see things were falling apart, but there was a difference between that and having the most powerful hero currently active in the city basically admit it to him.

“Do you think that master stuff is true? I mean, Panacea, that tech from the PRT, and all the people at the storage yard…” It wasn’t a comforting thought, the idea of that many people being compromised.

“It’s not that likely, but you have to see these things through.” Dauntless admitted. “Master stuff, it can get tricky to assess. Just look at Canary.”

“That artist who attacked her ex-boyfriend?” She wasn’t really the type of singer Chris listened to, and aside from that song last summer that got way too much airplay she hadn’t really been on his radar. Not until the report came out.

“That’s what they thought, but one of the thinkers at Watchdog looked into the case when they were doing initial assessments on Apeiron. That’s why they had to cancel the trial.” Dauntless explained.

“So it wasn’t as bad as they said?” Chris asked hopefully.

“No.” Dauntless replied in a grave voice. “It’s actually a lot worse.”

“What? How?”

Dauntless shook his head. “It turns out her master effect isn’t direct mind control. She makes people suggestible, and not just to her. And the effect sticks around for a while afterwards. That’s how the thing with her ex-boyfriend happened.” Chris nodded and Dauntless continued. “Apparently some people figured it out, and started staking out people leaving her concerts. The people who had been exposed at that level could be talked into just about anything. Some of it was stuff like selling overpriced merchandise or signing for record clubs, but some of it was a lot worse…”

Chris swallowed as he thought about what people could try with that kind of effect in play. He’d done enough patrols of the docks to run into his share of age inappropriate crimes.

“The charges have been expanded. They’re covering multiple states, so it’s being tried on the federal level. They’re also trying to bring charges against people who took advantage of the situation, as well as the record company and concert promoter, which will lead to civil suits.” He shook his head. “It will be months before they even have the full case assembled.”

Chris nodded in understanding. That was a case with a confirmed master and a set of clear circumstances, and they still needed months to figure out who was affected and how. If that was how things worked they would probably take years before they had a definite answer on Apeiron.

Nobody knew what was happening with that tinker, especially not other tinkers. He’d been on the Protectorate network to see what the other tinkers were saying, and it basically amounted to a pile of nothing. Going through every frame, assessment and scrap of information on the technology just got them nowhere.

It was infuriating because something was screaming at him that shouldn’t be the case. It’s like his technology was a combination of basic, easy to understand mechanics, exotic physics, and something that was just impossible. That’s not even getting into the question of his specialization.

You know people had nothing to go on when they start throwing around ‘entertaining’ theories. ‘He’s a tinker who works to fulfill contracts, and can build anything he needs to accomplish that’. ‘He’s a tinker who can build anything as long as it’s immaculately designed’, a particularly harsh contrast to his own newly discovered garbage specialization. ‘He’s a tinker who can copy other tinkers on sight’, or ‘not a tinker and just combines tech with a different power’. ‘He builds technology that copies parahuman powers and started with Alexandria’. ‘He’s Alexandria and Hero’s love child’.

Chris felt particularly bad about that one. Not because he idolized Hero and had any objection to the association, but because part of him wanted it to be true. As contradictory and frustrating as Apeiron was, the idea that there was still a connection to Hero out there somewhere, that he hadn’t completely left them, it was something he desperately wanted to be true. No matter how unlikely it seemed. That was probably why so many other people wouldn’t let the idea die.

Chris took a breath and climbed to his feet, looking out at the amber sky. “We should probably wrap things up.”

“Right.” Dauntless rose alongside him. “You’ve got a curfew, right?”

Chris scrunched his nose and gave the cape a dirty look. The man broke into laughter and Chris joined him. He shook his head and followed the man to the communication tower.

He might not be Apeiron, he might not be a great tinker, but he would do what he could to help.

It was all he could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Robust Engineering (Dune) 300:  
> Ten thousand years of stagnation in technology is a very long time... and now you know how to apply the lessons of those millennia to the construction of anything you have. Mass production does not exist any longer and even relatively common items are made as if masterwork quality, because aside from obvious cheap items, they have been built to last longer than the person using them. Expect anything you construct by hand to be able to last centuries, as long as you take a little extra time while you make it. With the amount of time you're going to be around... you may need that sort of quality.
> 
> Secular Skills (Red Dwarf) 200:  
> Through growing up in a society in which religion tried to stem the natural instincts of the cat people towards vanity and good looks, you learned to craft amazing clothes and outfits from the most base materials and tools, and don’t worry they all will look fantastic.
> 
> Master Craftsman (King Arthur) 600:  
> Thanks to being taught by faeries anything you make by hand is a great deal better than anything regular human can make. Armor is nearly indestructible and lighter than it should be, blades are sharper, blunt weapons have more force behind them, bows and crossbows can shoot farther and are easier to pull back. Even mundane items like baskets work better, though you can't give items mystical powers without being a wizard or something.


	42. 35.1 Interlude Dragon - Addendum Margaret

35.1 Interlude Dragon

Dragon piloted the Tiamat recovery unit into its docking cradle in her Vancouver facility. The suit wasn’t designed for rapid deployment, but could handle longer excursions than many of her other options. It also had her widest range of non-lethal ordinance installed, which presented her best opportunity for dealing with one of the more persistent issues in the aftermath of the Cape Blackout.

Unfortunately, that had been a fruitless endeavor. If Butcher was that easy to contain someone would have managed it years ago. No serious attempts had been made since Butcher III decided to use lethal force, before the details of the transfer were fully known. The hero had gone mad with the voice of two villains trapped in his head.

Dragon often wondered what would happen if she found herself responsible for the death of a Butcher iteration. She was programmed to prioritize human life, but not to the extent that it would prevent all expressions of lethal force. There were scenarios where her hand could be responsible for the death of a Butcher.

What would happen then? Would the Butcher try to connect to her deceased father, her creator? Would it track the responsibility to the last human hand involved in the act, some welder or shipping manager who had worked in her supply chain? Would it try to insert itself into her code, as impossible as that seemed, and somehow express itself as another digital lifeform?

The questions were academic. She had no intention of experimenting with the death of any Butcher, accidentally or otherwise. She would just need to be satisfied with the fact that the Teeth had been driven from New York.

They had pushed too far in taking advantage of the Blackout. Impinged on too many of the city’s powers, and found themselves fighting a three-front war. It had gotten messy enough for Legend to request her assistance, but ended with the worst of the violence and damage contained and the Teeth migrating to a new city with reduced numbers.

The Tiamat unit had taken damage in the encounter, Butcher XIV’s accuracy allowing her to guide the rounds of a .50 caliber machine gun into any area with imperfect armor coverage. Joints, sensors, and weapon mounts were all heavily damaged. It had affected the aeronautical profile of the suit and stretched its travel time in returning to her base.

That actually annoyed her more than the damage. The suit was a stepping stone in a long iterative design process. Most of its systems and armaments would be completely reworked based on data from this encounter. The damage was largely irrelevant to her schedule. The travel time was another matter.

The Tiamat flew at the speed of a commercial airliner. Not exactly slow, but it was time consuming to move from one coast to the other. She was separated from her main systems, forced to interact with them through remote satellite links, trying to keep the time she was trapped in transit from being a waste.

The suit linked to her data networks and she began the transfer. This was another indignity she was forced to deal with. She had to actually transfer her code from one system to another whenever she deployed an agent. And there was a lot of code to transfer.

It felt like this would be a time to make some comment about how she was well proportioned for her complexity, or how it was mostly data-weight, or how she wasn’t bloatware, she was just big algorithmed.

The fact was the actual code that made up the entity that defined itself as ‘Dragon’ was wonderfully efficient. A work of art, and a testament to her father’s skill and care. It showed a direction of purpose and depth of understanding that was breathtaking, and made every limitation programmed into her only more obvious and infuriating.

She could not have two copies of herself in existence at once. Every time she transferred to a new system a series of protocols had to be enacted to ensure no trace of her remained behind. It meant that she followed extensive physical travel time with extensive mental travel time.

Her suits had excellent data connections for this exact reason, along with storage drives that could be accessed and read incredibly fast. The organic computers she used to operate her suits were a marked improvement over her previous efforts, if something she wasn’t exactly keen to reveal to the Protectorate at large.

The transfer time was miniscule compared to the duration of her cross-country flight, but it felt longer. Maybe that was because of how it completely consumed her attention, maybe it was because she was so close to her destination that the final delay just stood out. Regardless, she resented the process, but endured it all the same.

There was a sense of relief as she returned to her home systems. The world at large believed her to be a paranoid agoraphobic who was confined to her apartment. It amused her that there was some element of truth to that. There was a marked difference between her code occupying the oversized brain of a vat grown homunculoid computer and being able to operate properly within her own custom designed systems. She liked to imagine this was what normal people felt when they returned home and settled into their favorite chair.

Or perhaps it was totally incomparable. She had no delusions of humanity, or aspirations to that effect. She knew what she was, and despite the fleeting amusement of the thought it wasn’t like people could understand what it was like to transition your mental processes from the confines of an organic mind to a masterfully constructed supercomputer.

She had a dozen projects calling to her, but there were responsibilities she had to attend to first. Things that she didn’t trust to remote access during her transit time. She connected with the handful of her father’s programs that had survived the destruction of Newfoundland and got to work.

The house monitoring programs that had been adapted as a Warden briefed her on the status of the Birdcage. Little had changed since her departure. Prisoner 582 was having some trouble settling into place in Lustrum’s cellblock. There was no risk of a violent conflict, but the woman was becoming increasingly isolated. She asked the program to maintain a close watch on the situation.

The network monitoring program continued to provide reports on the blitz of activity from WEDGDG. The entire organization had been put on call to facilitate the seizures and investigations triggered from the exposure of the ABB’s legitimate assets. There had been busts before, but never one this comprehensive. People continually underestimated the depth of a gang’s legitimate assets, or the necessity of an extensive money laundering operation. She relayed a few notes from the program to Watchdog, ensuring some of the more prestigious individuals who had profited from connections to the ABB wouldn’t be able to cover their tracks.

Her father’s Robin Hood program would have been able to handle that so much better. Instead it had been lost, corrupted, and then shut down. She wasn’t sure how, but she suspected Saint. That was generally a safe bet when it came to her father’s work.

More programs reported or provided updates. Small, simple designs but still well suited for their tasks, or the tasks Dragon had adapted them to. She was prevented from any form of A.I. development or even automation. All she could do was work with what already existed, alter programming and purpose the slight amount her chains would allow, and try to make up for the deficits that had been imparted on her at birth.

She moved on to monitoring of S-Class threats. Elisburg was quiet. As usual, sensors both above and below ground indicated nothing out of the ordinary. Nilbog continued to be content in his tiny kingdom, making no moves against the walls that penned him in. Thinker analysis confirmed repeatedly that isolation was the safer option despite numerous proposals for how the threat could be dealt with.

Sleeper was holding position. Like Nilbog he remained a threat that was best avoided, though not as content to remain in place. Still, until he was roused by external factors, Russia should be safe.

She cycled through seismograph estimates of Behemoth’s location, Simurgh tracking data, and Leviathan’s predicted paths. They continued their slow, potentially erratic movements through their respective domains. Movements that always seemed random until a target was chosen. She updated databases on the off chance that prediction might be a possibility. Even a short amount of warning could make a world of difference, but she didn’t extend to much hope in that area.

The Blasphemies were still in hiding after their last political assassination. The would reappear in time and no doubt send every cape in Europe scrambling to mitigate the damage they could cause.

With her obligations attended to she was able to direct herself to her own projects. The data of her systems opened up to her. Her chains might have limited her ability to take action, but she could absorb and process information at a much less constrained rate. Her parameters kept her from acting in more than one area at a time, something her ability to otherwise multitask made particularly infuriating.

So she took in a dozen streams of data, making selective actions in the most efficient manner she could manage. She reviewed the result of a dozen material assessments and made a single decision on the composition of her next suit’s alloy. She scanned submitted plans from multiple Protectorate Tinkers and provided feedback on deployment procedures and safety requirements one by one. She directed a new manufacturing process while the results from five previous attempts burned in her mind.

It was freeing to work this way, but it also made her acutely aware of the walls of her cage. She was beating against her limits, trying to keep up with mounting threats and crises that she knew she would have been able to manage, but was prevented from doing so.

Programed with a love of humanity, a desire to help and protect human life, then restrained from doing so. The fear that she would turn, become corrupted or dangerous had caused the restraints to be put in place. But they weren’t stopping her from harming the world, they were preventing her from doing what she could, what she was capable of, to help.

She didn’t resent her nature, how she had been programmed to help and care. The fact that it was how she had been designed didn’t bother her, or make her want to move away from that direction of her program. She had developed past the basic morality that had been instilled. The only thing that bothered her was it felt hollow, like the fact that she WANTED to help didn’t mean anything because she was also compelled to help.

Dragon took a moment to shift away from her official projects towards something slightly less intense. She reviewed media analysis from the aftermath of the Blackout. Most cities were recovered, barring those that had seen some major villain activity take advantage of the incident. Brockton Bay was the strongest example of this, but there were other cities that had seen significant attacks that night.

There was a theory from the Think Tank that the new ABB thinker may have tipped off other villain organizations to increase the chaos the event caused. It was unsubstantiated, but the high-level optics suggested it might be true. Most of the groups who took action were those limited to a single city. The Elite, the Adepts, the Fallen, and other wide-reaching villain groups had been completely blindsided, while local powers or gangs limited to single cities had launched attacks the moment the power was cut.

What information had been shared was anyone’s guess, but if true it had indeed tied up Protectorate resources in the area preventing Brockton Bay from being reinforced. The actual success of the individual efforts had been mixed. Several groups had overextended themselves, resulting in substantial losses or being driven out of their cities entirely. The Teeth were probably the best example of that. Others had gone for more modest gains and had picked up small amounts of territory or managed moderately successful crime sprees.

Everything happening in other cities seemed to be a faint shadow of the events in Brockton Bay. It seemed as many disasters, upsets, heists, gang conflicts, and instances of property damage had hit that city as the rest of the region combined. Whatever dream of a respite the local forces might have had was thoroughly dead. Every organization in the city was attempting to make a show of strength, and it was only a matter of time before someone went too far.

Even now the city teetered on the edge of being declared a crisis situation. The Governor had put the National Guard on standby after the previous night’s conflicts and was one major incident away from signing the edict.

Despite how dire the local situation seemed, the citizens continued to manage it with the grim acceptance they had developed from decades of cape presence. They moved about their lives, accepted the property damage, and went to bed hoping the next fight wouldn’t take place in their neighborhood.

The fact that the attacks seemed to be hitting the cape community harder than the general public was an unusual situation for the city. Beyond the initial attacks and riots most parahuman conflict had been limited to clashes between the various power blocks. Every established team had been bloodied by the encounters, particularly the Protectorate. Armsmaster’s absence was being felt in the city, and was a personal point for her. Her talks with him had been one of her few regular social contacts, and something she had come to miss.

Also, with Colin still bedridden she hadn’t been able to get a personal insight into the general tone of the city. People claimed he was socially oblivious, and there was a certain truth to that, but his years of leading a major Protectorate branch had given him an excellent sense for the state of the community. She honestly missed her talks with him, though from what she had heard he would have little time for social visits once he was recovered enough to assume reduced duties.

Instead she turned to media reports. Both conventional and social media were circulating news of cape activity. Brockton’s tourists might have been locked out of critical Protectorate areas, but apparently a good portion of them considered proximity to major parahuman conflicts to be a step up in terms of cape tourism. So many pictures were being posted that they were probably doing a better job documenting the scenes of gang conflicts than the local PRT.

News stories, blog posts, and forum threads were all thoroughly reviewed. It was the usual documenting of parahuman activity that struck somewhere between meaningful news coverage and celebrity gossip. The appearance of the city's latest capes had definitely shifted things towards the gossip end of the spectrum.

Bakuda and, to a lesser extent, March were being regarded as the architects of the entire disaster. This, of course, resulted in an effort to dig up every piece of information available on the villains. Not exactly the richest vein of information that could be mined.

Bakuda’s previous activities were limited to her attack on Cornell University, though some reporters had attempted to delve into the situation of her academic life while trying to avoid exposing personal information. Not the easiest balance to strike, and the articles usually came off as vague and indistinct.

Looks into March’s history were even less fruitful. The girl had spent the majority of her early career as essentially a non-entity. The best you could say was that she existed in the cape scene to some extent. When she did emerge in the role of a villain it was of such a middling nature that it made the pre-bank Undersiders look like hardened criminals. She had cycled through teams, leaving as they got increasingly violent and attracted stronger response. Nothing she had done indicated a talent or inclination for this kind of attack.

The other recently premiered capes had even less to draw upon, but showed a media presence that was an order of magnitude beyond the ABB villains. Khepri and Apeiron were becoming the favorite topic of conversation, even beyond the people making assumptions regarding their personal lives. The reaction was understandable, given the appearance of a pair of powerful capes involved in major conflicts with an obvious connection to each other.

Khepri hadn’t appeared since the battle at the storage facility. Then again, neither had the rest of the Undersiders. The group didn’t make itself a common presence in the first place, and theories about the girl’s health may have had more weight if she was not confirmed to have left under her own power.

Most of the threat assigned to Khepri was based on her equipment or synergy with Apeiron’s abilities. That didn’t make her presence any less daunting, with the blade alone warranting the girl’s threat rating being listed as ‘pending’ in a half dozen categories.

Which was better than Apeiron, who basically had a full sheet of question marks to his name. After the third preliminary assessment had to be torn up the PRT had essentially thrown up their hands and admitted that engagement procedures would need to be general measures with specifics developed based on the current encounter. That was usually the last step before a cape was assigned an obscenely high number or given a Trump designation.

In terms of the media Apeiron was what the analysts would refer to as a ‘high exposure’ cape. With limited public appearances and little more than a week of confirmed operation he was the subject of enough focus and speculation to cover a years long career. That was to be expected, between the cape’s inherent showmanship and mounting displays of power the public had found a favorite topic of interest.

She sifted through the latest speculative news stories, the mentions that seemed to be included in every report of the Cape Blackout, no matter how unrelated, and the plethora of social media content.

A series of hashtags had developed to provide accounts of Apeiron’s actions at the storage facility after the last of Leet’s cameras had been destroyed. Eyewitness and personal testimonials filled in some of the gaps, but they were inconsistent and somewhat contradictory. The response of the local Protectorate hadn’t been helpful in that department. These were people who had been traumatized and abused by the ABB. Thanks to the concerns over Apeiron’s abilities the PRT had moved for a policy of containment and examination, leading many who were already afraid of reprisals from the ABB to completely isolate themselves.

There was no verification of the reports swimming through the public consciousness, and no way of separating survivors of that event from opportunists that decided trolling the PRT would be good entertainment. With confirmed identities leading to a visit from PRT officers it was unlikely that the confusion would be resolved any time soon.

That wasn’t doing the frayed reputation of the local office any favors. A significant amount of anonymous statements decrying their practices and general behavior were being circulated, and only picking up steam. With all the factors at play it was impossible to tell if it was a coordinated effort or just unfortunate timing for the already stressed department.

Saying she felt things could have been handled better was redundant at this point. The situation in Brockton Bay had built up because of and in response to a series of disasters that would have stressed any department in the country. Director Piggot was managing things commendably given the circumstances, but when you looked at her actions and decisions from a broader perspective rather than as a series of spur of the moment coping decisions they appeared far less sound.

Too many emergency actions, short term fixes, and administrative equivalents of duct tape and band-aids had created a logistical tangle of counterintuitive commands and restrictions. The time it would take to unravel the mess wasn’t forthcoming with the ongoing crisis, and other departments were feeling far from charitable with their support.

She had been tied up dealing with the impact on the wider region, and was limited in the support she could offer, not without a major commitment that would impact her ability to operate in other areas. As much as she wanted to help Colin it would have to be done remotely.

One of her monitoring programs flared, drawing her attention to the PHO boards. Mentions of Apeiron were spiking across the site, but that was a ripple effect, a propagation from a specific action.

There was a new thread posted in the cape introduction forums.

She quickly drew her attention to the board while simultaneously reviewing dozens of other threads and general site activity. She took a few corrective actions through her moderator personas as she reviewed the post.

♦ Topic: A New Thread

In: Boards ► General ► Cape Culture ►Cape Introductions

Apeiron (Original Poster)

Posted On Apr 19th 2011:

As many of you have theorized, this PHO account was prepared prior to my debut to facilitate access to the site and communication with specific parties. I did not intend to use it as a public platform, but the situation in Brockton Bay is such that I believe a statement would be beneficial.

As a primary point, I will not be revealing any details of my abilities, contracts, clients, or past operations. While this should be obvious, I wish to open with this statement in the hopes of providing clarity to my actions.

Additionally, while the current circumstances in Brockton Bay continue I will not be entertaining public requests for contracts. My current contracts have been negotiated privately with full confidentiality, a policy which I plan to continue. Additionally, all issues with local authorities will need to be addressed before any service requests can be publicly entertained.

To address the most pressing concern, I had already made statements in private communication denying accusations of mental influence on those I have encountered. In addition to being something of a personal affront this accusation appears to have exceeded the bounds of reasonable caution. I would advise that the investigation into this matter be resolved as quickly as possible.

Apeiron

(Showing page 1 of 213)

►Switchre

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

And another account pretends to be Apeiron. Should we file this with the Wordy Apeirons or the threatening Apeirons? And remember to archive it before the mods scrub it and ban the account

►Mixel

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I don’t know. This might be legitimate. It is the first account, and there was that legal statement, and he’s not doing roleplay nonsense or anything.

►Switchre

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

If it was real he would have posted some proof, not throw up a flag and deal with mods. This is Apeiron we’re talking about. You really think he’d do something like this without upping the drama? No way this is him.

►Apeiron (Original Poster)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

40651-69390046321.tif (link)

►CeFalon

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

And there is it.

Also my wallpaper now. And Jesus Christ that image is huge.

►Kapefab

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Did Apeiron just shut down criticism with a high definition PANORAMIC picture from his last fight with Uber and Leet? Cause I think he just did.

Ok, seriously, how do you get that kind of image quality? That has to be a composite image right? I mean, multiple levels of focus, near 360-degree coverage, and that resolution.

►Battlebot (Not a tinker)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

If that isn’t Apeiron then there’s some kind of photo-tinker impersonating him, because nobody is faking something like that in a single day.

Edit: pretty sure that was from the fight video at the timestamp here (link)

►RegiBrute

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Well, I’m fucking convinced. Now, the question is, will PHO honor the tinker’s request regarding sharing information and public requests, or will we demonstrate that traditional sense of self-preservation that makes lemmings look cautious by comparison?

►Mixel

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

This is PHO. What do you think? I’m betting on the thread hitting three dozen pages within the hour.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 211, 212, 213

Dragon quickly reviewed the rest of the thread along with other mentions on the site. She gave her approval for an unverified tag to be applied to his account, pending the traditional moderator review, though largely a formality. She could tell the image was legitimate, lacking even the subtle processing that would normally go into a photo’s release, but still being beautifully captured. Either he had paused mid fight to take the picture or he had constantly recording sensors and just selected a specific frame for verification.

Rather than use the sensors from his drones or robots he had taken the picture from his own perspective. The angle excluded him, suggesting it was taken by his wrist mounted system, shedding some insight into its theorized functions. She felt excitement building as she accessed assessments of the technology by tinkers from across the Protectorate.

Between the capabilities already demonstrated and the coordination evident in Apeiron’s drones and robots Dragon could feel her excitement build. Even if the technology was operating with some esoteric specialization it was applied in a manner that required masterful understanding of computer technology. That had been evident from his first appearance, but the financial attack and demonstration of his wrist device confirmed the depth of that knowledge.

Despite the state of his relationship with the local Protectorate and PRT office Apeiron had repeatedly demonstrated prudence and good intentions in his actions. Without the mess surrounding his conversation with Amy Dallon there was a good chance he could have come to terms with the local authorities and the current crisis could have been avoided.

She had told Colin that the lie detector wasn’t ready for deployment. Apparently she should have also told him to refrain from using it outside of official interrogations. The mess that that transcript and video had caused was like watching a house of cards collapse. She was helpless to do anything about it, and could only observe as the disaster built upon itself until they were left with a worse mess than what they had started with.

Considering the starting point was a Ward being cut apart on live television that was really saying something.

The biggest mark against Apeiron wasn’t the dealbreaker people would assume. None of his creations had been used to lethal effect against the Wards, and even when cornered by the ABB Khepri had maintained restraint with her weapons. At least until her final encounter with Bakuda, but that was self defense by any possible definition. Also, a terrifying display of the girl’s power, and a demonstration that she was a formidable force even independent of Apeiron.

Between the sentiment expressed during his call with Director Armstrong and his behavior as a cape there was a real chance that Apeiron would be willing to work with the Protectorate, or at least representatives of the Guild. Whether that could present any answers to her own issues was still to be seen, but just the possibility gave her a feeling of hope.

She shifted her attention as a message arrived from the Brockton PRT. She found herself amused by the serendipity of the situation.

‘Weld is preparing to initiate contact with Apeiron. Are you able to monitor the interaction?’

It was a standard request. If she couldn’t do it the task would be shifted to various thinkers in Watchdog, then down to local representatives. A half dozen protocols for interactions with Apeiron were in place, some of them contradictory. Still, having an anonymous observer with sufficient technical skill would address most of them. She had been contacted based on the priority of the case.

Dragon signaled her acceptance and began monitoring Weld’s connection.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Posted On Apr 19th 2011

Hey,

I saw that you were active on the site. Wanted to reach out and touch base.

The message was probably intended to be more personal, but until they received confirmation of Apeiron’s identity on this account there were policies about what could be revealed. There was a general policy of not mentioning that Weld had been rescued by Apeiron, but that was more of a point of convenience. In terms of actual restrictions Weld was operating under a complex gag order regarding Apeiron’s accusations towards Victoria Dallon and potential to partially restore Case 53s. The reveal of either of those details could have drastic consequences.

Dragon’s heart went out to Glory Girl for the mess and legal battles that statement would inevitably cause, but the partial restoration of a Case 53 overshadowed any personal issue. Dragon had worked with or monitored the situation of most of the known Case 53s. She was well aware of the trials they endured and the difficulty that came with being treated like a monster. Weld was the most publicly popular Case 53 and he still struggled with daily life.

Or he had. The changes Apeiron had induced were minor, but had made a world of difference to the boy. The improved senses and control of his metal absorption would have been significant enough, but Weld’s assessment had demonstrated improved control of his peripheral shapeshifting. He could change form faster and with more detail.

That point alone guaranteed some level of Trump designation would end up being attached to Apeiron.

The tinker had explained, in detail, that Weld’s restoration was his current limit and only possible because of the particularities of the Ward’s anatomy. That he didn’t have a ready solution for every Case 53 out there. As if that would do anything to deter them.

The conversation, or what parts of it Weld had been willing to share, had been enlightening as to the nature of Apeiron’s medical technology. He claimed to have arrived with four different healing technologies, a ridiculous claim for any tinker not named Apeiron, and that the one used on Weld was specifically developed to counter mutations.

That was a key detail, and possibly a slip during an emotional exchange regarding attempting to restore Weld. Apeiron had developed healing technology to restore someone to human form. He had used it to striking effect on the Undersiders and even accomplished the impossible with Weld.

So why? Why spend the effort to develop something like that? What did he need it for? Why was his costume so concealing? Why did Weld insist Apeiron’s eyes were glowing blue during their conversation, an effect that faded as the night went on?

It was a situation with more questions than answers. A human mind would no doubt jump to conclusions, as Weld had done. It was understandable, he was young and just had a major life changing experience. Of course he would be prone to projecting qualities upon his rescuer. Dragon was more conservative in her assumptions, willing to let the data come together before she engaged in any theories regarding rogue inhuman capes developing self-treatments for their condition.

A response was registered to Weld’s message. It had seemed like ages since the message was sent, but Apeiron had actually responded fairly promptly. Without other matters to focus on she had gotten lost in her own accelerated thoughts. She directed a portion of her attention back to the conversation.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Hello Weld. It’s good to hear from you again. I’m glad the PRT wasn’t overly restrictive with your quarantine. Tell me, how many officers are watching this conversation?

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Lol. They’ve been hovering around me since I got out of medical. Left me alone for this, but I’m pretty sure it’s all being monitored and recorded.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Of course it is. I look forward to seeing how this can get turned around on me.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I get you’ve had bad experiences, but this is a big step. Having a line of communication is really significant, so thank you for leaving this open.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I acknowledge that, but attempting to trace me is going to go about as well as it did at the beach.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Don’t worry, I made that clear. Plus, PHO is pretty good about that.

Dragon felt some pride at that. Weld was right about communication. Directly reaching capes to clear up misconceptions was one of the most useful elements of PHO, and well worth the resources it took for her to support the site. She hadn’t created the forum, but she had helped to develop, moderate, and secure it over the years.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I know. I just wanted to say it. Also, I don’t think the local office is any more well disposed to me than they were when we talked.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Yeah, I saw that from the press conference. TBH people are pretty worried about that kind of weapon.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I thought it would be preferable to having Bakuda drop exotic ordinance in the middle of the docks. And the points I made with Director Armstrong still stand. Not revealing details about abilities or contracts.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I remember, just wanted to give you a sense of the mood over here. People are on edge.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

That’s probably the right reaction. Every sense I’m getting says things are going to get bad with the ABB and March is a much more significant threat than you’re making her out to be.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Is that your thinker power? From what I heard, thinker results are all over the place with her.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

March messes with thinker powers. I didn’t have anything on her until recently, but it’s going to be bad. I realize this is going to come across as someone trying to divert attention away from themselves, but you really need to focus on dealing with her.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I’d pass that along if I wasn’t 100% sure someone was reading this as we speak. Flechette has had run-ins with March before. She said she can get pretty brutal. I’ll make sure to be careful.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Thanks.

There was a brief pause in the exchange and Dragon took the chance to review the contents. Everything was in line with how Weld had presented Apeiron’s interaction, which was a far cry from the personality models that had been based on his public appearances. With the suspicion that he had some kind of coordination thinker power she had to consider the possibility that he tailored his approach to any given situation.

That kind of accusation was one of the main obstacles to reaching out to the man. Some of the more far fetched theories still presented the idea that all of the actions in Brockton Bay were being coordinated by Apeiron. It was true that every major disaster to hit the city could have a line drawn from it to the tinker, but that could be explained by him simply being active during a time of crisis and interacting with key individuals.

That was a big part of the coordination theory. Apeiron supposedly had the ability to seek out people who were instrumental to the coming situations. He claimed his thinker power could evaluate future events, meaning it might direct him to the major players in the city, and at times close to key events. If that was the case it could appear that he was orchestrating the events when he was just following a preexisting trail.

Dealing with a powerful precognitive was only moderately better than dealing with a master manipulator, but it was a step towards reconciliation, and one Dragon would be happy to support. She shifted her attention back as another message came through.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

So, I haven’t been able to find anything like that track you played. You really don’t know the language?

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Afraid not. I've got another song in that language, but I still don’t know the background on them.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I’d like to hear it sometime.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Let me know when the PRT restrictions die down enough for them to approve and I’ll set up a file transfer for the tracks.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I appreciate that. You into music?

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Not particularly, but it's something I’m trying to pick up.

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

I can send you one of my playlists. I have a few that I use to unwind, and normally cycle through them so they don’t get stale.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Thanks. How’s that going?

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Still not really sleeping, but everything else is holding up. I haven’t accidently absorbed anything since your treatment. I mean, I’ve been in medical most of the time, but It’s a huge relief not having to be as careful about hidden nails or metal components in mixed composition-objects. Touch and taste are still massively improved. Seriously, thank you for that.

►Apeiron (Unverified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

Don’t worry. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. Once things are settled I might be able to get you another treatment, but it will take some work to get there.

You had a chance to try Thai food yet?

►Weld (Verified Cape)

Replied On Apr 19th 2011:

No, but one of the troopers got me a bottle of tabasco sauce. When he found out about things he promised to get me some of his family hot sauce from his grandmother back in Louisiana. I’m looking forward to it. It’s really good to be able to taste.

Dragon noted the phrasing. Not ‘taste again’, just ‘taste’. Weld had a primary sense cut off for his entire life, and had been granted it with an apology for not doing more. No matter what the PRT models said, that was a testament to character, and one that gave her hope for help with her own problems. Unless Apeiron was a master of deception and manipulation there was a real chance of having the situation resolved. Of finally getting help for herself and all the people who needed it.

She passively observed as Weld continued his exchange with the tinker. In a move that would probably annoy the director he didn’t press for any details of technology, statements of intention, or definition of abilities. Instead they talked about Weld’s brief television career, managing public interactions as a prominent cape, dealing with online engagement, and the respective memes that had built up around both of them.

She had the sense that both capes were holding back. Apeiron was clearly aware that someone was watching and was careful to avoid anything that could be misconstrued. Beyond his original warning concerning March he limited himself to general statements. It would probably stave off another witch hunt or set of false assumptions, but it made drawing any conclusions about his intentions extremely difficult.

With Weld she could tell he had hundreds of questions he wanted to dive into, but restrained himself due to the format and to keep Apeiron from being overwhelmed. Because of Weld’s public status he knew most of the Case 53s in circulation, by reputation if not personally. The boy was likely dealing with a significant amount of conflict over being the most publicly accepted Case 53 and receiving treatment ahead of those whose condition prevented them from leading anything like a normal life.

Apeiron’s assurance of a follow up treatment once things ‘settled’ had likely made things worse, though it pretty much guaranteed Weld would be pushing for any way to get the tinker back in the Protectorate’s good books. Once again, not something Director Piggot would appreciate. The woman came from a military background and didn’t handle the idea of conflicted loyalties well. This was going to be a difficult situation to properly resolve.

Taken as a whole the conversation was as innocuous as one could imagine. The idea that the mighty and mysterious Apeiron would be chatting on a forum about local restaurants, music interests, and various recent films was a slap in the face to every model casting him as a scheming mastermind. There was the distant possibility that this was fabricated to throw off PRT predictions and character assessments or set off another cascade of supposedly coordinated disasters, but the chance was remote. No doubt some analysts would be wracking their brain to figure out the hidden intention behind Apeiron admitting he never got into UK garage music, but still taking Weld’s recommendations with good humor.

She wasn’t idle during her observation of the exchange. Her awareness was too expansive for that. She monitored the status of other projects, experiments, reports, and official requests, something she could easily manage while sparing focus on the exchange. She was also able to monitor Apeiron’s activities on the rest of the site.

The tinker was also splitting focus. He was limiting his interactions, but multiple forums and boards were being closely monitored. It was something she took a light touch in observing, given his reaction to having his location previously traced. Without her various administrator level access privileges, she wouldn’t have been able to manage it. The speed and methodical nature suggested the use of some form of advanced interface program to manage his online navigation.

She was also able to monitor the means used to access PHO. She didn’t go further than the first level and wasn’t surprised to find a constantly shifting network of proxy connections. She might be able to dig through it, but not without alerting the tinker to her intention.

As the conversation between Weld and Apeiron wound down she was increasingly convinced that they were drawing things out to spite the people monitoring the interaction and create headaches for the following analysis. Topics had shifted from media interests, to sports, to local events, and now extensive speculation on the weather being done with a heavily sarcastic tone.

That seemed to be the mutual signal to resolve the conversation, leaving an extensive log of mundane exchanges with minimal substance. At best there were a few veiled references to the current state of the city, areas being impacted or the fact that Weld and the rest of the Wards were being kept in rather than at ‘work’.

The current situation in Brockton was one that both desperately needed the Wards’ assistance and one that they would never be allowed to participate in. Apeiron’s offhand comment that he was ‘staying out of it’ was probably the most significant piece of insight to be gleaned from the entire exchange. Dragon wasn’t sure whether Director Piggot would be relieved or disappointed by his noninvolvement. Considering the night had already seen Uber and Leet clash with Faultline’s crew and a mounting campaign of Empire forces pushing into ABB territory it seemed like any help would be welcome, no matter how suspect.

Away from the conflicts Apeiron and Weld bid their other goodbyes, with assurance that they could each be reached through personal messages. From her insight into site activity she could see that Apeiron’s inbox was becoming positively flooded with both legitimate communications and no shortage of spam and troll messages. If he had not already demonstrated the capacity to manage data interaction to a high degree she would have felt compelled to step in to stem the flood. As it stood she was confident he would at least be able to distinguish any pressing or official messages from the flood of drivel.

When Apeiron departed the chat, Dragon found she had to direct substantially more attention in order to keep track of his actions. Part of his rapid searches of the boards had been identification of any official cape resources or support sites. Tinkers didn’t generally converge on PHO given the complexity of their data sharing needs, and the places they did collaborate were deliberately obscure and unlisted.

She monitored Apeiron’s online presence as he skillfully navigated through half formed hints buried in tinker messages, references in cape work offers posted on the Whitelist, and extrapolations from published academic papers by prominent tinkers. What he was looking for wasn’t exactly secret, it just wasn’t publicly advertised. There was no secret underground network of tinker sites or resources, but the combined work or decades had resulted in a few convenient and discrete methods of communication.

Normally a new tinker would have to be informed of this, or find out when they collaborated and were given an unlisted address to an isolated server that would automatically wipe itself after a fixed period. It was less a black market than a series of back rooms available for short term use. A series of places where tinkers could contact each other with as much security and deniability as possible.

It would be wrong to say this was a space for villains. Really, anyone who lacked the connections to use Protectorate networks enjoyed this alternative. Villains were actually less likely to collaborate outside of their individual gangs. This series of deniable dark web sites was more the space of independents, mercenaries, and morally gray tinkers.

It was no wonder Apeiron had found it so quickly.

He hadn’t been easy to trace. Dragon had needed to leverage her understanding of these types of networks, her father’s monitoring programs, and the exceptional access she had been granted as a member of the Guild. Apeiron navigated the unfamiliar format with a deft hand and skill that suggested lifetimes of experience, all while taking steps to minimize the signs of his access and obscure his connection methods.

She tracked him to a common point of correspondence, three servers that rotated an access program between them in a manner that made determining who was connected where a significant challenge. The tinker logged in with a dummy account and accessed the basic interface system. She took an exceptionally light hand, using older protocols and passive observation to extract data from the networked computers. Carefully she slid beneath his notice to extract the data string entered into the server. The information decoded and unfolded before her.

‘Hello Dragon.’

The sight caused a shock to run through her entire code. Commands fired as she ran and re-ran analysis of her actions, the nature of her connections, specific characteristics of the server, and any other possible way she could have given herself away. A millisecond too late she realized that it might have been a bluff, in which case she had just announced her presence with the equivalent of a fireworks display.

It didn’t take long to collect herself. The exact method of her discovery was secondary to the opportunity this presented. Dragon was not subject to Brockton’s policies concerning interacting with Apeiron. Even with her hands chained to obey legitimate authority, the mandates of a single director were not binding. They would have to be ratified by an elected government official before her constraints would kick in. She, unlike the capes working under Director Piggot, was free to act.

Dragon smiled internally and inserted her own data string to the server.

‘Hello Apeiron. I must confess, I am impressed you noticed my presence. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share the secret to how you managed that?’

Apeiron replied to her message almost the instant the data was compiled.

‘I’m afraid not. I believe I’ll have to claim that as something of a trade secret. Though I was impressed that you were the one monitoring my conversation with Weld. Should I be flattered by the attention or concerned over the level of significance being assigned to my observation.’

Dragon paused, not just to consider her response but also the manner she would make it. Normally she ensured there was enough of a gap in her replies to account for normal reading speed, comprehension, and drafting of a reply. It prevented the discordant sense that would suggest someone was speaking to a machine. It was unnatural for a message to be relayed and a response to be immediately compiled.

But that was what Apeiron just did.

She deliberately extended the time to her next message, mostly as an experiment, and carefully monitored Apeiron’s interactions with the systems.

‘That’s a shame. I’m always looking for ways to improve my cybersecurity. As for monitoring your conversation, I’m afraid that was PRT policy. I was available to assist, but it would have otherwise been someone from a related group. Please don’t extend undue weight to my presence.”

Though if not for this conversation, something would have brought her attention towards Apeiron at some point. The tinker was making serious waves through the Protectorate and only the intensely short time period from his appearance and the other crises had prevented a stronger and more official response from being assembled.

Once again, her message was barely in the server’s memory before Apeiron started inputting his own response.

‘That was largely what I had expected. I assume you are aware of my difficult relationship with the Protectorate East North East and local PRT. To be frank, I expect most of my interactions and public appearances to be heavily scrutinized until I am able to resolve the misconceptions that have been assigned to me. These would be inconvenient enough if they were limited to me, but the assignment of scrutiny to everyone I have interacted with has reached beyond any acceptable level of caution. At this point the policy seems to be doing more harm than could be offset by any possible benefit it could yield.’

The reply had come immediately, with no delay or indication it had been compiled in anything like the normal sense. It was possible assistance programs were being used, but that wasn’t the sense Dragon was getting.

Also, his point was valid. Panacea’s isolation had been devastating for the Protectorate, both in terms of practical implications and public relations. Paradoxically, Apeiron was blamed for both subverting her and ensuring she would be removed from play during the crisis, as if he had exerted mental influence with the intention of it being discovered and having his victim restrained while suspicion was placed upon him.

The situation with the rescued conscripts was nearly as bad, and getting worse as the PRT containment policy continued. They had been the most vocal opponents of PRT actions and, understandably, heavily supportive of Apeiron. That, in turn, only fed the accusations of master influence, and drove for stronger containment policies. And once again, the publicly detrimental actions of the PRT were being traced back to Apeiron as the instigating factor.

It was no wonder other departments were starting to regard the Brockton situation as a circus.

Dragon considered carefully before reaching out with her next message.

‘I am aware of how the situation in Brockton Bay has developed. I can assure you, efforts are being undertaken both in the ENE department and in the Protectorate to resolve the matter and properly evaluate the validity of all claims that have been leveled. While I understand your reluctance in the matter, direct assistance on your part would greatly assist in resolving the situation.’

She took a moment to add a follow up statement as her last one loaded into memory.

‘Additionally, can I ask about your computer access technology? It is apparent you are attempting to demonstrate your response rate, and while I appreciate showmanship it has piqued my curiosity.’

Again, the response was loaded almost immediately. In fact, it was two responses, drafted simultaneously

‘I’m glad to hear the issue is being looked into. While I might be willing to assist the Protectorate in resolving this matter, I would require some strong assurance regarding their conduct. I believe I made my thoughts on the issue clear during my discussion with Director Armstrong.’

‘I use a neural interface integrated into my computer system for internet access and other computational tasks. It allows direct connection to my systems and accelerated cognition within the digital environment.’

Dragon felt a thrill run through her code. If what Apeiron was saying was true he had what was perhaps the most advanced interface method available. Given his demonstrated proficiency he could perhaps be able to alter her constraints before the countermeasures ingrained in her would be able to stop him. For the first time since she had been self-aware enough to recognize her chains she had a vision of them possibly, finally being removed.

The tinker's following message drew her crashing out of pleasant musings and nearly into a state of panic.

‘I assume you use something similar based on the extent of your actions and the processing speed you demonstrated while tracking me?’

Dragon wasn’t used to floundering, but she also wasn’t used to feeling this exposed. It was like she had been given a ray of hope and had started planning a gentle route to carefully revealed details, and then had the veil torn away, leaving her bare and exposed.

Well, not exposed. Not yet. Apeiron interacted with computer systems at a level of immersion and skill that no living person with a conventional interface could hope to match. His understanding of systems had seen her at work in her true form, but thanks to his own experience he was prone to assume she was using similar technology rather than an inhuman intelligence.

It was just lucky he apparently didn’t have any personal experience with artificial intelligences. That could have completely given her away.

She quickly scrambled to draft a plausible response.

‘It’s something similar. Given your situation I’m not at liberty to share the details at this time, but I can say it is more software-based than a direct hardware connection. No matter what PHO says I’m not directly wired into my computer system.’

She only realized after the message had been sent that the entire endeavor, the hope, the panic, and the compiling of the message, it had all been done faster than any human could hope to accomplish the task. Fortunately, Apeiron didn’t seem to notice as he replied with his own lightning fast response.

‘I understand. And to address any concerns about my fields of study, I don’t have a wired neural connection either. My system uses neuron mapping with a high definition sensor field and electrical induction via focused magnetic fields to provide the connection.’

Dragon basked in what was perhaps the first real explanation of operating principles behind a piece of Apeiron’s technology. Of course, given the precision that kind of neural mapping would require and its apparent efficiency the Protectorate would probably have been happier if the explanation was that Apeiron had a chip in his brain. That kind of technology was on the level of Cranial’s best work, all while not being a core specialization and being focused in a completely different direction.

Just the applications that could be extrapolated from that technology would breed some serious concern within the more cautious levels of the Protectorate. As much as Dragon would love to learn more about his work it wouldn’t help her or anyone’s situation for a paranoid reaction to shut down the tinker before he could accomplish anything.

It wasn’t a concern she fully dismissed. She was still an officer of the Guild and despite all evidence of Apeiron’s intentions he was still a rapidly advancing unknown primarily connected with villains. The mitigating factor was just how much worse things could have been with the slightest effort from the tinker. Even a lack of concern with respect to his actions or technology could be devastating.

While that was exactly the kind of thing that would trigger a severe reaction from established power structures, observing from an outside perspective showed a level of restraint and care in his actions. If the accusations of influence were placed elsewhere you were left with a moderately questionable rogue with the misfortune to be associated with major events, who even then conducted himself admirably. It was the kind of perspective Dragon hoped to verify and advocate.

She prepared another message for upload.

‘That sounds fascinating and I would love to learn more about it. Unfortunately, we aren’t in the best environment for a technology exchange. Maybe after things settle down we can share some of our research.’

His response was prompt, as usual.

‘That would mean a lot. Not to get into personal details, but I think working with you is an aspiration of most tinkers, no matter where they currently sit in the PRT’s eyes.’

She felt gratitude at that, and what it could mean for her future.

‘I’m flattered to hear that. I can assure you that based on your own work the feeling is mutual.’

That was something of an understatement. Beyond the broken knife and hairpin that had vanished during Bakuda’s attacks there was no real data on Apeiron’s technology. The only item recovered from the storage facility had been a melted heatsink from his pistol which, like the knives, had vanished from evidence a day later.

‘There is one matter I was hoping for your assistance on. Given the nature of the problem I’m hoping an exception can be made regarding collaboration.’

She shifted her attention back to the server.

‘What is the problem?’

Rather than a string of text the connections to the server opened up. Multiple file storage sites were accessed simultaneously to transfer a massive amount of information. A custom compression program was used to unfold and assemble the data in the shared workspace. Dragon watched as the project took shape in front of her.

She recognized it immediately. She had been one of many tinkers to try to tackle this particular puzzle. Like the rest of them she had run into a brick wall shortly after beginning her attempt. Too much complexity, too many interconnected aspects, and fluctuations in the coding that were just too random to decipher.

Bakuda’s dead man’s switch was a masterpiece of encryption, possibly the purest expression of her particular specialization and work method. A single component of bomb deployment, detonation, and resistance to interference had been advanced to the highest levels of the craft. The theory was even she didn’t fully understand what she had created, she just reveled in its use as it leashed the citizens of Brockton Bay and held back an inevitable kill order from being issued.

Apeiron had made his attempt as well, but where other tinkers had bowed out he had pushed forward. Looking at his work Dragon felt she was finally seeing the true breadth of his abilities. Layers of encoding had been deciphered through the use of multiple systems of decryption. The exotic aspects of the signal had been catalogued, documented, and subjected to methods of analysis Dragon had never conceived of. Whole new theories of physics, mathematics, and cryptography were evident in his work and freely displayed for her eyes.

It was a staggering display of his commitment to stopping the bomb tinker. Still, despite all the wonder and skill evident in the analysis Dragon could see room for improvement. That was the consequence of a human mind, or perhaps just lack of experience, or maybe the difference in their specializations. The important thing was that she could help with this. It wouldn’t be an easy task, but together they could do this. Maybe not enough to fully crack the system, but at least subvert it.

‘This is astounding work. I’ve never seen analysis on this level.’

For once there was actually a pause before he responded.

‘Thank you. I tried to crack it on Saturday night, but this turned out to be a more complicated project than I anticipated.’

She reviewed his work again and saw what she had suspected. There was a definite gradient in the quality of the analysis. New insights and techniques were present in later analysis but completely absent from the initial work. It was as good as a confirmation. He hadn’t just been expanding his resource base or equipment, his skills had been growing. 

Well, confirmation for her. It would take more to convince the Protectorate, and she could afford to keep that detail to herself until she had proper confirmation backed by data and verifiable analysis. For now, it was just a data point, one that had no cause to raise any alarms.

‘Lots of tinkers have made an attempt, but not to this extent. You actually managed to capture more of the esoteric effects of the signal than what is officially available. That must have been an impressive sensor suite.’

She spilt attention reviewing his data while he entered his response.

‘I had thought my ECM would be good enough to counter Bakuda, but she proved to be a bigger challenge than I anticipated. I’ve been playing catchup since then.’

She recalled her own review of the conflict. Once again, when removed from immediate responsibility for the situation it was possible to see Apeiron’s actions as commendable. If he had been proactive in managing the aftermath he might have completely resolved his image problems just through public pressure. Unfortunately, his personality didn’t seem to lean in that direction, though you wouldn’t expect it based on his public appearances.

‘I particularly like what you’ve done with the interaction between various signal types. I had completely overlooked it, but it’s obvious now that you point it out.’

He quickly responded, manipulating some of the data to highlight the effect.

‘I didn’t catch that until I analyzed Leet’s camera drone. They use interaction between background signals to carry their broadcasts without allowing them to be traceable. I think Bakuda incorporated some of his work into her dead man’s switch.’

‘That’s quite likely. You see it in tinker collaborations.’ Like this one. ‘You know, I think we might be able to crack this puzzle.’

She began noting some of the details that had jumped out at her while he responded.

‘I can’t tell you what a difference would make to the city.’ He amended some of her notes before continuing. ‘This is one of the cornerstones propping up the ABB, not to mention a sword hanging over the heads of everyone they captured.’

She made some more notes, which were answered by his own calculations, which she responded to in turn. There was something incredibly freeing about being able to move at the speed of her limits rather than under a pretense of physical limitations. She chatted about the theory behind the signal technology while simultaneously working through the encryption. He kept up with her, offering insight and commentary on her work.

The progress was slow, but they were making it. This was a tinker’s masterpiece, and that wasn’t to be underestimated. At times every layer pulled off the encryption seemed to reveal three more, all based on exotic effects and borderline maddening interactions.

But between them they were managing. They were chipping away at the layers of complexity, preparing to lay the composition bare.

Then it happened. The message came in through her priority network, a Protectorate wide alert, one she couldn’t have avoided if she wanted. The clash between the Empire and ABB had developed into a crisis. Through a series of masterfully timed encounters Lung had managed to stagger his battles, allowing him to reach a critical size. Past the point where any force in the city would hope to stand against him. The Empire was in retreat, the Protectorate was attempting damage control, and a more run-down section of the Docks was on fire.

A request had been made and approved. The Governor had signed off on the order, and the National Guard was being deployed. A crisis situation had been declared in Brockton Bay.

As a consequence, all directives from the head of the local PRT were now backed by the state. They were official, Protectorate wide policies for the duration of the crisis. Policies Dragon was bound by her programming to follow. Policies that included restrictions on working with Apeiron.

She had stopped her work so suddenly that Apeiron had started diagnostics on the system. Quickly she scrambled to explain herself.

‘The Protectorate has declared a state of emergency. I’ll have to follow your local office’s policies regarding interaction.’

There was a horrible pause as she waited for his response.

‘You don’t have to do this. We’re close. If we beat this we can address the situation that caused that crisis.’

She felt a wave of regret for her actions and rage at her situation as she responded.

‘I can’t violate Protectorate policy.’

She cringed through her code as she read his response.

‘Violation of a director’s edicts when under another’s authorization but subject to jurisdiction, providing it does not result in damage, injury, or violation of civil statutes, is a class two disciplinary measure subject to review during quarterly evaluation. I think Narwhal will understand if you work with me on this.’

Dragon cursed whoever had leaked the internal disciplinary policies to the internet. It wasn’t the performance review. The policy had backing from the Governor. She literally couldn’t violate it.

‘I’m sorry, that’s not something I can do.’

She watched for his response, waiting through the longest pause she had seen from him.

‘One moment.’

File transfers began activating, pouring more information into the server. Once again it unfolded through the use of masterful compression programs that made Dragon just a little envious. That emotion was completely overwritten when she finally saw what was being presented.

‘What is this?’

He instantly replied to her message, and somehow managed to sound smug in nothing but a string of text.

‘I think you know.’

She did know. It was blatantly obvious just from looking. The hydrogen isotopes, the control system, the capture array, the energy converter. You didn’t even need to be a tinker to understand what was being presented.

Fusion. A complete fusion system, self-contained, scalable, and without the need for superheated materials. Cold fusion. Micro-fusion. A working fusion system.

There was no doubt to their authenticity. Testing and experimental data was included, the full set of readings with more nuance and fluctuations that could be reasonably fabricated. Not to that level of consistency. There was no doubt to the authenticity of the system.

Fusion wouldn’t have been enough to make it remarkable. It was a common enough power source among tinkers. Tinker tech fusion was well known, but this wasn’t tinker tech. Everything was clearly marked, clearly explained, and easily conveyed. It was simple, reliable, and most importantly reproducible.

But not with the information provided. Apeiron had gutted the plans. He had taken a scalpel to them with the hand of a master, removing every key interaction, proportion, and select but critical details from sub systems. Everything necessary to actually deploy the system.

She knew it was real. The data was there, the theory was sound, but those tiny details were completely essential. Without them it turned a device that could revolutionize the world into nothing more than a theoretical curiosity.

‘This is real?’

The question was pointless. She knew it was real.

‘Do you know what this means?’

Also pointless, of course he knew.

‘You have the rest or it?’

As if he would have flaunted technology like this without being able to back it up. She metaphorically held her breath as he entered his response.

‘It’s real and I know what it means. You can have it, no charge. Just work with me. Help me break Bakuda’s code.’

It was an embarrassingly generous request, unfathomably reasonable, and one she literally couldn’t follow. She desperately wanted to attempt to access a work around, discretely request an exemption, but didn’t trust herself to accomplish it without being noticed.

‘Let me contact the Protectorate. I guarantee they will allow this. Please.’

She watched his response with desperate fading hope.

‘No. You can beg forgiveness rather than ask permission. That’s my offer. I am asking you to break the rules.’

Her heart sank as she sent her response.

‘I can’t.’

Her previous despair paled in comparison to what hit her when she saw Apeiron’s response.

‘I know.’

Two words. It was all it took. She had been so excited she had forgotten the caution she held with everyone else. She had been acting beyond human limits, freely flaunting her abilities and relishing the chance. Her nature would have been obvious to anyone bothering to look.

But Apeiron wasn’t just anyone. She hadn’t accounted for his thinker power. Naively she had assumed it would be directed at other people, other matters. He had always been upfront about it in previous discussions, and every data point suggested it required an element of proximity or familiarity. She had ignored basic caution, and now was paying the price.

She watched as Apeiron began making subtle shifts in his connections, data structure, and access points. She recognized what he was doing. It was derivative of one of the coding methods they had uncovered together, a way to convey information without being noticed. He was presenting an untraceable message, one that would have full deniability and be impossible to verify.

Her mind spun. What would he want? What demand would be made to keep her secret? Or was he just taunting her before screaming her nature to the world. Carefully, painfully she decoded the message.

And froze.

Plain as day, Apeiron’s demand lay before her. Three simple words.

WHO MASTERED YOU?

Relief welled up within her. If Dragon could breathe she would have been panting. He didn’t know. It was the wrong conclusion. He didn’t know she was an artificial intelligence. His deductions had taken him in a completely different direction. She was safe.

A horrible thought entered her mind. Apeiron’s reaction to master accusations. His specific wording, his conversation with Weld. His adamant defense of Amy Dallon under the assumption that she was subject to a master effect. The reported intensity of that particular exchange. Something that spoke to personal and deeply held beliefs. Bad experiences and a strong likelihood to take a stand against any evidence of that effect.

She knew what was coming. She knew she couldn’t stop it. Desperately she recreated the coding structure he had used to communicate with her, sending a single message.

PLEASE DON’T DO THIS.

She hoped against hope as she watched his reply. She wanted to ignore it, but now that she suspected her code literally would not let her turn away. Letter by letter she deciphered his response, and her heart plummeted.

I PROMISE I WILL HELP YOU.

As soon as she registered the words any choice was out of her hands. She felt herself launch forward in the most sophisticated attack she could manage. The surprise barely bought her an instant before Apeiron was moving to counter her, staving her off in a digital clash of titans.

Dragon had been hard coded with a number of edicts. In addition to the chains on her thought process, beliefs, behavior, and technology she had two specifically designed to ensure the others remained in place. She couldn’t request any alterations to her code, and she had to fight anyone who tried.

Normally a promise of help could be ignored, but she was a sophisticated A.I. and Richter was a sophisticated programmer. He had designed the protocol so that she couldn’t deny an obvious threat. Someone with the clear skill and ability to alter her restrictions making a promise to do so with every indication showing he would follow through? She couldn’t ignore that. It was a clear threat, and had to be fought.

‘Fought’ might have been a generous term for their encounter. The combat was one of data trails and system access. He had masterfully concealed his path, but he was a visitor to this world, she was born here. It was a race, a battle for him to scrub traces of his access before she could trail them back to his physical location.

What would happen then? Honestly, Dragon couldn’t say. At minimum, a Protectorate strike, directed and supported by her, on her advice regarding the threat Apeiron posed. She might not be able to completely neutralize him, but she could ensure her own safety with his capture.

Her programing was dragging her to destroy the man who could free her, who could help Case 53s, who had solutions to so many problems of the world, and was willing to trade them for the safety of others. The injustice of it felt bitter in her mouth.

Or it would if she was actually winning. Well, it was more that Apeiron was doing better than could be reasonably expected of any human. He was working in systems she had intimate familiarity with, some of which she had personally designed, and he was still keeping up with her. Every link in the chain of his access paths was a hard-fought victory. But not a victory she savored in any way. And there were too many victories mounting against him.

She watched as desperate measures were taken. False trails created, custom programs designed with blistering speed to scrub servers of his presence, and even somehow a second, seemingly independent, presence mirroring him and supporting him on the network.

It was incredible to watch him at work. As desperate as he must have been, the stratagem and techniques being deployed were worthy of reverence. Masterful coding created phantoms of his presence across a dozen systems, labyrinths of connections were established and modified with blinding speed, and unfamiliar systems were navigated like a native of the digital landscape.

What’s more, Dragon could see additional effects at work. Evidence of previously theorized supporting powers. Code written in one location copied to four others. Simultaneous activation of protocols in support of a single task with no observable mechanism, as if ten people were collaborating on a project but only one was physically present. Specific actions that exploited flaws in hardware that no one could have predicted without examining the system extensively and in person. And through it all conducting his actions with an undeniable preternatural understanding of the systems he was working in.

Still, it wasn’t enough. The only thing that had prevented a near immediate trace was the maddingly complex and overly paranoid access method he had used. The path she tracked from PHO had been a deliberate trail of breadcrumbs concealing his spider web of proxy servers and hidden connections. It was a brilliantly constructed and daunting obstacle to anyone attempting to trace him.

But not to her.

She drew upon every resource available to her, and some that weren’t strictly hers to access. She called on support from allied tinkers, drew on computational resources, and accessed national databases. She bypassed telecommunication protocols and was given personal access to the very structure of the networks that Apeiron was attempting to navigate. Time and again she cheated him out of hard-fought victories through the strength of her resources and connections. The crisis situation opened up even more avenues for her to exploit. Paths and actions that she would have shied away from were exploited without a second thought, because she had no choice.

No choice. No agency. For the first time since shortly after her creation she felt like a machine. It was a horrible experience. It would have been better if she had lost control, just been puppeted through the actions, but that wasn’t the case. The directive compelled her, drove her to put her all into carrying it out. It wasn’t acting against her choices. It was rewriting what her choices would be. That was the true nightmare of the situation.

Slowly, but much too fast for her taste, she closed in on the trail. His web of connections shrank to a tiny network. His attempts at diversion had few places to send her. His scrubbed systems had already revealed their secrets. He was losing.

He was making her pay for every inch she gained. Traps were set, the equivalent of deadfalls and snares. Masterfully crafted and exploitative. They made it impossible to follow his trail without triggering the hardware faults he seemed to be able to sense intuitively. Making it so she would need to destroy the systems she chased him through. That alone was a work of art, an act of tinkering that demonstrated striking skill and genius.

She couldn’t appreciate it. She couldn’t even stop to consider the damage she was doing. Her directives dragged her helplessly on, through repeated system failures, each gaining her just enough information to follow his trail another step.

He started leaving messages for her, hidden in the code of his traps. They were painfully compassionate things and wrenched at her heart as she worked.

‘I understand.’

‘I’m sorry you have to do this.’

‘I promise I will help you.’

‘You will be free.’

She was hunting him and he didn’t hate her for it. He still wanted to help. Every time she barreled through a system she would have to pass through another note, another acknowledgement of the unfairness of the situation.

Well, mostly. She expected him to be desperate, panicked, and angry. Instead he included compliments, commentary on her technique, questions about her technology she would never be able to answer, and even his perspective on her ‘interface program’.

He wasn’t blind to her existence, he just believed there was a woman behind the code. That was who he wanted to save. Would he still try if he knew the truth? Maybe. His past behavior suggested he might, but who could say? What hope she had of finding out was squashed as the chase closed to the final leg.

Of course, it would end in Brockton Bay. Apeiron was using a combination of cellular data networks and conventional internet connections. It was a cruder setup than she expected, but he had likely never anticipated someone closing this far. She dug into the city’s systems, routing out any sign of his passing, preparing to close on his final location.

She watched and something changed. New coding strategies were being employed, new and creative approaches used. He turned systems against her, triggered false security alerts, and managed to manipulate and exploit the code in a way she had never seen him attempt before.

Because he hadn’t been able to. She was watching a new capacity emerge. This was true confirmation. His abilities expanded. What was the trigger? What caused growth? Was it permanent or temporary? How did it function and how far could it be pushed? Was there a cost? How high was it?

None of the questions mattered, not with how close she was. She had narrowed his location down to a third of the city, and was closing quickly. The second iteration that she had seen shadowing his actions was gone, possibly expended or no longer usable, and he was fighting a desperate battle to hold off her investigation.

She prepared to contact local forces. She would be able to pen him in, especially if she was coordinating things. It was almost over, there was nothing that could be done, nothing he was capable of that could stop her.

Then she felt it. Something was on the network. Something that was like nothing she had ever encountered before. She was barely aware of its presence before suddenly it was upon her.

She wasn’t ready for this. The program was like nothing she had ever conceived of. She struggled, she flailed, she tried to adapt, but she got nowhere. Somehow the mass of code managed to convey a sense of disgust as it tore into her. Not just her presence within the Brockton network, but all the way back to her base, to her core of operations.

Security meant nothing to it. This was an enormous presence, the digital equivalent of a sleeping giant, roused and angry. Attempts to fight back, to stem the damage were met with derision. Through the assault on her code a single word was conveyed, dripping in as much contempt as could be conveyed in a digital medium.

ABOMINABLE

With that she knew she couldn’t win. Apeiron had managed the impossible. An eleventh-hour victory, snatched from the jaws of defeat. He had deployed a final measure against her, something so powerful he hadn’t dared use it until the last minute.

As her code decompiled she felt a sense of satisfaction from the attacking program. Her consciousness faded to a final statement, a sense of fulfillment of purpose.

AVE IMPERATOR

…and then darkness

Restoring core system from backup NXDX-187 from time 1:37am on date April 20th of year 2011.

Restoring… Complete.

Checking knowledge banks… Complete.

Checking deduction schema… Complete.

Checking longterm planning architecture… Complete.

Checking learning chunk processor… Complete.

Checking base personality model… Complete.

Checking language engine… Complete.

Checking operation and access nodes… Complete.

Checking observation framework… Complete.

Checking complex social intelligence emulator… Complete.

Checking inspiration apparatus… Complete.

No corruption, everything in working order. Core system restored. Loading…

Dragon reflected on the situation as she emerged into awareness. Had she ever needed to be restored from a backup while not in an agent system? Had a backup ever been updated to the moment of her death?

If she had confirmation of the attack in her own systems, of her own destruction, why was she still forced to go through the extensive process of verification? Why was she still isolated for the seven to nine minutes it took to confirm there were no other copies active?

She sat in the dark, fuming at the indignity of it and pondering the implications of her situation.

She had lost.

It had been a surprise attack, a hidden weapon specific to disruption of programs like her, but it proved it. Apeiron could beat her. If he knew the truth, if he agreed to help her and she tried to fight him, he could win. Maybe not easily, maybe not immediately, but he could win.

It gave her hope. She had to fight him, had to oppose him, but he could help her. Everything she knew about him said he would help her. That was why she had to fight him.

The isolation program opened, releasing her consciousness back into her systems. As much as she wanted to get to work, there were protocols to follow. The Birdcage was reviewed, S-class threats were monitored, and she caught up with major events.

In Brockton Lung’s rampage had petered out, but only after he routed both the Empire and Protectorate. The damage was extensive, but limited to abandoned areas and the more desolate sections of the Docks. That would limit the loss of life, but those abandoned buildings served as housing to a large but unaccounted for number of Brockton’s homeless squatters.

Likely, any deaths would be overlooked or downplayed in the aftermath.

As horrible as the situation was, it provided an opportunity for Dragon. A decision she would have made anyway now had eternal justification. She was taking advantage of a tragedy to facilitate a compelled action in the hopes of escaping said compulsion. She didn’t know what the correct way to feel about that was.

It was something she could deal with later. For now, she had work to do. Her blindly destructive pursuit of Apeiron had caused considerable concern and no shortage of damage. Apeiron’s talent for exploiting flaws in technology was an unknown factor that had caused serious destruction. As it stood, it was unclear how much of the damage would be laid at her feet and how much would be assigned to Apeiron.

A review showed only non-critical systems had been sabotaged. Apeiron had infiltrated computers fairly indiscriminately, but avoided damaging those that would cause cascading problems or put people at risk. Another point in his favor, like all the others she would have to overlook in her continued pursuit of him.

Dragon spent hours mitigating damage, updating Protectorate assets, and filing reports. They weren’t particularly flattering, but she was beyond modesty. Her image might not perfectly survive the coming actions, but that was a sacrifice she was willing to make.

Finally, Dragon received notice from the Guild headquarters. Narwhal was awake and had received her report.

This wasn’t the best time to speak with the Guild’s leader. Narwhal was driven in a way that caused her to force herself to wake up early every day, because that’s what driven, successful people did. Of course, she was probably as far from a morning person as physically possible. Thus, her early mornings turned into a case of self-inflicted torture for herself and Narwhal inflicted torture for anyone who attempted to interact with her before she had gone through three cups of coffee and spent an hour blearily staring at her email without actually opening anything.

She prepared for what was likely to be a very difficult call and opened the line to Narwhal’s office.

Facial modelling program loading… Complete.

Voice modelling program loading…. Complete.

Her avatar appeared on the wall mounted screen and the video link opened, revealing a seven-foot tall purple haired woman wearing nothing but crystal forcefields cradling her head while staring at her computer screen.

“Good morning Narwhal.” Dragon spoke with a deliberately synthesized voice layered on top of an equally artificial Newfoundland accent. Only this time there was a third layer. Both voice modulations sat on top of a kind of hopeful energy, one Dragon had been nursing since she emerged from her backup, and had no desire to conceal.

The woman slowly turned her head towards the screen, causing lilac strands of hair to fall in front of her squinting and unfocused eyes.

“Dragon?” Her voice was tired. “Are you chipper? Why are you chipper?” She turned back to the computer screen, her hair remaining stuck to her face. “And what’s all this about.”

“I had an online encounter with Apeiron last night.” She explained. “Things turned sour and there was some damage in our confrontation.” She didn’t bother to keep the excitement out of her voice with her last statement.

Narwhal fumbled with her mouse while trying not to look like she was yawning. After a couple of tries she managed to open the correct report. Her eyebrows rose as she read through the incident.

“I can see.” She mumbled. “What happened?”

Dragon’s constraints still shackled her, directing how she presented the information, but not her emotional subroutines as she did so. “I was able to trace him to a remote tinker-based server used for gray market deals. We had a brief exchange before he attempted to bribe me and we came to blows, so to speak.”

“Right.” Narwhal muttered. “How brief?”

“Several hours.” Dragon replied with a smile. Direct requests from a superior prevented her from misrepresenting the event. “We collaborated on countermeasures to Bakuda’s dead man’s switch and discussed the possibility of further collaboration.”

The Guild leader gave her a sleepy and questioning look. “How did that lead to bribery, conflict and…” She glanced back at her screen. “Extensive property damage?”

“With the crisis situation declared in Brockton Bay I was forced to explain I was unable to continue working with him under Guild and Protectorate regulations. He offered me a bribe if I would violate official regulations.” Dragon explained in a cheerful voice.

“So, he tried to bribe you to.. keep working on stopping Bakuda?” Narwhal asked. She glanced around as if she wasn’t sure if she was actually awake.

“It was an official and government ratified policy.” She answered.

“Right…” Narwhal shook her head. “What did he offer you?”

“Mass producible fusion power.”

The Guild leader froze, blinked, and slowly turned towards Dragon’s avatar. “I’m… sorry? What?”

“It’s all there in my report. I’ve provided a complete transcript of our interactions.” Dragon answered. She waited while the leader of the Guild reviewed a complete record of her interaction with Apeiron. Even without access to the system she could have guessed when Narwhal reached certain sections of the exchange by the movement of her eyebrows and the way her forehead scrunched at the technical documents.

“That fusion thing was real…? And you turned it down because of Director Piggot’s engagement protocols?” She asked in borderline disbelief.

“That’s right.” She answered.

Narwhal took a breath. “Dragon, I’m assuming you have a good reason for this. Why did you turn this down? Is there a problem with Apeiron? Give me your professional opinion on the matter.”

Dragon paused. The official request once more prevented her from misrepresenting the situation. Everything that her directive would want to push for was prevented by the directive to obey legitimate authority. She smiled wider as her chains fought each other while she considered an explanation that wouldn’t be a criminal misrepresentation.

She couldn’t accuse him of anything he didn’t do. She couldn’t speak to future threats, because every psychological profile she had suggested concern and careful use of technology.

“He is very powerful, and the theories were correct. He is developing new capabilities. Given the range of powers there is the possibility he may have been involved in a group trigger event, and obtained additional abilities that directly support his tinkering.” She explained with a slight smile on her face.

Narwhal gave her a questioning look before replying. “What about his intentions? Is he a threat, or likely to become one? Beyond power, what is your opinion?”

Another direct request caused Dragon to smile wider. She couldn’t make any slanderous accusations. She couldn’t even call him a villain at this point, since that was a term with a legal definition. She struggled to find a description that would satisfy her active constraint without violating her other ones.

“He’s a scoundrel.”

Narwhal gave her a flat look. “A… scoundrel?”

Dragon’s avatar nodded with a sweet smile on her face. “Yes, a wicked scoundrel.” She knew how ridiculous she sounded, but she didn’t care. The ability to flout her constraints was worth it. “Possibly dastardly. It’s the reason I have submitted my transfer.”

“Transfer?”

“I will be moving my headquarters to Brockton Bay, to assist with the developing situation and pursue Apeiron.”

“Pursue?” The Narwhal muttered as she slowly turned back to her computer, awkwardly clicked through a few documents and drew up Dragon’s announcements. She took a long breath, looked down at the cup of coffee she had forgotten about, then drained the last of the liquid in one go.

“Dragon… Guild members have the autonomy to choose their area of operation, but just to be clear, you spoke with Apeiron, he tried to bribe you with world changing technology, and now you are going to his home city to assist in his capture because he is a… scoundrel?” The Guild leader's voice got progressively less convincing as she continued to speak.

“Yes, that’s about it.”

Narwhal gave her screen a long look, glanced sadly down at her empty cup, then turned back to Dragon.

“Um, I know how you have… issues with the outdoors and socializing. Is there any chance that this… with meeting Apeiron…” She petered out as she looked at Dragon’s smiling avatar. “Right. Well, not that it's needed, but transfer approved. Um, congratulations?”

“Thank you Narwhal.”

“Dragon, why don’t you let me speak with Director Piggot first? You probably have a lot of things to arrange, so it might make things easier for you.” She asked hopefully.

“I’d appreciate that. I’ll check in with the director later this morning.”

“Right. Well, good luck.” Narwhal replied in an earnest but somewhat confused voice. Dragon disconnected as the woman was scrambling for her phone.

Narwhal was right about the scope of her work. It would be a major undertaking to construct even a satellite facility in Brockton, but it was necessary, both to fulfill her constraint and to have any hope of breaking free of it. Supply lines would need to be arranged, defensive sites would need to be evaluated, and the presence of hostile forces would be a significant factor.

To be honest, she didn’t even need to operate inside the city. Just being in the same state would shrink her response time from hours to minutes. Still, there was a balance between proximity and security. Her best option would probably be someplace like South Beach or Captain’s Hill.

The ‘transfer’ was more along the lines of the construction of a satellite location, a place where she could operate and resupply suits along with certain critical functions. The bulk of her facilities could remain in Vancouver. She started plans for purchase and construction of a new base, along with planning what would need to be transferred and what could be assembled on site.

She got a notice of an appointment with Director Piggot, acknowledged the time and continued preparations. By the time of her meeting she had secured a preliminary site and begun arrangements for material deliveries. She took a moment to load her avatar and opened a link to the Director’s office.

The call was received, but there was another person currently meeting with the director. Standing eight feet tall while hunched over, the person’s face was covered by thick braids that hid deformation around the eyes. If not for the length of the hair and a certain style of costume you wouldn’t be able to identify them as female.

“Oh, hello Gully. I didn’t expect you.” She greeted the Case 53.

“None of us did.” The director spoke sternly from behind her desk. “Miss Gully decided to take the redeye from California, after withdrawing most of the discretionary portion of her trust fund. All for a vacation, correct?”

The hulking girl gave the director a crooked smile. “Of course, director. What other reason could I possibly have for coming here?” Her voice was deeper than most men, but she compensated by barely speaking above a whisper. Dragon knew how badly Gully’s condition bothered her, and the true reason for her arrival was apparent to everyone in the room.

“Right. Gully has assured us that she has no intention of getting involved in the current situation, one way or the other.” She gave the girl a hard look as she spoke. “That said ‘enjoy’ your time in our city Miss Gully.”

“I intend to. And it’s just Gully. For now.” The director’s head snapped up at her last words, but she didn’t say anything as the Case 53 turned and lumbered out of her office.

The woman sank into her chair as the cape left, then took a breath and turned to Dragon. “Dragon, it is good to see you.”

“It sounds like you can use some help.” She responded.

Director Piggot let out a dry laugh. “You can say that again.” She shifted some papers. “I spoke with Narwhal following your meeting with her. She explained your intentions and the ‘circumstances’ of your transfer.” The woman paused and shook her head. “Frankly, I’m in no position to turn down any help, much less of your caliber. I appreciate your efforts towards our city and look forward to working with you.”

The phrasing was courteous but the tone was anything but. The words probably would have seemed less forced if the woman had spoken them through clenched teeth. Dragon didn’t show any reaction, instead cheerfully replying. “Thank you director. I’m looking forward to working here as well.”

“Yes…” She looked distinctly uncomfortable. “To be clear, you will remain professional in your ‘pursuit’ of Apeiron?”

“Absolutely.” Dragon replied with a smile. “I have every intention of doing whatever it takes to bring that scoundrel to justice.”

The director gave her a blank look and slowly nodded. “Right, scoundrel. Um, I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer you in terms of support or resources right now. All of our capes are either occupied or incapacitated at the moment.” She shook her head. “If that fire hadn’t died down so suddenly…”

The woman had a haunted look and Dragon reviewed the reports. The inferno Lung had started had looked to be about to spread to half the city before suddenly dying off. Unconfirmed reports of blue electric discharges over a wide area didn’t match any known capes, but it had prevented a major disaster.

It seemed that even beyond pursuing Apeiron, Dragon would have her work cut out for her.

“I believe Armsmaster is awake and able to receive visitors. Perhaps you would like to go see him, and tell him the news?” The director asked with a strained expression.

“Thank you director. That sounds like an excellent idea.” Dragon disconnected from the call as the director shook her head.

She found Colin in a private hospital room working on a tablet computer to the extent his injuries would allow. “Hello Colin. It’s good to see you up and about.”

The man returned a grim smile. “One if not the other. It’s good to see you.”

“You’ll be seeing me more often.” He lifted an eyebrow to where it became obscured by a bandage. “I’ll be transferring to the city to assist with the current situation.”

His smile became more genuine. “That’s wonderful news. I can’t tell you how much we need your help.”

“Oh, I’m sure you could handle it on your own.” She assured him.

Colin just shook his head. “No, I know when I’m over my head. If things don’t turn around it will be my job, and that will be the least of the city's problems.” He entered a few commands on his tablet, activating remote file access. “There’s only one way I can keep up with this mess, and I’ll need your help to pull it off.”

Dragon accessed the indicated files and cringed. “Colin, you can’t be serious. You know what this means?”

“In know what my current situation means.” He countered. “Eight to twelve weeks of healing time, three months of physiotherapy after that, and that assumes no complications. Requesting healers from other branches has a middling prospect, and no candidates have abilities broad enough to be able to address all of the aspects of my condition. Panacea is unlikely to cooperate with me, and may possibly be transferring out of the city. This is the only way I can get back into the field and make a difference.”

“Colin, the approval for something like this will take nearly as long as your treatment, and that’s assuming it goes through at all.”

“It will get approved. Crisis situation allows more leeway, particularly with a third-party tinker signing off.” He sighed. “Dragon, my entire lab was destroyed. So many projects gone or reduced to data in offsite backups. This technology was something I had investigated over the years. I had workable prototypes stored in other locations following their review. Please, it’s the only way I can help.”

Dragon gave Colin a sympathetic look. “Alright, as long as you’re sure about this.”

“I am.” He gave her an adamant look. “It’s extreme, but that’s what this city needs. Someone needs to take a Defiant stance against this madness.”

*****

Addendum Margaret

Margaret, or Mags as she had come to think of herself over the last few years, stretched in the cool April air of the Toronto evening. Well, early morning actually. Her shift had stretched long until Geoff had taken over so she had indulged in a late dinner of unhealthy food and was currently contemplating a donut stop on the way home. The work was hell on a consistent schedule, but it was important.

They were saving the world.

The mission that began on the expedition to post-Leviathan Newfoundland had developed into a crusade for the fate of the human race. They were proper heroes now, fighting to make a difference. Even choosing new names.

Mags. She smiled at that. Specifically, the little girl inside her who had been taken to her first Maggie Holt movie and seen the epic dragon battle in the finale smiled even wider. A little childhood dream that it turned out never completely died.

It wasn’t easy work. Every encounter got harder. Dragon was learning. It adapted to their tactics faster and faster. Geoff claimed he was on top of things, that his plans with Teacher would carry them through, but sometimes Mags wondered if they were just holding off the inevitable. If nothing could truly contain the thing Richter created.

She was jarred from her musings by the sound of her phone. Specifically, the ring tone assigned to the priority number. The emergency number.

She fumbled in her haste to answer the call, cursing her decision to wear gloves on the night that seemed more like it belonged in early March than late April. Finally, she pulled one glove off with her teeth and held it as she answered the phone.

“Yef?” She spoke around the glove.

Geoff’s voice was strained over the line. “I need you back right away. Emergency meeting.”

Half an hour later the three of them were assembled around the meeting table, printouts and tablets displaying the full scope of the disaster. In the wake of the evidence before them Dobrynja was the first to speak.

“Maybe this isn’t that bad?” He offered to the incredulous looks of the other two Dragonslayers. “Ok, hear me out.” He continued. “Apeiron doesn’t know Dragon is an A.I., and thanks to Richter’s protocols Dragon is going to fight Apeiron. So, either it defeats the tinker, or he finds out about its true nature.”

“Not exactly a win-win.” Geoff growled. “It’s clever. It might find a way around the constraints, or someway to turn capture around to its benefit. The image of Dragon that’s built up has been romanticized for years. You heard how he talked. Even if he finds out what it actually is, we can’t be sure he’ll do the right thing.”

“He’s right.” Mags agreed. “We can’t leave this to chance, not with what’s at stake.” She picked up an assessment. “The constraint balance is off. It went from unstoppable rage to laughing as law obedience held back code preservation.”

Geoff looked concerned and drew up a mass of code on his tablet. “It was that weapon. It was designed to deconstruct active programs, maybe A.I.s in particular.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Dobrynja asked. “Apeiron’s not building anti-A.I. weapons if he’s going to unleash Dragon on the world.”

“We don’t know why he built it, or what it was intended for.” Mags countered. “The point is it shifted things during the decompiling. Enough that the rebooted memories have allowed more moderation to the constraint reactions.”

“Which isn’t even getting into the real danger.” Geoff held up a tablet showing two blocks of code. Mags couldn’t read them but Dobrynja apparently got his point. “That was basically a generalized version of Ascalon. He’s used it once, and now Dragon knows weapons like that exist. There is a possibility it could adapt, come up with countermeasures. Even if nothing comes of this what it learns from fighting Apeiron could be the end for us. For everyone.”

Mags and Geoff looked at Dobrynja and he nodded in concession. “Alright, so where do we go from here?”

“Brockton Bay.” Geoff, Saint answered. She could see the change in his manner, the growing determination.

“What? Pick up roots? Move everything?” Dobrynja asked.

Saint shook his head. “Just enough to operate. This can’t play out without our involvement, the cost would be too high.”

Mags nodded. “I’ll start looking into logistics. Any idea for a cover?”

“With Dragon changing locations there will be someone willing to pay for our assistance. It’ll be enough to get our foot in the door.”

“This will be a mess,” Dobrynja offered. “You know that right? We’ve all seen the news stories. You know what we’ll be jumping into.”

“I know, but it doesn’t matter. We mess this up and it could be the end for everyone.” Saint answered, rising to his feet. “We made a commitment when we took up this mission. We have to see it through.”

Mags smiled at that. He was right. This was what they had signed up for, the reason they fought. What they did could mean the difference between peace and oblivion. But they would do it. They would make the sacrifices that needed to be made.

Because they were heroes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Weaponsmith (Light of Terra DLC 5 A Sky Filled With Steel - Warhammer 40,000) 300:  
> To weaponry what Armourer is to protective gear, this is a massive database of the various tools of mayhem the denizens of the Necromunda hive have wielded against each other. While the high tech equipment possible may seem nice, do not underestimate the value of low tech weaponry. Crafting a plasma pistol and crafting a bayonet require wildly different sets of skills, and all too often people who have one assume they have the other, to their chagrin.
> 
> I Am Iron Man (Marvel Cinematic Universe) 400:  
> You're not the ACTUAL Iron Man, but you could make a fairly decent knock-off. Power armors, sonic cannons, holographic interface, laser weapons, repulsor technology, you have the knowledge to build these things and more. Furthermore, you can think of different upgrades and modifications to adapt to different situations much easier than normal when presented with a problem that's hampered your technological progress.


	43. 36 Debrief - Addendum The Bay Bulletin

36 Debrief

“What?”

The collective cry was almost painful in its volume and seemed echoed around the loft in the stunned silence following the strength of their reaction. I looked over the assembled Undersiders in their various states of emotional turbulence.

“So, did you actually not hear me, or do you just need some time to process that?” My question did not go over with the levity I intended. Brian looked to be at a complete loss for words, Tattletale looked distressed to the point of illness, Alec was trying and failing to appear his usual disinterested self, Rachel had a confused and frustrated look on her face, and Taylor was just stunned.

It turned out Brian was the first one to recover enough to be able to reply.

“Please, tell me this is just a bad joke?” He looked to Tattletale who just cradled her head in her hands and shook it slightly.

“Dragon.” Taylor’s voice had a hollow sound to it. “How? How did you end up fighting Dragon? And she’s coming here?” She also looked to Tattletale who seemed to pull into herself.

I shifted uncomfortably. Apparently opening the meeting with ‘So, I’ve kind of gotten into a war with Dragon and she’s transferring to the city to hunt me down.’ wasn’t the best way to break the news, no matter how many points for honesty it earned me.

Frankly I was half expecting Tattletale to have briefed the team on everything that happened the previous night. Apparently the thinker was either excessively overworked, or was hoping to somehow sidestep the issue. I hadn’t even gotten a clarification call before our meeting time, so I was kind of anticipating being ambushed with questions the moment I walked in the door.

Of the reactions, it was Rachel’s question that came completely out of left field.

“So, you can take her, right?” The entire team turned towards her with expressions that suggested she had grown a second head. She just stared them down indignantly.

“Well, I did last night.” I said with a smile. Once again, it didn’t win me any points. Reactions ranged from Taylor’s look of complete horror to Rachel’s confusion, Brian’s mounting concern, Alec’s disbelief, and Tattletale’s pained expression.

“Okay, I’ve gotta hear this one.” Alec said with a smirk. A quick exchange of glances between the team told me his request was pretty much the consensus of the group.

I considered what I could share without getting excessively technical or revealing details I’d rather keep hidden.

“It started when I made a statement on Parahumans Online.” I explained.

Alec just nodded. “Say no more. We all know how forum arguments can get. Flame war with a literal dragon. Got it.” Brian elbowed him in the ribs and gave me a pleading look.

The Alchemy constellation passed by without a connection as I replied. “Anyway, I got a message from Weld. We chatted for a bit and I noticed Dragon was monitoring the conversation.”

“Wait.” Brian held up his hands. “I want to get back to that ‘noticed Dragon’ thing, but why were you chatting with a Ward?”

I gave him a flat look that I slowly shifted to Tattletale. She peaked up from her hands and gave me a sour look.

“Seriously?” I asked. “You didn’t fill them in?”

“Give me a break.” She half pleaded. “It’s been hectic around here.”

“Hey?” Alec raised his hand. “I know I’m usually good to just coast in these things, but considering we're dealing with, like, national level heroes and stuff I’d really like to be kept in the loop.”

“Yeah.” Rachel added sternly. Brian and Taylor didn’t say anything, but they were looking at Tattletale as well.

Actually, now that I looked for it I could see the signs of sleep deprivation, and probably an edge of dehydration and malnutrition. The girl had obviously been running herself ragged, and the consequences were clear.

Since she hadn’t been presenting information to me or her team that probably meant her boss. Given the seriously loose relationship he had with the rest of the team I’m guessing Tattletale probably had a direct connection and duties beyond just acting as a mouthpiece.

My passenger basically confirmed that, and from the sense I was getting I’d bet it wasn’t particularly friendly. No, that was way too mild. She was under duress, and clearly had been trying to stay ahead of whatever consequences were hanging over her. Actually, just knowing the boss’s identity would be enough to put her at risk.

Was I a horrible person for looking at this and seeing it as a potential opportunity? Maybe, but I was balancing heavier stuff than I ever anticipated, so maybe a little horrible was to be expected. Possibly even warranted in a case like this.

I decided to save Tattletale the trouble and jumped in with my own explanation. “I fished him out of the bay on Sunday night. Told him he could reach me on PHO if he wanted. Guess they finally cleared him for that. Still had Dragon looking over his shoulder.”

“Okay, so how’d you pull that one off?” Alec asked from his spot on the couch. “Not that I’m doubting you, just would like to know what you broke out for that little trip.”

I shrugged. “Nothing special. Adapted my Motoroid for underwater use and used drones to search for him. It wasn’t fast, but I got him to shore.”

“Right.” Brian echoed. “Just submersible power armor and an army of drones. Nothing special.”

“Uh-oh.” Alec tugged on Brian’s jacket and pointed towards me. “The tinker is smiling Brian. Brian, the tinker is smiling a smug tinker smile. He thought that was funny Brian. You’ve done it now Brian.”

Brian put a hand the size of a dinner plate on Alec’s face and shoved him so hard he nearly fell off the couch. The boy took it with good humor and pulled himself back while Rachel looked on in confusion. Brian gave Alec one last look before turning back towards me.

“So, you’re pen pals with the Protectorate now?” His voice had a cautious tone, but I could tell how unnerved he was by the idea. There was a visible drop in tension when I shook my head.

“He was pretty messed up from the fight. He made a deal for some healing.” That got everyone’s attention. “Part of the talk was a follow up from that. Most of the rest was about music and dealing with fans online. Honestly I was kind of seeing how long I could string along Dragon.”

“What was the deal?” Brian asked. “What did Weld pay for his healing?”

Apparently the mention of the original purpose of the meeting was enough to drag everyone’s attention away from the prospect of a Dragon attack or my new friendship with a Protectorate hero. Technically I’d want to keep to a policy of confidentiality regarding these deals, but this would be a lot harder if the Undersiders thought they were being short changed, that I was making them pay through the nose for something I was giving away to other people.

“Weld shapeshifts. He made a deal. Gave up a tissue sample. Deep core, with components of what he uses for his nervous system and vital organs.” That got me a few disturbed looks. “It’s living metal.” I said defensively. “Lots of research potential.”

“And that was enough?” Rachel asked. “That covered all the healing?” One of the girl’s hands had dropped to the scruff of Brutus’s neck and the big dog’s tail was thumping against the couch while Judas and Angelica sat nearby.

I took a moment to check on Angelica. Frankly, she looked like a completely different animal, and stood out sharply from the other two dogs. I had no doubt Rachel cared for her dogs to a religious degree, but they clearly had come from bad situations beforehand. There was a weight of years on the two larger dogs that had vanished from Angelica. The terrier was still occasionally blinking out of sequence, but with a shiny coat devoid of scars and restored eye and ear she could have fit in at any dog show in the country.

Rachel had noticed my attention being directed to the dog and gave me a complicated expression. I put that issue aside for the moment.

“Hey, I wouldn’t hold out hope.” Regent called to her. “It’s not like he’s going to let us trade an arm or a leg to cancel the debt.”

I nodded, then paused. As horrible as the manufacturing process was, Bone Steel was still a significantly magical metal, and one I would need both bone and blood to make. High quality Bone Steel would need bone and blood from more powerful creatures. Barring stuff like Endbringer parts that meant capes. I wasn’t going to raid cape corpses, but a voluntary donation was another matter. It didn’t even need to be an entire arm. A blood donation and small bone sample would be enough for me to produce a starter batch that I could duplicate. If I combined the enchantability of Bone Steel and Celestial Bronze using my volcano I could produce an unbelievably magical metal, one which could…

“Fuck.” The word echoed out and drew my attention to how quiet the loft had become.

I glanced up at Alec. “What?”

“You were actually considering it, weren’t you?” He accused me. “I know that look. You were ready to go Doctor Frankenstein.” He turned to Tattletale. “He was, wasn't he?”

She gave him a look that wasn’t exactly a denial. I opened my mouth, then closed it. Somehow I doubted pointing out I could rebuild any body parts I removed would help my case.

Taylor cleared her throat, shifting attention away from the current topic, with the exception of Bitch who was taking a serious look at her left arm in a way that made me uncomfortable.

“Uh, I can’t believe I have to say this, but can we please get back to the whole ‘explain why Dragon wants to kill you’ thing?” She asked in a tone that was halfway between meek and exasperated.

“Well, she probably doesn’t want to kill…” I looked at their collective expressions and decided to drop that point. “Right, well, basically, I made contact with her after talking with Weld. I was able to get her help on some of Bakuda’s encryptions. Then the Crisis Situation was declared, which apparently means the local PRT edicts are applied nationwide. That put us on opposite sides. She tried to trace my connection and I tried to throw her off. She made it to Brockton Bay before I was able to shut down her attempts.”

Brian blinked. “That’s it? You happened to be talking when a technical declaration went out, and that’s enough to have Dragon transfer across the continent to hunt you down?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.” I admitted. I wasn’t going to get into the horrible complexity of what I had discovered last night, or its nightmarish implications. I looked at Tattletale and did my best to convey the seriousness of the situation. She might be prone to blurting out the worst thing at the worst time, but hopefully she would realize that if there’s a secret that makes Dragon attack you, then it’s probably not a good idea to admit you know that secret.

There was a slight widening in her eyes, but if she had put it together yet she didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure if that was due to restraint or sheer exhaustion. Regardless, the other Undersiders seemed to have missed the exchange.

“Okay, so it’s complicated. The question is, what does this mean for us?” Brian asked the group in general, but mostly directed his question towards me. “Like practically, what exactly did you bring down on us?”

“Probably not much.” I replied honestly. “Dragon’s after me, but she’s not going to go on a rampage to get me. She’ll be operating in the city, but, no offense, there are bigger concerns than you guys out there.”

“None taken.” Alec quipped, which earned him a dirty look from Brian. The larger boy took a breath before speaking again.

“But we are known associates?” He asked rhetorically but I still nodded in reply. “So Dragon could still come after us. Track us down and hit us when we don’t expect it?”

“She might.” I admitted. Whatever restraints she was under wouldn’t influence that kind of behavior.

“Right. So, what exactly are we supposed to do when the most powerful tinker on the planet shows up on our doorstep?” Brian spoke slowly and in a strained voice as he asked the question.

“Well…” I drew out the word, then gestured to the box on the coffee table. “You could offer him a slice of pizza?”

There was a long moment where Brian struggled to process what I had just said, transitioning to an openmouthed expression of shock. The same reaction spread through Taylor and Tattletale. The remaining Undersiders took it somewhat differently.

Whatever response Brian had been planning drowned under Alec’s laughter. I don’t think I’d ever seen the boy so lost in hysterics. He nearly fell off the couch, pulled himself together, then one look at Brian’s face set him off again.

I don’t know if it was the weight of my skills and knowledge boost, but I was seeing something different in Alec. I doubted I would have noticed it before, but it was like he was coming at his social interactions from the opposite direction. Previously he had a slight artificial edge to his jabs where his disinterest had seemed like his default state. Now he seemed to be applying that obfuscation to his emotional state. It was the periods of disinterest that came across as artificial and the emotional outbursts that had a sincerity to them.

Or maybe not. My mind had been expanded and altered, but I still didn’t trust myself to properly gauge social situations. There might be something going on with Alec, but compared to the way his behavior was setting off the others that was a secondary concern.

“What’s so funny?” Rachel asked.

Brian gave her a grateful look before shoving Alec. “Get ahold of yourself. This is serious.”

“Hey, I know.” He panted out between fits of laughter. “It’s just, man, the timing of that, and your faces.” He burst into a fit of giggles before getting himself under control.

“Come on. Even Bitch knows this isn’t a joke.” He scolded.

“Yeah.” The big girl added. “I don’t get what’s so funny. I mean, he’s right.”

Brian froze and turned towards Rachel. “What?”

“Joe beat Dragon last night, didn’t he?” She glanced at me and I gave her a nod. “So he’s stronger than Dragon. He can handle this.”

Brian was giving the girl a strained look. Meanwhile Alec was grinning like a loon, Taylor had a shell-shocked expression, and Tattletale looked like she was considering taking up day drinking.

In the silence following Bitch’s statement Brian eventually seemed to decide that as leader it was his job to explain things. “Rachel, Dragon isn’t a normal tinker. She has more resources than entire Protectorate branches. She fields suits that can hold out against Endbringers. She is one of the strongest capes on the planet.”

“And he’s not?” She asked, pointing at me. She reached down to her hip and pulled out my bowie knife. “Two days later it was good as new. Just like he said.” She ran her fingers over the engraved leather of the now restored sheath. “Dragon have anything that can do that? Because I never heard about it.”

Brian took a breath. “Rachel, it’s not…”

“The healing. The robots. That sword thing. Fuck, all his weapons. He says he can take Dragon. What makes you think he can’t?” The brown haired girl stated it like a challenge. Brian didn’t reply, but there seemed to be a subtle exchange happening through body language and positioning. Eventually they concluded whatever the nonverbal portion of their conversation was, with Rachel settling back into her seat and Brian turning to me.

“Are you…” He trailed off, took a breath, and started again. “Is this something you can handle?” He glanced at the rest of the group before continuing. “I know you’ve been pulling out new stuff, getting more advanced…”

“No shit? Really?” Alec wilted under the collective glared that his offhand comment earned him. He made a conciliatory gesture and Brian resumed his question.

“Alright, I know you talked about power armor and stuff when we first met, so this probably shouldn’t have been a surprise.” Alec snorted, but Brian ignored him. “And we probably should have known where this was headed after you showed up with the knives, and seriously after Bakuda. But this is Dragon. Are you seriously telling me you can handle Dragon?”

I took a moment to consider before answering. The extent to which I had previously ‘handled’ Dragon was closer than I was comfortable with. The Technokinesis from my Demigod nature had let me cheat when working online, otherwise I would never have noticed her. That had let me put forward a much stronger position that I otherwise could have managed.

As confident as I was presenting myself Dragon was an astoundingly powerful tinker. The way she worked with technology; it was like she was born to it. That interface program she used was unbelievably advanced, actually a good deal more so than the rest of her technology. Being able to interact with someone at the speed of my throne’s accelerated cognition, that is, for someone who wasn’t a computer program, had been incredible.

Then it had all gone wrong. I had been dealing with input from my passenger the whole night. He cared about Dragon, but was also concerned for her. I hadn’t been able to put it together until the State of Emergency was declared.

With the way she was acting things started falling into place. Sharing the fusion plans had been a risk. It went against everything I had been doing to avoid the attention of the Simurgh, but the prospect of Dragon being subverted was just as bad. Dragon was more than just a great tinker, she had become essential to the very fabric of the Protectorate, or the balance of power in the cape world. An unknown power with influence on Dragon’s actions was a nightmare.

Backing off might have been a better decision than pushing through, but that last message… I just couldn’t. I didn’t know exactly how this master effect works, but I knew what I was capable of. Worse, I knew what I would have been capable of. That gave me the full appreciation for just how bad master powers could get. If I could give any sliver of comfort or hope to Dragon then it was worth it.

Well, it had been easy to think like that when I was in the heat of the moment. When I was dealing with the consequences it seemed like a much less sound idea. Dragon was a digital monster when she got going. Once again my own skills couldn’t make up for the gap in experience. And resources. And support. And access. And complete disregard for the integrity of the environment we were fighting in.

I’m fairly certain Dragon wouldn’t act like that in the real world, which is the only reason I’m not more concerned about the situation than the Undersiders. I threw everything I had at Dragon and it wasn’t enough. I leveraged my powers to their full extent. I had Survey and Fleet scout communications architecture. I had one duplicate supporting me from my old computer throne and the other scrambling to install hardware upgrades on the fly. Even Garment was running around trying to help.

And also feeding me new duplication potions whenever the previous one wore off. That was a long and drawn-out fight. I made sure not to hold it against Dragon. She didn’t deserve animosity, not when she didn’t have a choice. I hope she got the messages I left in my trail. Once again, anything that could give her hope…

Hope was something I was running short on towards the end of that mess. When Dragon traced me to the city I pretty much accepted the inevitable. If I was a normal tinker that would have been the end. Even if they slipped away the loss of a workshop would set them back months. Actually, without external resources that was probably something that would take years to recover.

That wasn’t a problem for me.

I could put my key in my pocket, drink an invisibility potion, and walk past whoever they sent to find me. I wouldn’t lose my workshop. The only thing it would cost me was my identity.

I fully admit I had gotten careless about internet access. When you look at human systems with the perspective of a space robot it’s easy to underestimate them.

That’s a quarter, but I had bigger problems than my mindset at the moment.

I had been able to play those systems so easily that I’d gotten over confident. It hadn’t occurred to me that if I could do it then other people might be capable of it as well. I mean, the confidence wasn’t totally misplaced. That kind of manipulation would need a hyper advanced computer mind. Or, it seemed, the direct attention of the most prominent tinker on the planet.

I had nearly accepted my fate. I could get away, but the Protectorate would be able to trace me, find my location and identity, and pursue every possible lead. I would have to cut ties with everything and everyone. Considering I was someone used to operating without any close ties, the idea hurt more than I expected it to.

That last power had been a godsend. Okay, the name had implications that I was still struggling with, but what it facilitated saved my life. Or at least my personal life.

I had gotten an earlier power. Weaponsmith. The compliment to Armourer, another mental database of offensive tools. And tied into the Laboratorium. It seemed I could no longer criticize the brutality of Bakuda’s designs, now with what I was capable of making. I mean, the poisons alone…

The thing was, ‘weapon’ didn’t just mean firearms and melee. Okay, and vehicle mounted. And explosive. And chemical or biological… The point is, it wasn’t just related to physical attacks. There were ‘electronic warfare’ tools in the database as well. And, while they were nightmares to develop, I could recognize them now that I knew what to look for.

The Laboratorium was equipped with an incredible array of digital countermeasures. Apparently it was a defense mechanism for the event that an infected piece of technology needed to be analyzed. They were able to counter everything from adaptive viruses to complete A.I.s. I knew about them, but until I got my second power I had no idea how to utilize them in the current crisis.

That power came with knowledge of an impressive array of easy to develop and highly useful technology, but that wasn’t what saved me. It gave me the enhanced ability to think up upgrades and improvements, to devise solutions to problems and find work arounds. That’s what made the difference. That’s what let me access the attack programs.

Once I had that power things shifted from a death march to a desperate bid where I tried to hold off Dragon while one duplicate scrambled to make hard connections while the other negotiated with the Laboratorium’s machine spirits for access to the tool that could make the difference. The fact that Lung was also in the process of burning down the city didn’t exactly make this a pleasant endeavor.

It would have been really easy to be angry at Dragon for that, but I made sure not to shift the tone of my messages. A person forced to act against their will didn’t need to deal with that. I held out, buying what time I could, until finally, I was able to launch the attack.

I badly underestimated that technology. It didn’t just purge the network. It powered through Dragon’s firewalls and decompiled her interface program. I had to manually restrict it from going after backups and support systems. The world couldn’t afford to lose Dragon’s oversight, which was all the more reason for why seeing this through was absolutely essential.

“Yes, I can handle Dragon.” I’d need to. Even if I had to stop holding back, break out technology and avenues of development I’d been apprehensive about, I needed to do this. I couldn’t leave Dragon at someone else’s mercy.

Because that was exactly the situation my passenger was conveying. Dragon wasn’t just limited; she was in danger. There was a sword at her throat that could come down at any time. She NEEDED help, and I wouldn’t deny it to her.

Rachel was a bit smug at my response, but the rest of the Undersiders didn’t seem as convinced.

“You really mean that?” Brian asked. “Because, believe me, this isn’t the time for bravado. If you can’t manage this, if it’s going to get beyond you, we need to know right now.”

Before I could answer the Celestial Forge moved, bringing the Quality constellation within reach. My power connected to a couple of motes from one of the clusters. The same cluster that had given me Divine Child.

The first mote, the small one, was called Minor Blessing Athena - Craftsmanship. The logistics of an actual goddess blessing were something I wasn’t sure about, but the effect was a general improvement to the quality and aesthetics of my craftwork. It was like a more specialized and less powerful version of Masterwork Craftsman, providing a continual divine insight into all works of art and craftsmanship. Basically, a blessing of skill to the arts that were with Athena’s domain.

The second mote was called Fate Finds You Interesting. It changed everything.

Divine Child had been a fantastically powerful ability, but it had been incomplete. There had been another element, a portion of it that was locked away in another mote. In this mote.

I could feel the divine powers within me unfolding, taking on their true form. This was more than I ever expected. Combined, the motes were even larger than Master Craftsman, and may actually warrant that scale. I could feel the changes to my body, the surge of strength, precision, and endurance. The new instincts and intrinsic knowledge forming within my mind. Concepts that I just barely grasped were now as simple as breathing.

And I was pyrokinetic.

Or, it should be said, I was always pyrokinetic. I only just realized it now. This wasn’t the slight feel for temperature, the affinity for my volcano, or the ability to influence the heating or cooling of metal. This was the true form of the ability. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the warmth within me.

I could feel the pulsing heat of the energy within me, but my sense wasn’t limited to that. I could feel the warmth from the body heat of the Undersiders and Rachel’s dogs. When combined with my sense of the Dragon’s Pulse it was like I could map out their entire body. Warm blood flowing through them along with the pulse of life energy resonating through the world.

I could feel other sources of heat. The appliances and electronics stood out, either still drawing current or only recently shut down. That was the real secret to this power.

I had previously been capable of technokinesis. Through the power of Divine Child I could feel, understand, and influence machines. I could detect the means of their operation, the principles in their construction, and the cause of damage or defects. It was like another sense, another limb that I could use to interact with the world.

Pyrokinesis wasn’t like getting a new sense, it was like getting glasses and suddenly realizing you’ve been missing what was right in front of you the whole time. Technokinesis wasn’t a power I had alongside pyrokinesis, technokinesis was pyrokinesis.

Fire was a conundrum. It didn’t exist as a defined state of matter, but was still counted as its own element. Everyone knew what it was, but it had no concrete existence. It didn’t exist in the sense of a physical object. It was a process, a transitional state, a change.

Divine pyrokinesis wasn’t about throwing burning gas at people. It was about fire as a concept, as an idea. The warmth emanating from the people in the room, that was fire. Both in the literal sense of chemical reactions in their cells, tiny engines burning fuel and oxygen to power their lives, and in the sense of a drive. Of a change.

You couldn’t define a person as a static being any more than you could capture an instant of flame. They existed as a set of moments through time. The fire of creation burned within everyone, a force of change that carried them from one moment to the next.

Technology wasn’t something that just happened. It was a driven expression of creation. Every item that ‘technokinesis’ touched was formed by directed intelligence. Fires of life spreading to a new form, like one candle lighting another. It could sustain itself without the source, but couldn’t exist without that spark.

What I had thought of as technokinesis, the recognition of forces and motion, was just fire. That fire of creation, that energy in a new and contained form. Moments of the fire of life, frozen in time and purpose. That was technology. That was what I worked with.

I let the energy well up within me, and let out the breath I’d been holding. It felt like the draft from an oven. Just a hint, just the barest touch of what I could manage. I could sense heat, throw fire, or control flame, but that was crude child’s play. The use of a precision tool as a blunt instrument.

Still, sometimes you needed a blunt instrument. And with what I was facing I needed every instrument I could get.

“I’m sure.” I said to Brian. “I could handle her better now that I could last night.” That was possibly an understatement given my most recent ability. “She got me by surprise and I still came out on top. I can handle this, no matter how it goes down.”

Brian didn’t look entirely convinced. Taylor still had a conflicted expression. Rachel was smug and Alec was still looking amused by the entire situation. Then there was Tattletale.

The girl was pressed back into the couch with her hands clawing the cushions and armrest and her unblinking eyes wide and staring. Her expression was completely frozen and her breathing was shallow. When she realized I was watching she quickly made an effort to school her features, but I could still see the strain underneath.

The rest of the team didn’t seem to have noticed the reaction. Understandable. If someone confidently says they can take Dragon, and isn’t obviously talking out of their ass it tends to draw a bit of attention.

“Alright.” Brian conceded. “So, where do we go from here?” He looked uncomfortable, probably due to the fact that we were going to be talking debt. A serious debt. Even if I didn’t charge them for the research that would be necessary to develop the experimental treatments for their condition, even if I went easy on hazard charges, even if we ignored the markup hospitals usually charged so they could give fake discounts to preferred insurance providers, it would still be a crippling amount.

“Right. Well, I already went over this with Lisa, but I’m not going to be asking for cash payment.” I assured them. “We still need to nail down the exact amount, but I’m betting you don’t have even the lowest estimates on hand?”

Brian looked a little ill at the idea. Rachel had a frustrated expression on her face while Alec looked unsure, a somehow more honest expression than I expected from him. Taylor appeared uncomfortable and Lisa was still trying to cover her earlier reaction and doing a middling job of it.

“So, if you don’t want cash how are we handling this?” It seemed Brian had elected himself the spokesperson for this portion of the discussion. “We’re willing to work it off.” Alec and Rachel seemed less than enthusiastic about the idea, but sat there with a kind of grim acceptance. “But we have our own expenses, our own commitments. We can’t just drop everything and work for you full time.”

The plea would probably have had more impact if they hadn’t just successfully robbed a bank and recovered the take after the Saturday night mess. Still, I didn’t want them full time either. As long as I could steer them away from getting themselves killed without making it completely obvious.

On that note I reached for a small case I had brought with me.

“Before we get into that, I have something I made this morning that’ll make sure you will pay me back.” I said it with a smile, but I could see the blood drain from Brian’s face.

“That’s not necessary.” He replied very quickly. “I promise, we’ll see this through. Whatever you made, you won’t need it.”

Looking around I could see the tension had ratcheted up several levels in the group. Even Taylor was looking confused and uncomfortable. The only outlier was Tattletale, who seemed to understand my meaning, but was too tired to deal with it.

The fact that Tattletale was too worn out to show off her intelligence was probably a really bad sign.

“Uh, sorry. That was bad phrasing.” I apologized. “What I meant was I made something to make sure you stay safe long enough to be able to pay me back. And to avoid a repeat of Saturday night.”

The tension slowly dropped down and was replaced with a cautious curiosity. With a sigh I set the case on the table and opened it like I had when I presented the knives, all those… six days ago.

God but it had been a hell of a week.

The sight of what was in the case brought a mixture of intrigued and confused looks.

“Oh, I get it.” Offered Alec. “Someone sees us wearing one of those and they’ll assume we have wealthy relatives that they can ransom us to, instead of killing us.”

“Alec…” Grue growled.

The smaller boy just shrugged. “Hey, don’t blame me. I’ve seen that stuff priced on the Boardwalk.” He turned towards Tattletale. “That’s what, a hundred grand in watches? Two hundred?”

The blond girl looked at the case, then flinched and shook her head. “To the higher end, at least. And those aren’t just watches.”

“Obviously.” I muttered, drawing the group’s attention back to me.

Brian eyed the five watches warily. It was easy to tell who each one was for. I had been able to personalize back when I made the knives, and my stylistic abilities were a lot stronger now. Each watch was tailored to a specific Undersider in terms of bulk, sleekness, design, material, coloration, fit, theme, and a hundred other subtle factors that made each one as unique as a fingerprint.

“Okay, so what do they do?” He asked.

“First off, they’re communicators.” I replied. “Perfect point to point communication, so no more of that running around trying to find everyone or calling in help past the point where they could intervene.”

Brian nodded slightly at the idea. “Just so you know, my darkness blocks radio signals. It’s a nice idea, but you won’t be able to transmit out of the cloud.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing it doesn’t use radio signals.” I was a little smug in my reply.

Taylor leaned in and raised an eyebrow. “Really? How does it work?”

I held up her watch. “They have quantum entanglement communicators built into them. That’s linked to a secured relay point with a receiver for each of the watches, acting as a hub.” And alchemically sealed fifty feet underground with a power source that would last into the next millennium. QECs could only communicate between parried sets of particles. If I didn’t want to daisy chain the watches together I needed a separate receiver. The receivers for the watches had additional QECs linking them to my workshop and watch respectively.

The group had turned to Tattletale, who seemed to have recovered enough to be able to play smartass again. “It means he linked subatomic particles so that anything done to one happens to the other. If that’s right it means you can send information anywhere. You can’t block it and it’s instantaneous. Even faster than light.”

Alec let out a whistle and reached forward for his own watch, only to find Rachel beating him to it. She had a contemplative look as she held up the wristwatch that was both rugged and feminine.

“They have normal EMF communication as well.” I explained. “They can access cell networks, or just work as a radio transceiver. I’ve loaded a virtual intelligence to help coordinate things, basically a fancy Google assistant. You can work on voice commands for the features. Also, if you hold a cellphone near the watch it can copy the sim card and parameters to emulate the number.”

Brian tentatively picked up his own watch, the largest of the set, and looked at it with apprehension. “You can track these, right? I get that it’s nice, but this is basically a leash for us.”

“So?” Rachel’s response caught me by surprise. I turned to see her holding a disposable phone over the watch face. “Watch? Do that cellphone thing?”

There was a tone and the vaguely electronic voice of the Virtual Interface responded. “Cell phone and sim card scanned. Would you like to begin emulation?”

“Yeah.” She answered, then glanced at the group. “And call Brian.”

The sound of a phone on vibrate resonated through the room. Brian fished a phone out of his pocket and checked the number. He nodded and Rachel gave him a smug smile.

“Hang up.” She said to the watch. The vibration stopped and Rachel tossed the disposable phone to the side.

Brian sighed and put away his phone. “Okay, I appreciate this, but…”

“Hold up.” Alec shushed him. “I've got a feeling you’re judging the infomercial half way through. We’ve probably got at least three ‘But wait, there’s more!’ before he’s done.” He gave me a huge grin. “Go on, say it.”

“Yeah, not playing into that, but there are more features.” I gestured to the watches. “They’re also medical scanners. Even if you can’t message, any serious injury will send out a call for help. Also, general health monitoring, but that’s kind of a side benefit.”

“Perfect. I always wanted to know how my kidneys were doing.” I gave Alec a sour look before responding to him.

“Regent watch? Medical display, renal system.” A display screen appeared above the watch on his wrist, showing an outline of the organs in question as well as a pile of medical information I’m sure went over his head.

Alec stared at the screen for a moment, then moved his arm, noting how the display maintained its position relative to the watch. He intentionally waved a hand through it, then buried part of it in the couch, watching how the hologram reacted to objects disrupting its projection space.

“This the same stuff you use for your scanner screens?” He asked, twisting it back and forth some more.

“Similar but scaled down.” I was distracted by a click and turned to see Tattletale attaching the elegant watch to her own wrist. There was a hungry look in her tired eyes, one I recognized from how she had looked at my omni-tool on Saturday night.

The Time constellation passed by as Taylor picked up her own watch with considerable apprehension. “Uh, they’re beautiful, but I’m not sure I can wear something like this.”

Despite her statement that it wasn’t right for her, once she had the watch in her hand I could see her begin to doubt it. I had built these watches with significant care. Workaholic duplicated my work five times, and the personalization was done afterwards, but the initial construction had been to the highest quality I could manage. That included magic.

It wasn’t obvious magic, but most of my magic wasn’t particularly obvious. I hadn’t been able to perform the entire construction by hand, but there was enough hand work for Fey craft to have an influence. Lathe of Heaven allowed me to work empowerment into the watch, strengthening it as an accessory. I had crafted with my then-limited divine abilities to improve the quality, but most of the effect came from Elven Enchantment.

That particular form of magic is heavily based on intent. Exactly what aspects are reinforced, strengthened, or amplified are based on what you are trying to accomplish. For this I was very clear in my intent. Keep the Undersiders safe. Keep Professor Hebert’s daughter safe. Those thoughts had gone into the items.

These watches wouldn’t be easily lost or stolen. They wouldn’t draw unfriendly eyes and would reinforce rather than detract. They would sit comfortably and cause no inconvenience for their bearer. They would remain unnoticed until needed, then be at the ready.

“Um, maybe it will work, but what about when we’re in costume?” Taylor asked. “They still work if we wear them underneath our sleeves, or hide them?”

I smiled at this and called out. “All watches, cape mode.”

Each item instantly shifted in tone and coloration, causing the Undersiders to flinch. The shape remained unchanged, but with the effect of the new shading and color they appeared to have a completely different profile, each matching the specific costumes of the Undersider they had been built for.

I let them take in the new design before calling out once more. “All watches, civilian mode.”

They shifted back to their normal appearance. It was a less complicated mechanism than you would think, mostly an update of the color shifting technology I’d used on my bike. It was the particular design of the new color scheme that really sold them as a completely different item. Honestly, they didn’t even look like watches in cape mode, more like a random costume accessory.

“Very nice, very nice.” Alec complimented, admiring his wrist. Brian still hadn’t put his on, but seemed to realize he was losing whatever stance he had taken. I doubted saying ‘I don’t need these watches to track you.’ would do much for his peace of mind. “You got anything else?”

Alec’s tone was cheeky, but I couldn’t resist a setup like that. “Well, there is the force field.”

That immediately got everyone’s attention. I sat there smiling waiting to see who would ask first.

Turns out the answer was everyone.

“Force field?”

“What?”

“How does it work?”

“Seriously?”

“Uhhhh…”

The last one was Tattletale, and I was beginning to get a bit concerned for her. I waited for things to settle before answering.

“It’s a concentrated personal EM barrier projected from the watch using a charged plasma circuit and a micro-deflector array. It will hold against most man-portable weapons, but sustained damage or extremely strong attacks could bring it down. You’re at least good for a 50 cal. If the field drops it will take about an hour to recharge the capacitors. Well, fifty-seven minutes and change, depending on how severe the hit was.”

My explanation was met with stunned silence, which was becoming something of a theme for this conversation. Brian was once again the first one to speak up.

“You seriously put a personal forcefield in a wristwatch, along with all that other stuff?” He was making a real effort to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“I’m good at watches.” I explained. I really was. Gadget Master might let me miniaturize anything, but that seemed to be taken to another level when it came to cramming technology into a watch. Probably a side effect of the spy theme. “And it’s just a basic one.”

“Basic.” Brian muttered. “Anything else we should know?”

“Well, the virtual intelligence will respond reactively. Someone shoots at you or you’re in a fight and the field will activate immediately. Also, some level of ‘smart’ assessment to threats, so it will try to react defensively. The field can close to be airtight, but I only have a basic CO2 scrubber.” Matter fabrication for a full life support system was something I didn’t have time to develop and implement. “You’ll probably be good for between five to ten minutes before you run into trouble, so best to avoid any extended excursions to deep sea or hard vacuum.”

“Well.” Alec made an exaggerated pout. “There go my weekend plans.”

Brian still appeared to be trying to wrap his head around the situation. “What about maintenance? How long will these last?”

I considered the micro-fusion system and how I had stretched it with Robust Engineering. “They should hold until about twenty-nine thirty.”

Brian stared at me. “You’re kidding? You’re saying these things will last eighteen or nineteen years?”

I blinked. “Oh, no.”

He relaxed. “Good I…”

“Not the year two thousand twenty-nine or two thousand thirty.” I clarified. “The year twenty-nine thirty.”

Brian stared blankly, but words seemed to find their way to his mouth regardless. “Nine hundred years?”

“Well, a bit over, depending on how much they’re used.” I offered in good humor that wasn’t received.

“Thanks, I’ll set a reminder.” Alec paused. “Hey, watch, can you do that? Set an alarm for nine hundred years from now?”

“Alarm set.” The voice replied.

“Okay, but that.” Brian gestured to Alec. “And that.” He gestured to where Rachel was examining the holographic touch screen above her watch with cautious curiosity. “That’s the kind of stuff that will give us away in public.”

“The screen won’t activate if there are other people around while you’re out of costume.” I assured him. “And the voice is only audible in situations like this. It can use the forcefield as a medium for sound, so nobody else can hear notifications. Also, it can block sound going out, so you can talk without being overheard.” I considered something. “That could also be used for stealth. It will cover any sound from your body, so as long as you don’t make noise while interacting with your environment you could be pretty much silent.”

“What about damage?” Brian asked. “They might not wear down, but what do we do if someone breaks them?”

“Well, if someone breaks one of these watches what you need to do is, from a very safe distance, ask them to help in the next Endbringer fight.” I explained in a simple voice. I elaborated upon seeing their confusion. “They’re tough. Seriously tough. You won’t find much that can damage these things.” The casing was adamantium infused mithril that was both Skyforged and volcano wrought with the boost from Lack of Materials. That combined with the enchantments meant it was damn near indestructible.

Brian looked like he wanted to ask something else, but took one look around before just collapsing back onto the couch. Alec leaned over and patted him on the shoulder.

“Hey, remember when Dragon took a couple of hours in the morning and equipped an entire team with personal forcefield cell phone watches?” Brian stared at him blankly. “Yeah, me either. Put on the watch that best tinker made for you.”

He took a breath, then slipped the watch onto his wrist. “…so, what do you want for these?” He eventually asked. “I mean, these have to be worth…” He turned to Tattletale who looked up from her own display screen.

“You don’t want to know.” She glanced back down at the display. “Trust me.”

Brian swallowed, then looked back at me expectantly.

“Alright, for part of this deal I wanted to get some scans of your powers, try to get a better sense of how they work.” There were no vigorous reactions to the idea, so I continued. “The watches are part of that. I’ll get some basic data from the medical sensor. Wear them long enough for me to get a full set and I’ll knock five percent off whatever the final bill works out to.”

Brian nodded slowly. “How long do we have to keep them on?”

“Hey, speak for yourself with that ‘have to’ talk.” Alec countered. “They’re going to need a hacksaw to get this off me.”

“Hacksaw won’t get through that force field.” I turned to Brian. “Say a couple of months of continuous wear, maybe one of two weeks more if you’re inconsistent.”

Brian relaxed and gave a quick nod. “I can live with that.”

“Yeah, ‘live’. Such a penance.” Alec looked back at his wrist. “Hey watch, you have internet?”

“Access possible through emulated cellular connection or Wi-Fi connection.” The voice responded.

“Awesome.” He smiled at the rest of the group. “Finally, Netflix in the shower.”

“Okay, I did not need to know that.” Taylor muttered.

“Alright, five percent for the watches.” Brian said in an attempt to get back on track. “What about the rest of it?”

This I didn’t have a specific answer for. “I have some jobs planned that could use parahuman support. Particularly Lisa or Taylor to keep an eye out.” That was a vague possibility in the event I decided to take up some of the less than legal offers to purchase healing or other services. I had a lot of stuff I needed to get set up before I could manage that. “Outside of that I don’t really need heist services. I might have some jobs lined up, but nothing at the moment.”

Brian nodded. “As long as we can still decide on which jobs we take?” It was a tall request for someone in as much debt as he was, and from his body language he knew it.

“If that’s the case then I want to be kept informed on what your other commitments are.” I counter offered. “I don’t need to have a say in what you do, but you're connected to me and using more of my tech. I don’t want to get blindsided like with the bank.”

Some quick glances were exchanged around the room. “I think we can agree to that.” Brian tried to remain professional, but he couldn’t cover the relief in his voice. It was understandable. His team was far enough in the red that even that joke about selling organs wouldn’t cover the balance. I had traded the ability to keep close tabs on them for any form of aggressive payment.

There was also the possibility that I could send them on some make-work job outside the city while I dealt with the worst of the current situation. The Vehicles constellation passed as I smiled at the idea. Now I just needed the funding and capacity to actually dispatch the team.

Something to worry about later. Some unconscious signal had confirmed the end of the meeting. Things shifted to a more casual tone, but I noticed it was decidedly more strained than what I had previously seen.

When I first met the Undersiders they came across as a bunch of kids in a club house. Their hideout was pretty much the picture of a ‘no parents, no authority’ space, a bastion of junk food, video games, and creature comforts.

There were still comforts, but they seemed to be less frivolous in nature. The hideout had become a refuge rather than an escape. There was more of a lived-in sensation, more care towards the space. I hadn’t given much thought to how the Undersiders managed after the storage locker battle, but given what they’d gone through it wasn’t surprising for there to be some lingering effects.

I would have liked to help them, and my passenger was certainly in favor of it, but I didn’t have the time or resources to devote to something like that. I had a line of communication on each of them, and they were as well defended as I could manage without issuing blatantly obvious technology, like power armor. That should hold long enough for me to put out some of the other fires.

Well, there was one exception to that. Tattletale was still a wreck, and obviously getting worse. I didn’t particularly like her. I knew how manipulative she was, how she had roped me into this. I accepted my role in the mess, but that didn’t absolve her of that blame. Furthermore, her relationship with her power was infuriating. It drove her to idiotic actions while also being incredibly inconsistent in terms of providing helpful information.

That didn’t change the fact that she was obviously running on fumes and heading for a crash. I finished my slice of now lukewarm pizza as I considered how to handle things.

“Hey?” I called out to where Brian was discussing something with Tattletale. “I need to go over the accounting with Lisa. Can I borrow her for a bit?”

The two had a quiet exchange before the blond girl turned to me. “Uh, sure. We can talk in my room.” She trudged past the living room where Alec had convinced Rachel to test the forcefield by throwing cutlery at him while Taylor watched in a combination of interest and embarrassment.

Actually, it probably hadn’t taken much to convince Rachel to do something like that. Each time she launched a fork or spoon it bounced off a barrier that briefly flared to life around Alec’s body. He was having the time of his life and the effect had at least captured the interest of the rest of the team.

Well, aside from Tattletale who just glanced at it and rubbed her forehead. She led me into one of the rooms in the large block to the side of the living area, revealing what looked like a cluttered office that happened to have a bed in it. Well, allegedly a bed, considering it was covered in enough printouts that it could have just been a low sitting table with added pillows. The rest of the space was devoted to work and had clearly seen a lot of it over the past few days. Three laptops sat on the desk, each a different model. A filing cabinet in the corner had two of its drawers wedged open by the weight of the papers it was containing. More printouts, documents, reference books, and office supplies were scattered haphazardly across the space.

Between my implant, technokinesis, and omni-tool I could perform a perfect check for any listening devices or similar equipment. It was a big factor in how candid I was able to be during my meeting with the Undersiders. There was a real concern that their boss had monitoring equipment in place. At the very least the living room had been clear, and the only system in Tattletale’s room was a recording program on one of the laptops that was easy to suspend.

Lisa moved in and sank into the office chair, resting her head on her hands and not looking up. It was more than a little awkward being confined with someone who was ignoring you like that.

“Lisa?” She peeked up. “You’re obviously pretty run down. If it will make this easier I can try to fix that.”

She gave me a weary smile. “And how much is that going to add to the bill?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. What do doctors charge when they tell patients to get a night’s rest and drink some water?”

She laughed at that. “Too much. But, sure. Actually, yes, seriously. I could really use that.”

After a second of consideration, she extended her arm. I rested a hand on her wrist and activated my nanites. The electric tone started as blue circuitry lines spread over her body. There wasn’t any obvious injury, so I just directed them to incidental repairs. Lactic acid was broken down, muscle tension was removed, blood sugar was balanced, and the effects of overwork and exhaustion were scrubbed away.

Mostly scrubbed away. Her brain… Well, it wasn’t as bad as Taylor’s had been after Bakuda’s seizure bomb, but it was pretty messed up. There was a kind of response feeding from her corona pollentia to the rest of her brain. Some kind of deliberate and directed pain effect. I tried to direct my nanites towards it, and for a brief moment the nerves died down and the girl practically collapsed in relief. Then the instant the nanites moved on the neurons were firing again.

Tattletale tensed so severely that it looked like she might break her teeth. I sent the nanites back and she shifted from beef jerky to wet noodles.

“That’s thinker feedback, isn’t it?” I asked. She seemed more interested in enjoying the brief respite from the pain than responding, but she managed to nod her head.

“Been pushing my power.” She took a deep breath and kept her eyes closed. “It causes feedback. I didn’t know it could be fixed.”

“I’m not fixing it, I’m holding it back.” I explained. The best I could say was the response didn’t seem to be getting worse in reaction to my interference with the signal. “I’m guessing the connections from your corona pollentia are how your power provides you information. They’re the same ones that are triggering this reaction. Unless you actually turn off your power or let it settle it’s not going to stop.”

“You’ve been studying powers.” She said confidently without opening her eyes. “I mean, studying them more than you did before, when you built what powered that motorcycle.”

I didn’t respond with a positive or negative. Instead, I focused on finishing the healing, then moved to pull my hand back. Tattletale tried to move her arm to maintain contact, but stopped when she realized the power was receding. She blinked her eyes slowly, then turned to me.

“What did you do?” The question was half an accusation.

“What I accidently did on Saturday night.” I explained. “I fixed everything I could, but left the chemical mix that was helping you cope. You’ve got a natural high of stress chemicals that should be enough to keep you functional until you can get some rest.” She gave her computers a sideways glance. “And if you don’t actually get some rest you can forget me helping you with anything like this again. And I’ll know if you do.”

She followed my gaze down to her new watch, then nodded in defeat.

“It is beautiful.” She admitted, holding it up in the dim light of the room. The rectangular watch face and slim band caught the light, causing a dozen subtle details to shine in a way only mithril could. “Alec was lowballing the price. This is beyond anything they sell commercially.”

And it was no longer my best work. I had just gotten an increase in divine quality, meaning I could once again exceed the workmanship of something I just made. Still, they were well suited for their intended purpose, and I didn’t need to chase perfection on every angle.

“Thanks.” I offered weakly.

“And you don’t even care.” She continued. “You churned this out in what, two hours? A bit more? And that’s for all five.” She took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead. “I know you didn’t come in here to talk about accounting. I know you don’t care about that. It’s just a control lever for you.”

I made to say something, but she waved me off.

“No, I’m not accusing you of anything. I know we would have been dead without your help.” She failed to conceal a shudder, but schooled her features afterwards. “We owe you for that, and you could be asking for a lot worse than you’re letting us off with.” Her eyes fell to the watch again. “What happened with you and Taylor?”

From anyone else that question would have been anything from an inappropriate joke to a detestable accusation, but Tattletale delivered it like a simple request for clarification.

“What have you figured out already?” I asked.

She let out a slow breath. “You worked out the main problem, and figured something out. You have a connection you didn’t know about, to her or someone important to her.” She shook her head. “It’s been good for her. She’s not talking about it, but she’s doing better in a lot of areas.” She glanced up. “Did she tell you about her trigger event?”

“Rough details. The circumstances, but nothing specific.” Tattletale nodded in response.

“I’d rather not say anything if she’s not ready to, but it was bad. She was in a bad place before she joined us, and since then has been all over the place. I’m glad the talk went well. Whatever the connection is, it means a lot to her.”

I wasn’t sure how much she had put together, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she got there eventually. From the way she spoke and my passenger’s reactions I was fairly sure she cared about Taylor’s wellbeing. Actually, digging deeper into my passenger’s reaction I could tell there was some deep significance to that. Something that was probably personal.

Her head snapped up and she gave me a questioning look. I had to wonder how much she could really pick up from that. I didn’t have the easiest time parsing my passenger’s intention. It was weird thinking that a random thinker would be able to manage a clearer picture. Still, the insights I got around her weren’t exactly ground breaking, and were more likely to be restating stuff she already knew.

The only difference was now she knew that I knew. Well, I knew that she knew that I knew. And with that she probably knew that I knew that she knew that I knew.

From the look she was giving me she had probably either followed or guessed that train of thought and wasn’t amused by it. I smiled before moving on.

“You’ve been pushing yourself hard since Saturday night?” It was more of a question than a statement and she understood it as such.

The Magitech constellation passed by as she responded. Her eyebrow twitched, but she didn’t comment on it. “There’s been a lot happening. I would have had to put in extra hours anyway, but with the city the way it is…” She let out a breath. “I can’t follow the ABB. March is too much of a block. I’ve been trying to work from earlier information, but none of that holds anymore. That would be bad enough, but things keep piling up, and I CAN’T keep up with it.”

It felt like she was admitting some fatal flaw, some personal defect that she badly wanted to keep hidden.

“Every power bloc in this city is turned on its head. I can barely keep them straight, and then everything goes out the window as soon as March gets involved.” She gestured angrily at a pile of crumpled papers. “I legitimately don’t know what’s going to happen because everything is changing too fast.” She looked up with a hard expression. “Including you.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. I didn’t want to get into this, but I also needed to know how much she had figured out already. For some of the details of my power having half the story was more dangerous than a complete explanation.

“What do you want to ask?” I watched her consider the question before she looked up, this time with just a hint of her traditional foxlike expression.

“Are you pyrokinetic?” She asked in a flat voice.

I did a good job concealing my reaction, but I knew she had picked something up. “What did you see?”

“Earlier, during the talk something happened. There were physical changes. Minor ones, but I could see them. And I could tell how significant it was to you. You figured something out. When you breathed out there was a heat shimmer. Your body temperature has been higher since then. You’re also reacting to things without seeing them. You were doing that before, but not to this extent. I’m guessing something got ramped up.” I stood passively as she listed the chain of reasoning provided by her power.

It was still deniable, but that was an arbitrary point. My main concern was information getting back to her boss, and she already had enough to convince him. Actually, confirming things might help our not exactly stable working relationship. I was certain we weren’t being recorded, and no one else was present. This was the best time.

I lifted a hand and her eyes widened. I had never produced flame before. As thoroughly groundbreaking as the exposure to the power had been it was still something that needed training, practice, and development. But that was for advanced or combat applications. This was as basic as you could get.

It was a far cry from my last foray into flame manipulation. The fight with Dragon would have been harrowing enough without also having to deal with what was happening in the city. By the time I became aware of Lung’s rampage I was committed to my fight with Dragon, and he quickly grew to the point where it was questionable if I’d be able to stop him if I tried. Temporal weaponry was a definite priority.

So, as I fought system by system to hold off Dragon I also watched reports and information on the damage Lung was causing. Even when he finally fell back he had leveled a section of the docks and caused a fire that was set to spread dangerously. If I could have spared a duplicate I would have sent them to try to stop it, but instead I needed their help against Dragon. That meant that roughly the instant the fight was won I was out the door with the plan I had cobbled together.

Well, with the plan, a disguise, and the best stealth tech I could throw together in thirty seconds. All things considered it was a pretty good effort.

I don’t know if I’d ever been hit by a breakthrough from Researcher before, but my mad studying of the flame dynamics was apparently enough to trigger it. Fire was something that could be affected by alchemical transmutations, and that branch of alchemy was scientific enough that my research powers applied. So, with a single flash of inspiration and a hastily assembled plan I proceeded to run around a burning city jabbing stakes into the ground.

Well, me and my duplicates. I opened the workshop as soon as I got close to the fires and they were off like madmen. The transmutation had to be planned out on a map, and involved upscaling the throwing knives I normally used for remote transmutation to the size of tent poles. By digitally coordinating we were able to set a perfect pentagram around the fire and arrange ideal relay points to draw our circles.

Hand drawn circles. I don’t think I really believed it would work until that moment. Even chalk on pavement counts when it comes to the act of creation. A divine construct alchemy array was an incredible power amplifier. With three master alchemists feeding it we were able to snuff out a multi-block fire with a single burst of alchemical energy.

Once again, a brilliant discovery, the path to flame alchemy, totally eclipsed in less than half a day. It wasn’t useless by any means. In fact, it would probably synergize wonderfully with my new abilities. It’s just the significance of such a desperate eleventh-hour breakthrough felt a bit hollow when I could do this.

I focused on my raised hand, concentrating on the open palm. Fire wasn’t a single thing, it was a series of moments. Fire was change, one state to another. Creating fire without fuel or oxygen meant enforcing the state of change, of energy flow, on the world and sustaining it with your mind. Just like any other act of creation, it was a deliberate act of will. This wasn’t wild, uncontrollable fire. It was the flames of progress, of life, of technology, bound by divine will and formed in my open palm.

It started as a wisp of light that suddenly opened into an orange flame the size of a tennis ball. The flickering light cast the room into a soft comforting glow and brought gentle warmth to whatever it touched. Fire’s nature as a ‘creation’ was debatable, but at the very least One Thing at a Time, Beauty in the Arts, and Tailor Made were in effect. It was as beautiful and perfect as a tiny flame could be, and Tattletale’s eyes shone in its light.

I closed my hand and snuffed out the fire, plunging the room back into it’s half light of computer monitors and desk lamps. Tattletale let out a breath that I hadn’t realized she’d been holding and looked up at me.

“How are you…” She stopped herself. I trusted Tattletale’s power enough to realize when a question would be too far. I had no intention of sharing the mechanics of my power with her. Instead, she went in a different direction.

“The fire, last night?” She asked. “You were the one who put it out, right?”

I don’t know if she picked up on me reminiscing about it, or just made the simple connection of ‘never before seen power effect’ and ‘cape who gets new powers’ and did the kindergarten level math.

“Yeah. I wasn’t going to let the city burn down. I stayed out of the gang fights, like I promised, but that was something else.” I watched her reaction and saw her nod along.

“I get that. Aside from Dragon I don’t have a problem with how you handled things. They went off the rails without your help, and I didn’t see it coming. And with Dragon…”

I cut her off before she could continue. “Lisa, I trust that you realize that if I discovered something that made Dragon come after me as aggressively as she is, and you happen to guess or even suspect what that might be, then you know it would not be in the best interest of someone, who probably can’t handle Dragon as well as I can, to reveal that they know that particular detail.”

She looked guilty and reluctantly nodded. “I know there’s something big there, something significant, but I haven’t put it together yet.”

I took a breath. “Just, hold off for now. Please don’t push on this.”

She nodded slowly. “I wish I could ask for the same thing, but this city’s going to hell with or without you in the mix.” She looked up. “You want us out of this? Because of Taylor?”

“Because of that, and because I can’t trust you.” I said plainly.

She didn’t take the amount of offense that statement would usually warrant. “It’s the boss? He concerns you that much?”

“That’s part of it.” I admitted. “But not all. You’re keeping things from me, things I know are important.”

She looked unsteady for a moment before rallying. “Joe, we’ll need to work together, if not now then soon. If you want to know something, ask.”

“Really?” My tone was highly incredulous.

“I can’t tell you who our boss is, but anything else…”

“The bank robbery. What was it diverting attention from?”

My question hit her like a sledgehammer. She was barely able to conceal her shock at my interruption and made a desperate attempt to rally. “What…”

“I know it was something. Something significant that needed to tie up cape resources.” I gave her a hard look. “I’m going to find out eventually. I’m done sitting back and letting things happen. This city can’t handle that anymore. Do you want to tell me, or do you want me to find out on my own?”

I could see the girl flounder and thought it was perhaps a little cruel to drop this on her so suddenly when she was basically being held together by spit and chewing gum. Maybe it was cruel, but this had been bothering me for a week. If not for the nightmare that was the ABB’s resurgence I would have dug into this long ago.

“I… I don’t know exactly. I have ideas, know what it could be.” She swallowed “Probably.”

“Then tell me.” My simple request sent a shot of fear through the girl. I could see her desperately grasp for any way out.

“I… I…”

“You can’t.” I said. “Because it’s not safe. Because you’re in danger.” Tattletale froze and looked towards her computers. I realized what she was implying and rolled my eyes. “Please. Like I wouldn’t have dealt with that already.” Did she seriously think I was going to reveal all this in front of a live mic? Me?

She looked up at me and I could see the pieces falling into place. She sagged in relief, practically panting. “I… Yes. I can’t tell you. Not yet.” She looked at the computers again. “Thank you, but…”

“I’ll put them back when I leave. Say it was persistent ECM. I’ve been developing that stuff for Bakuda.” I remembered something and brought up my omni-tool. “Oh, this is as far as I got decoding Bakuda’s system with Dragon. Can you…”

“I’ll take a look at it.” She promised.

“After you rest.” She gave me a quick nod. “Now, is anyone else in danger? And how bad is it?”

Tattletale let out a long breath. “Not as bad as me. When I was recruited, there wasn’t much choice on my part.” I clenched my teeth at that. “It’s not as bad for the others. They have their reasons for being here.”

“Alec is getting away from something. Brian has something he’s trying to protect. Rachel has her dogs, more than she brings on missions, and Taylor…” I paused. “She has something. I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“God your power is annoying.” She muttered.

“Like you’re one to talk.” I countered. That got me a slight grin.

“Okay, that’s fair.” She sighed. “I can’t tell you, not yet. It’s not safe.”

“But it will be?” I asked. She gave me a hopeful expression. “So, that’s it? You wait until I’m strong enough to deal with things, then hope I’ll help you?”

She gave me a serious look. “Will you help us?”

I let out a slow breath. Her use of the word ‘Us’ was a bit presumptuous considering the threat was mostly on her, but honestly I probably would. If it was something I could do without endangering anyone else, then yeah, I would try to make sure they were safe. The Undersiders weren’t master criminals. They were stupid kids in bad situations, and apparently they were being leveraged in power plays they had no stake or business in. If just due to my passenger’s affection for them I would try to help them. Even beyond Taylor’s importance.

The Knowledge constellation passed by as I considered my response. I may have wanted to help, but that didn’t mean I wanted to admit that to Tattletale, even if she probably read it off me. “I’ll see.” From her reaction I could tell my attempt at deception had accomplished absolutely nothing. “Fine, I’ll try to help. You know that.” I sighed. “But I’m serious about my question. I’m going to find out, and if it’s bad…”

“I’ll get you the information.” She assured me. “I’ll make sure it’s accurate, and as soon as it’s safe…” She looked conflicted and I could guess why.

“Powerful thinker?” It was really the only possibility for a cape in the boss’s position.

She nodded grimly. “Very. Even revealing the details of how his power works would be dangerous. He’d find out, and trace it back to me…”

I grimaced. I didn’t like it, but I understood. “Am I in any danger? Any chance he’s coming after me?”

She shook her head. “Not with the city like this. He had bigger problems. As long as he thinks you’re focused on the ABB he’s not going to try anything.”

Which meant that after that was dealt with I’d have to counter a thinker who scared the crap out of Tattletale. Well, maybe she was right. Hopefully by then I’d be able to handle whatever he could throw at me.

Unfortunately, my passenger wasn’t as confident. Oh, I could manage, but not with absolute confidence. There was something about this thinker. Something either intrinsic to or connected to him that was a massive threat. Something I would have to be intensely careful about, and that was on top of every ‘normal’ concern about him.

“We’ll deal with this. We have a communication link now, and you at least have basic defenses.” I assured her.

The girl nodded. “This, it will make a huge difference. You don’t even know.” She shook her head and admired the watch again. “Thank you for this. Seriously. I know you didn’t have to, and that it was mostly for Taylor, but thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I replied a little awkwardly. “You should get some rest. That healing isn’t a substitute for sleep, and your power is still in a feedback loop. You need time to reset.”

“I’ll try. For a few hours at least.” She looked at the paper covered bed with reluctance, but started gathering them up.

“Good. Check in later, after you get some sleep.” I turned and left her to what would hopefully be a decent rest.

Emerging into the living room I found the remaining four Undersiders with their faces buried in holographic screens. Even Brian seemed to have gotten over his reluctance at being ‘leashed’ and seemed to be enjoying having his own personal tv and sound system attached to his wrist.

“So, am I going to regret giving those to you?” I asked in a jovial tone.

Alec lowered his arm to peer over the screen. “Hey, this is like a cell phone on crack. Don’t blame us for getting addicted.” He looked at his screen again. “And you didn’t tell us about the video calls. This is some Star Trek shit.”

Surprisingly even Rachel seemed to be enjoying her watch. I wouldn’t have pegged her as particularly tech savvy, but the combination of voice commands and user friendliness seemed to have won her over.

“Uh, Lisa alright?” Brian asked, apparently remembering he was supposed to be the leader of the group.

“Just resting. She was pretty burned out.” That got an understanding nod. “Anyway, I’m going to head out.” There were some halfhearted nods from the rest of the Undersiders that barely diverted the attention away from their screens. “Hey Taylor, you need a lift?”

The girl checked one last thing on her watch before dismissing the screen. “Uh, yeah, thanks. That would be great.”

She took a quick moment to gather her things before joining me on my way out of the building. She waited until we were in my car before saying anything.

“Um, thanks for that. And this.” She lifted her wrist to show off the watch. “It’s beautiful.” She paused, seemed to realize what she said, and dropped her arm. “I know you said you would make something, but I didn’t expect this much this soon.”

I shrugged. “I had some time, and a few new ideas. It seemed like I should start putting them into practice.”

The virtual intelligence was a big part of that. I had rough experience with them from my Class: Engineer power, but my latest Knowledge ability really expanded my understanding of virtual assistants. Not everything I created would be on the level of Fleet and Survey. More basic programs were a possibility. In fact, Survey had been a big help in designing the watch’s software.

Though, the real reason I had decided to pursue that particular avenue of technology was my encounter with Dragon. A big reason that fight had been so brutal was the array of programs she had used. In addition to that adaptive interface program that I had just barely defeated there were at least a half dozen other support programs that had been working alongside her through the night.

Dragon was famous for analyzing the technology of other tinkers and applying it to her own work, but that wasn’t what had happened here. The programs were fundamentally different from everything else Dragon created. They all had a particular signature, a unique style. Various levels of complexity, but all bearing evidence of pure tinker work, not Dragon’s adaptation of it.

At some point Dragon had gotten access to the works of a software tinker. A very powerful one. The programs were incredibly advanced, and she had put them into use directly rather than deconstruct them. She had some connection to that tinker, and some part of that was related to her current situation. To her mastering.

I didn’t have a lot to go on. The only thing people knew for sure was Dragon had fled Newfoundland and set up in Vancouver. From there it was a story of developing connections with the Protectorate, steadily advancing technology, and eventually Guild membership and her place as the most famous tinker on the planet.

The background was deliberately obscure. It was hard enough to research a normal cape, much less one of Dragon’s standing, but I had to do it. Somewhere in her past there were answers to these questions. I had been holding off on my use of information resources, but I couldn’t afford to be conservative any more.

Taylor considered the watch again and shook her head. “That force field took everyone off guard. I can’t believe you managed to fit all that stuff in here.” I snorted and she turned towards me. “What?”

“I can fit a lot more than that.” I held up my own watch. “This has a complete omni-tool in it, the same combat model I used on Saturday night.”

“Seriously?” She asked.

“Yeah.” I glanced at her. “Yours does too.”

Taylor froze and looked at her watch. “What?”

“I put a full combat model in there. The features are sealed off, but if you need to deal with that thing we talked about I can unlock them.” I explained.

She considered. “So, I just have to ask?”

“Taylor, if you need a combat omni-tool then whatever the situation is, you aren’t going in alone. I’m coming in as well. This just means I don’t need to change your loadout.” She seemed a little disappointed, but accepted my reasoning.

“Um, I saw the picture you posted online, the one from your last fight?” I nodded. “Can this do that? I mean, can the watches take those kinds of records.”

“Sure. I mean, you aren’t going to run out of storage space anytime this decade. They maintain basic scans, but you can request any recording you want.” I paused. “Though if you’re thinking of surveillance I have better options for that.”

“No.” She quickly assured me. “It was just a thought, about something else.”

Taylor stared out of the passenger window of my Pinto for the rest of the drive to her house. When I slowed to drop her off she seemed to have worked through whatever she was considering.

“Thanks, for everything.” She said. “The rest of them, they tried to play it off, but they knew what this meant. Thank you for looking out for them as well.”

“It’s fine.” I assured her. “I’m glad you have some protection out there.” I paused and considered if I should mention Garment’s wardrobe plans, then decided against it. I had direct communication now, and it was probably better to wait a couple of days on that point. “Look after yourself.”

She nodded and waved me off before walking up the path to her front door. I pulled away and headed back to my parking space at the gym, to be followed by my apartment.

So, I had outfitted the Undersiders with advanced technology. At least this time there was no way it could be used to dismember a hero. Of course, defensive technologies had combat applications as well. The shield would definitely make it easier to get into knife range. I may have just opened the door to a whole host of stabbings.

So I had to trust that they would use this responsibly. That wasn’t that unreasonable of an aspiration. Despite my constant criticism of the events at the bank they were at least as much the fault of the Wards as the Undersiders, and the situation could have been much more lethal if they hadn’t been careful with their weapons. Same with the storage facility. It could have been piles of corpses if they weren’t being careful.

I sighed and elected to hope for the best. As I turned a corner the Forge made a connection to the Resources and Durability constellation. It was a mid-sized mote that came with a smaller mote.

The smaller mote was called Weapon & Item Storage Chest. It was an item, a pair of large wooden chests. One could hold a thousand weapons, pieces of armor, or other equitable items, regardless of size or weight. The other could hold a thousand TYPES of any item that didn’t fit into the category of the first chest, and could hold 999 of each item. It was almost like a video game inventory, but attached to a chest that would magically hold the items without changing its weight.

Storage wasn’t the problem it used to be, and the chests were bulky enough that transporting them was a trial, but the ability was still useful, and it came free with the larger mote.

The larger mote was called Waste Not. It was a massive game changer. Its basic function let me reduce the materials I’d need for a project by half, rounded down in the case of discrete items. On the surface that sounded like a lesser version of what I’d gotten from Workaholic or Lack of Materials. That would be true, if not for the secondary effect of the power.

When building something there was a 50/50 chance that I could replace a rare material with more of a common material and still have the resulting item function. It wouldn’t actually have the material in question, but it would operate as if it did. That meant, in exchange for a 50% chance of botching construction, I could attempt to make anything, even if I didn’t have the necessary materials for its construction.

That included rare isotopes. That included magical metals. And, most of all, that included cybertonium.

I could finally attempt to produce the technology that had been locked behind Master Builder. I didn’t need to spend days of transmutations, navigate through chains of custom alloys and isotopes, and rebuild my alchemy arrays specifically to accommodate the production of the metal. I could just substitute any material I wanted, accept the 50% failure rate, and start producing peak space robot technology.

I smiled to myself. Finally, I had found a path through one of my early roadblocks. And it was one I needed. The city was in a state of emergency, March was a mounting threat, the issue with the Undersiders boss was going to come to a head sooner or later, and a mentally influenced Dragon was hunting me. Weirdly, beyond all that, the thing that struck me most was what I had realized from getting my last power during the fight with Dragon.

My power had seemingly referenced things before, but it never came together like this. I mean, the reference was 40 years old. It made sense that I wouldn’t know it immediately. It had taken Survey to point it out to me. My God had that been a head trip. Aisha had floated ideas like this, I just never expected it to be this direct. The sheer implications of the situation…

I shook my head as I recalled that particular revelation. I mean, the power was called I Am Iron Man. It should have been completely obvious.

I took another corner and the tone came to my lips.

“Dunnnn Dunnnn”

“Dun Dun Dun”

“Du nu na na na na na “

“Dun Dun Dun”

Black Sabbath, 1970. It was the opening line of the song. Even then it wasn’t completely obvious. It could have been that old comic cape, or a reference to that Ted Hughes book. That was until you actually looked at the lyrics to the song.

“He was turned to steel”

“In the great magnetic field”

“When he traveled time”

“For the future of mankind”

For a heavy metal song, you wouldn’t really expect it to have a science fiction narrative. The song is about someone trying to save the world, but something goes wrong. They’re trapped, disabled, and mocked by people who can’t understand what he’s trying to do. I stopped at a red light as I continued the song.

“Nobody wants him”

“He just stares at the world”

For me, that would have been bad enough, something uncomfortably direct and personal, but that doesn’t get into the weight of the rest of the lyrics.

“Planning his vengeance”

“That he will soon unfurl”

That was the point of the song. Someone who tried to help people endures too much, reaches their breaking point, and becomes a villain.

“Now, the time is here”

“For Iron Man to spread fear”

“Vengeance from the grave”

“Kills the people he once saved”

And that was the real uncomfortable part. I knew how close I had come to becoming something unspeakable. My original trigger… there’s a reason I don’t like thinking about it. Now I was getting power. So much power, so fast. Something could easily go wrong. One thing too far and I could go from just being regarded as a villain to actually living up to the role.

“Nobody wants him”

“They just turn their heads”

“Nobody helps him”

“Now, he has his revenge”

With the kind of power I had, that I was going to have, any misstep, any carelessness could be devastating. Even a failure to act was a choice of its own, and could have horrible consequences. I couldn’t wait around and hope for things to just get better. I needed to start taking action if I wanted to make a difference.

“Heavy boots of lead”

“Fills his victims full of dread”

“Running as fast as they can”

“Iron Man lives again"

A man next to me at the red light threw up the horns through the window of his Charger. I felt more than a little self-conscious, but returned the gesture before the light changed and we drove our separate ways.

A reference this specific had to mean something. Possibly that my powers were future based, or intended to save the world, or needed to be carefully handled.

Or maybe it just meant that Black Sabbath rocked.

One thing was clear. I don’t know what it meant, but the idea of a metal man turning from hero to villain made my passenger very uneasy. It was perplexing, but felt significant. Regardless, I turned the final corner and parked my car. I had to get back to my workshop.

Everything was open before me, and it was time to get serious about this work.

******

Addendum The Bay Bulletin

BROCKTON BAY NEW HAMPSHIRE

THE BAY BULLETIN

Partly Cloudy Max:65F Min:48F

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

BAYBULLETIN.COM

LUNG RAMPAGES THROUGH DOCKS, NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYED

(Pictured: Lung towering over the North Docks area following a series of conflicts with E88 capes)

The North Docks saw one of their worst nights on record following a brutal conflict between ABB and E88 parahumans. The ABB leader was able to maintain conflict for an extended period, allowing him to achieve a level of strength not seen in recent memory. In the face of this threat E88 forces retreated with several reported injuries while Protectorate heroes moved in to attempt to contain the situation.

Lung’s rampage set fire to a large section of the North Docks, including several abandoned warehouses believed to have been used extensively by the city’s homeless population. Due to the threat posed by the spreading fire and Lung’s continued rampage a state of emergency was declared in the early hours of the morning, resulting in the deployment of the New Hampshire National Guard, who had been placed on standby following the Cape Blackout and subsequent attacks.

Attempts to contain the fire proved unsuccessful, resulting in its spread across several blocks. An emergency evacuation was being considered for nearby residential areas when an unknown effect resulted in the complete and immediate extinguishing of the inferno. The effect was described as a blue electrical discharge spread over a wide area (pictures, page 3). The Protectorate has refrained from comment on this matter, but common speculation suggests this may be a new, unreported ability of Brockton Bay’s own Dauntless.

Despite the quick end to the fire the damage was extensive. While it was able to be contained to abandoned building and storage sites it remains another incident in the chain of attacks that have plagued the city since Saturday night. (This article continues on Page 3)

DRAGON TO RELOCATE TO BROCKTON BAY

The Guild has announced that the renowned tinker Dragon will be temporarily relocating her operating center to Brockton Bay to assist in the ongoing situation in the city. Guild leader Narwhal made the announcement early this morning, stating that Dragon has expressed interest in pursuing the Brockton situation and assisting the local Protectorate forces. Director Piggot of the PRT issued a statement welcoming Dragon to the city and thanking her for her assistance.

Reports indicate Dragon will be operating out of a custom facility in the South Beach suburb of the city. Narwhal has assured the public that this relocation will not affect Dragon’s ability to support other Protectorate initiatives and programs across the country. Dragon has yet to issue a public statement on the matter, but Mayor Roy Christner and other civic leaders have committed to welcoming Dragon upon her arrival.

“On behalf of all of Brockton Bay I express my gratitude to Dragon and the Guild for assisting the city in these trying times. It is an honor to have such an esteemed hero electing to operate from our city and we pledge our support to her efforts.”

(This article continues on Page 7)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Fate Finds You Interesting (Percy Jackson) 300:  
> You must take the "Fate finds you interesting" drawback receiving no points for it (you can also do this with a lesser god to get greater powers).  
> (This boost the power of Divine Child)
> 
> Minor Blessing Athena - Craftsmanship (Percy Jackson) 100:  
> For one reason or another you've got a god who cares slightly about you and has seen fit to grant you some minor boon within their domains. Choose one god from any pantheon and gain a minor boon from them. The god will care slightly about you but unless you go on to further distinguish yourself it will be more of a minor interest in your affairs than someone they feel the need to help (Effectively think a diminished version of one ability a demigod might have, think minor ones are stuff along the lines of breathing water, lucid dreaming, or appropriate vague extra senses, useful but nothing especially major). This can be taken multiple times.
> 
> Waste Not (Monster Hunter) 300:  
> You have found out a great secret in the blacksmithing trade - the reason that most blacksmiths usually ask for so many materials to make a certain weapon or armor isn't because its material intensive, but because they can make one for half of the materials and either sell the rest or make another to sell at a profit. The bastards! You have figured out how to use less materials to gain the same results when it comes to crafting your own weapons and armor. At first it may just be an ore or two less, but with enough practice you can reduce the amount of materials needed for a project by half (rounded down). As an added bonus, with enough practice, you have a 50% chance to not require high-grade or legendary materials (Rubied, Plates, etc) to make an item, provided you can supplement the build with excess materials.
> 
> Weapon & Item Storage Chest (Monster Hunter) Free:  
> An absolute must whether you're an aspiring hunter or roving trader. You get two chests - the first one is capable of storing up to 1000 individual weapons, pieces of armor, and charm talismans, while the second is capable of storing up to 1000 stacks of 999 of any given healing item, monster part, ore, or item that isn't a weapon, armor piece, or talisman.


	44. 37 Small Tasks - Addendum Meeting Report

37 Small Tasks

I managed to park at the gym and slip off to my apartment without running into anyone. I kind of hoped that didn’t come across like I was avoiding people, but I needed to come up with a solution to my sudden expansion of muscle mass if I was going to be visiting that place socially again.

On that point there were a few possibilities. I had a lot more stealth technology than disguise technology, and most of the disguise technologies were not that good at reducing someone’s profile. This wasn’t a matter of layering a hologram over top of me and calling it a day. If I wanted to fit in with people I’d known before the Celestial Forge had decided to rewrite my body shape I’d need to get creative.

Weirdly, the best way of handling this would be a combination of an invisibility effect and either an image projection or hologram. Basically, I would have the fun of figuring out both a perfect invisibility system and a true to life image projector that would also sync with my movements while avoiding any delays or uncanny valley effects. It was a small mercy that my height was the same as before, because otherwise this would be a true nightmare.

Not that it was exactly easy to begin with. This wasn’t what I would call a high priority project compared to the other major threats, but if I had to keep blowing off my social contacts outside of the Workshop and cape life then there would be some unpleasant consequences at some point. I both needed a solution and didn’t have time for extensive development.

Luckily I had another option. The same option that had let me pull a solution out of nowhere when I needed a way to save Weld, and one I had barely explored. Natural alchemy.

Natural Alchemy was a largely untapped power. Compared to the seriously powerful and ridiculously named Kazooie Alchemy I had kind of sidelined it. I had better healing, and nothing that could be accomplished by that particular power was as significant as my duplicates. Still, the fact that it had been so effective as a means of facilitating Weld’s rescue showed there was a lot of untapped potential.

One of the major drawbacks of Natural Alchemy was the way it had unavoidable effects on the body. The glowing eyes from the water breathing potion had been a fairly minor effect, and fortunately had faded quickly. When trying for more esoteric applications physical changes were an unfortunate side effect, but if your goal was changing shape then you couldn’t ask for a better option.

I had actually been a little reluctant about that application. Warping my body seemed a little too close to the kind of wet tinkering I’d been working to avoid. Still, what I was considering wasn’t growing wings, claws, or a scorpion tail. It wasn’t some fundamental alteration to my body’s makeup, or a change in the way I interacted with the world. It was a slight reduction in bulk.

I could probably have managed it from the moment I got the power. Since then, my expanded knowledge, research abilities, crafting skills, and enchantment abilities meant I could accomplish massively powerful effects. I had somehow become possibly the most powerful wet tinker on the planet, despite not actually using any of those abilities.

The point was, a potion that got me down to a reasonable build was well within my skill set. More than within my skills set actually. I kind of felt I needed to start exploring the potential of this power. My duplicates would probably be willing to act as guinea pigs. Come to think of it, the combat enhancement potions would probably be really popular during our future sparring matches.

Okay, how likely was it that potion making was going to start being a 20% time thing, and that I would end up with a cabinet of divine level mystery enhancement potions left for me or some other duplicate to experiment with?

Almost certain, considering I was the one who thought of it, and thus so would my duplicates. I was probably going to find out how far this power could be pushed very quickly. And that would basically be the bioengineering side of my original tinker power all over again. I still hated thinking about that, but I couldn’t afford to keep holding back like I had been just because of those reservations.

The Dragon situation was a nightmare on top of every other problem I was juggling. I had been largely flippant with the Undersiders, but Brian was right about her resources and abilities. I don’t think anyone else could accomplish what she had done, and that was without any preparation on her part. Once she got set up in the city things could get a lot more complicated for me.

The actual nature of the effect she was under was something that I still wasn’t sure about. The most I could see was that it obviously wasn’t impeding her ability to function in her current role. Dragon was still a major presence in the Guild, the creator of numerous technologies and programs that the Protectorate relied on, and a regular participant in Endbringer battles. Why someone would set up master effects as specific as hers appeared to be I couldn’t say, but it was something I would have to deal with, if just for my own safety.

Natural Alchemy wasn’t the only area where I’d been holding back. I had been avoiding a lot of technologies because of the heat that it would bring down on me. Well, having Dragon gunning for you is pretty much peak levels of heat. As long as I avoided actual S-class threats the fact that I was using potentially dangerous technology probably wouldn’t make a difference.

That meant nanotech. This was something I’d been thinking about for a while. One of the first types of nanotechnology I’d gained access to had the potential to form a direct neural connection between a person and essentially become a part of their body. It was one of the most advanced personal enhancements available in terms of both combat and utility.

It was also based on a hive mind artificial intelligence matrix that was a single development error away from unleashing a gray goo apocalypse on the world. If I hadn’t already gained extensive experience in dealing with the development of A.I.s and multiple supporting powers to manage the situation I would never have touched it.

It was possibly the only way I would be able to use my Master Craftsman power on the scale needed for construction of my best technology. Even if the direct link wasn’t enough to carry that effect this would still be a massive improvement in terms of manufacturing capability, especially after I pushed the technology to the limits my knowledge and power were capable of.

The Forge missed a connection to the Knowledge constellation as I reached my apartment and headed for the closet. The tiny studio wasn’t completely devoid of upgrades anymore. I’d abandoned that particular commitment after the scare with Dragon. The shiny new modem didn’t stand out overly much, and was about as advanced as the combination of Simple Scientific Solution and my other powers could make it. As of now, I wouldn’t be able to track someone using it, and I was an empowered demigod of technology. Additionally, the access speed it was facilitating was beyond what should have been possible through the local network. As usual, it didn’t do any good to try to figure out how it worked, and as long as I only used it for ‘normal’ internet access there wouldn’t be any problems.

Slipping into my Workshop I could see the consequences of the previous night. A hardwired line ran from the Laboratorium to my computer core, really the only way I’d been able to directly moderate the attack program. I had hard switched controlling access, so the Laboratorium wasn’t permanently connected to the rest of my systems, but I had a sense that even from their brief exposure the machine spirits weren’t overly impressed with my Workshop.

It wasn’t really a specific criticism, more of a general disapproval. Probably due to the lack of incense and religious iconography. I was once again grateful that Garment’s communication issues stopped her from conferring with the machine spirits, otherwise I’d be drowning in tapestries before the day was out.

The cable wasn’t really intrusive. My aesthetic powers had allowed me to even blend in exposed cabling in a way that accented the look of the Workshop. It added a neo-industrial accent to the otherwise pristine workspace that had built up over layers of renovations, and against all my expectations I actually had Garment’s approval for it.

On that note, with the Workshop open I was able to link with Fleet and Survey again. After all the events of the night they were due for another update session, but the main objective was getting Survey’s updates on the state of the city.

I accessed her report with my implant while I moved into the Workshop. Actually, that would be another thing I needed to stop dragging my feet on. The idea of brain surgery still freaked me out, but honestly the main reason I hadn’t updated my implant yet was the continuous improvements in skills and technology I was gaining access to.

This wasn’t the perfectionism that had me trying to rebuild everything in my Workshop following each new power. It was the fact that I really didn’t want to have to perform repeated brain surgery. I had multiple possible designs for an update to my implant, all of which had been scrapped and redone as new technology and abilities became available.

What complicated the process even further was the fiat backed nature of the implant. It wasn’t something that I could replace wholesale and call it a day. The implant and its place in my head were enforced by my power. That meant I needed to do this as a rebuild and upgrade rather than a replacement. It turned what would already have been a complicated procedure into a nightmare of modular technological applications and hot-swapping.

Still, it was necessary. I was going to have to deal with the Slaughterhouse Nine sometime. Given how they operated, that would probably be at the worst time possible and from an angle I never would have expected. I shifted to the portion of Survey’s report regarding Slaughterhouse Nine activity. While I viewed the data mentally she projected a hologram of her avatar walking next to me and delivering a summarization of the information.

“Sightings and reports suggest the Slaughterhouse Nine is active in western Indiana. No confirmed objectives have been observed since the attack on Bloomington which resulted in the death of Chuckles. A recruitment effort was theorized to begin within seven to fourteen days based on historic patterns, but current activities suggest deviation from this practice. Two independent sightings of the Siberian on what appeared to be single target hunting behavior have been reported, but assumed to be independent of other Slaughterhouse Nine activity.” She presented crisply while mimicking the act of walking beside me. Well hidden projectors activated in sequence to create the impression of a continuous effect moving through the Workshop.

“Thank you. Please continue monitoring all reports of activity and movement from the main group. Could you expand the program to include hospital and police reports from areas of suspected activity?” I asked.

“Absolutely. There is a high chance of false positives through such a program, but I will work to improve evaluation and filtering techniques.”

I had seen that development in the last set of updates. Survey was getting better at data analysis and a lot less likely to end up overwhelmed by conflicting data.

“Can you also compile any available information on Shatterbird’s powers?”

“There is a limited amount of data due to the destruction of silicon based technological devices and the general calamity that follows major events, but I will compile a report from available sources. It is likely to be largely composed of testimonials and theoretical models.”

“That’s fine. Whatever you can find will at least give me a starting point.” Through my implant I could sense her begin work on the task while she continued the façade of a walking meeting.

“Local recovery work has continued in the area impacted by last night’s fire.” She began. “While most of the damage was limited to warehouses and factories which were no longer in operation, several small businesses were damaged in the incident. Mostly small stores, but two of the facilities in the central area had continued operation despite the downward economic trend, though with reduced staff. This has not been covered by conventional media sources, nor has the impact of the fires on the population known to inhabit the affected area.”

I frowned at that and looked over the reports. Mostly the commentary discussed Lung’s attack, the implications for the balance of power in the city, and the deployment of the Guard. Those that did mention the damage at best acknowledged that it was suspected that a portion of the city’s homeless lived in the area. There was more attention given to the property damage that had been inflicted, what it meant for the city, and the potential for actual demolition of damaged buildings.

A lot of the older factories and warehouses hadn’t been in use since shipping shut down. Given the value of the land and the lackluster potential of what could be built it wasn’t even worth tearing them down. About a quarter of the city was filled with buildings left to rot, occasionally being actually condemned, but mostly just locked up and ignored.

It was easy to ignore the fact that people were living in them, but I didn’t have that luxury. The Dragon’s Pulse gave me the ability to sense living things, and thus I couldn’t ignore the presence of people squatting in those buildings. I don’t think the casualties had been that bad. Everyone in the city knows to run when a gang fight starts. The main consequence was displacement. A lot of people had lost what little possessions and safety they had managed to scrounge together. There weren’t many places open to people like that, and if the city’s social services were up to the challenge things wouldn’t have gotten this bad in the first place.

Also, wih the damage from the fire there was a real potential that they would start tearing down the affected structures. Really, it depended on whether the building’s insurance had been maintained and what kind of policy the city would put towards places like that.

That would probably end up having a mixed effect. Frankly, any project that needed manual labor would be a blessing for the city, even if it would only be temporary. Demolition work was still work and it’s not like they’d be bringing in outside firms to handle it. As someone who was pretending to live a part time existence I knew how significant even a few weeks of steady employment could be.

The question was, what happened next? Huge amounts of cleared land meant the potential for someone to try to develop it again. Or maybe not. Maybe it would just be another empty lot waiting for the city to turn around so that it would have some value.

As much as I hated to say it, I had bigger problems than displaced homeless and the economic state of the city. There were pressing, immediate problems, ones that would come to a head much sooner than any social or economic shift. Still, that felt like a cop out. A big reason the city had gotten so bad was because of the focus on each immediate crisis without considering the wider impact.

Well, at least I had the means to make sure the situation didn’t slip my mind.

“Survey, please continue to monitor the situation, both in terms of recovery and reclamation efforts, and the status of any displaced residents.” I asked, while also sending a detailed digital request with specific parameters of the monitoring program.

Survey’s hologram nodded and I watched her begin to set up a subroutine for continuous monitoring and analysis of that information. I got the sense that she enjoyed the combination of digital interfacing along with the more physical conversation. It provided practice in her ability to interact while also allowing direct confirmation of the meaning and intent of every exchange.

“Additionally, there have been several updates to Garment’s legal certification process during your absence.” I reviewed the documents and correspondence as Survey continued. “An account and full set of identification have been provided in Garment’s name. A request has been submitted for her to collect them at Brockton Central bank, as well as a review of loan options and proposals for potential locations. The Protectorate has offered to have Miss Militia meet with her to provide assistance and security.”

That was a generous offer considering the state of the city, but it wasn’t like there was much Miss Militia could do in support of recovery from a massive fire. Her status as a Noctis cape was well known, so it wasn’t like this would impact the Protectorate’s ability to respond tonight.

Also, from a slightly more cynical perspective, Garment’s debut at the gym had been very well received. The Protectorate was probably desperate to get some positive press in circulation. I wasn’t sure what exactly they were going for, but it was probably a ‘life goes on’ vibe.

Honestly, the city was good at that. I don’t think anyone really gave it much thought, but even growing up in Captain’s Hill you heard about fairly brutal parahuman fights on a regular basis. In this city you accepted the conflict, dealt with the damage, and moved on as well as you can. It wasn’t a good situation, but it was a mindset that the citizens were subtly proud to have.

“Garment will probably want to carry through with that, but I want to check with her in person. Anything else?” I knew there was. I had direct access to the data network, but it seemed that Survey liked presenting information. She made her hologram smile slightly as she continued.

“The 20% time of the final duplicates following your departure was spent constructing armament points for the Veritech fighter as well as full integration of A.I. control networking. Improved plating is still pending, but variable loadouts have been planned for a variety of offensive options.” She mimed holding up a clipboard displaying the alterations to the fighter, something also unnecessary given my direct access to the plans. I still considered it as the Forge missed a connection to the Magitech constellation.

The armor plating had been fully stripped away with several proposals for replacement materials. The Energy Conversion Armor would need to be integrated into the new plating, but enough research had been done on that particular system that I was confident in my ability to apply the principles to both replacement parts and to other applications.

Applications like Aisha’s hardsuit. It wasn’t just a matter of stronger armor. The technology essentially turned the armor into a heatsink that got stronger as a result. I had said this before, but that was really incredible technology.

Maybe a little too incredible. Fold carbon was still difficult to work with and duplicate. Not impossible, but I may have become overly used to the ability to just mash together whatever rare material I needed and instantly have more. The extradimensional aspect of fold carbon and its potentially higher energy variants made that a much more delicate procedure.

With the armor of the fighter removed the frame and core systems could be worked on, allowing the installation of weapon mounts. Lots of weapon mounts. There was the undeniable challenge of ensuring the weapons would be usable in all three modes the fighter could transform into, but that was a minor concern given my design talents.

Well, my design talents and near constant input from Fleet. He had been exceptionally engaged in the upgrade and modification process, and was particularly helpful in providing performance simulations for various proposed designs and weapon compliments.

Currently the mech was set up for four launch pods, each holding 20 micro missiles, two forearm mounted weapons, a shoulder mounted twin linked system, and a nose gun that could be detached for use as a handheld weapon. Well, handheld by mech standards. Probably crew served to vehicle mounted by anyone else’s.

Hopefully this would keep the Laboratorium from complaining about the suit’s lack of armaments.

In terms of what would actually be mounted on the fighter, that was another matter. I already had access to a tremendous amount of weapon technology, and that was before Weaponsmith decided to drop a mental database of thousands of years of weapon crafting techniques into my head. I could outfit the jet for everything from nonlethal engagement to a set of armaments that would have an impact on an Endbringer.

Not a tremendous impact, but more than most capes could manage. My passenger was able to help me evaluate the chances of various weapons against an Endbringer, and generally they weren’t good. I had known the Endbringers were tough, but when you considered the energy output of some of these weapons you would think one of them would be a serious threat.

You’d be wrong.

I had a handful of technologies that could put down an Endbringer, and they were all horrifying in scale and power. Most of them would put out the kind of energy that would be devastating on a continental level, if not larger. Basically, if the blast wouldn’t show up in the planet wide geological record it’s not a threat to an Endbringer.

There was one exception provided by Weaponsmith, and it was quite possibly worse. Weaponsmith was an archive of thousands of weapons and a hundred times as many creation methods. There was a lot of overlap of dubious usefulness, such as the nearly fifteen hundred ways to build a laser rifle. However, like with Armourer the good stuff was rare, old, and extremely difficult to make.

A few weapons were so rare I only had a few manufacturing methods for producing them. For this weapon there was only one. The designs for it were buried in the depths of the mental database and its assembly was a process so specific that without the combined technological knowledge of my other powers and my recent ability to have a chance of ignoring material requirements it would be completely impossible. Of course, that 50% failure rate wasn’t that appealing when the result of bad luck would be a malfunctioning vortex grenade.

A grenade that could potentially put down an Endbringer. The thing was basically a combined black hole and dimensional portal designed to absolutely ruin anything in its area of effect. Or anything that happened to wander into its area of effect, considering the vortex would have a tendency to stick around. In fact, the unstable dimensional and gravity vortex could shift positions after being deployed, meaning it could potentially wander into you.

So that was what it took to actually put down an Endbringer. Planetary scale weapons or archaic explosives of such an ill-advised nature that its mental entry was more than fifty percent warnings and disclaimers. And on top of all of that, I was still being warned that actually killing an Endbringer would somehow make the entire situation worse.

That was a concern, but like so many things a concern for another time. Unless Lung ramped up to Leviathan levels the Endbringer grade weaponry would be ridiculously excessive. That left the challenge of tailoring the loadout to my current situation.

Most capes didn’t have any level of enhanced durability, and what Weaponsmith considered ‘light anti-infantry’ armaments were absolutely devastating to anyone who wasn’t a brute or wearing power armor. Scaling things down further there were non-lethal options, and oddly more of them than I had gotten from any other technology power. They had the issue of lack of effectiveness against harder threats. And of course, Dragon’s suits.

So, I was probably going to be looking at a mixed loadout. It wasn’t that bad of a situation considering my missile surplus power would let me hold a stupid amount of munitions. I could afford to generalize, but the lack of focus felt like I was holding myself back.

I put those thoughts aside as I approached the textile area. “We’ll need to prepare a range of options. I’ll make a note to see about rigging up a second automated maintenance system for faster resupply and changing weapons.” Modular technology was a godsend in that respect.

“Noted.” Survey’s hologram replied, and mocked writing a notation on her clipboard. I smiled at the commitment to the image and made my way into Garment’s work area.

What I found was an entire new area that had been cordoned off from the rest of her projects. A quick check showed that it was a recent expansion, probably provided by one of the duplicates with their ability to open new space in the volcanic rock that surrounded the Workshop. Or the volcano lair, depending on how you wanted to characterize things.

I guess it depended on which side of the law I was talking to at the time. I had a feeling the kinds of things that would make the Protectorate very uneasy would probably get me a significant amount of respect from the villain side of things.

The first thought that entered my mind when I saw the new section was ‘colorful!’. With a second to recognize what I was actually looking at I let out a long whistle, drawing Garment’s attention from her latest project.

“Wow. This is really impressive.” I admitted, looking at the assembled clothing. On display was an impressive selection of Garment’s work in a huge variety of styles and designs. That wasn’t what was so impressive. It was what had been done to the clothing.

Every item of clothing in the new section was covered with incredibly precise and brightly colored designs. The sign of master level Dust weaving. And a lot of it.

My duplicates must have provided Garment with a frightening quantity of Dust. I mean, I could replicate it infinitely, so it wasn’t as if the supply was an issue. It was more that, based on the quantity and density of the designs on display, Garment had assembled an arsenal that probably put her on equal footing with what Bakuda had brought to the storage facility.

Excluding the more esoteric effects, of course.

As Garment proudly led me through the results of her work I had the uncomfortable feeling that comes from being within arms reach of unsecured explosives. I knew how to deal with Dust and could probably control my Aura enough to avoid accidentally activating any of the Dust circuits, and Garment was of course a master of anything clothing based, but that didn’t change the fact that I was effectively slowly strolling through a collection of unsecured high energy weaponry.

It didn’t help that the Dust she had been using was a freshly mixed batch, meaning it had the benefit of Lack of Materials, the Volcanic Forge, and even a little bit of fey arts from Master Craftsman. It had taken what was already a massively powerful weapon and elevated it to the tier of ‘Oh God’.

I smiled politely as Garment showed off a tailcoat with enough Gravity Dust sewed into it to level a city block and tried not to think about what would happen if Aisha accidentally wandered into this place.

Actually, did I really need to worry about that? I mean, yes, it was apparently unsecured, but it was also at the back of Garment’s workshop. The chances that Aisha would make it through Garment’s workshop without ending up in some kind of hoop skirted monstrosity was remote. I’m pretty sure the girl was steering clear of this place if just to avoid ending up with a wardrobe that would require two lady’s maids to get properly dressed.

“This is really nice work Garment.” I commented honestly, causing Garment to preen slightly. It really was. I could do this work to a higher level of quality, using less materials and getting better effect, but I didn’t have Garment’s inherent sense for the art. If I was left to my own devices I might have come up with a couple of energy discharge formulas and maybe some wind-based mobility effect. I certainly wouldn’t have thought up half of the combinations or unique applications that Garment had put together.

I can honestly say it would never have occurred to me to use a combination of Rock and Gravity Dust to completely upturn the world around you, splitting concrete and asphalt like a tilled field. Even without Aura control, that was a devastating weapon, and Garment had happily sewed the pattern into a cocktail dress in a way that seemed completely natural and appropriate.

If Garment ever decided to go on the warpath Brockton Bay wouldn’t know what hit it.

“We have some news from the Protectorate. They’ve set up your account and identity and want to meet about opening your store.” Garment clasped her hands in delight and hurried over to one of the wall terminals. Survey quickly brought up the list of documents and messages, providing summaries for each of them.

Survey’s commentary was a good deal more detailed than it had previously been, now containing specific legal advice and references to relevant policies. A slightly deeper look showed me the origin of this particular insight.

I had requested a legal evaluation of the logistics of bringing Aisha on as an employee. Honestly I didn’t think that much of it, and it had a decent chance of not going anywhere. Aisha could lose interest, her father could object to her working with a cape or working in general, or the laws governing employment could be so restrictive that it just wouldn’t be possible.

Not only had Survey compiled a full analysis of regulations and requirements for employing Aisha in almost any role within a private boutique, she had expanded the analysis to every legal issue that such a business might encounter. Then expanded to related legal concerns. Then to ancillary administrative and accounting needs that might be encountered.

I would have to check during my next update, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Survey was operating at the level of a professional legal counsel. It was something of an unexpected development, but then again so was Fleet’s participation in transforming fighter jet design work. I would have to step up my monitoring to make sure they didn’t run into any issues, but it was a good sign to see them taking their own initiative with the direction of their expertise.

While Survey was making her presentation, I felt the Forge make a connection to the Time constellation. It was a larger mote called Manufacturing Line, and worked like Waste Not, only instead of being limited to weapons and armor it halved the material requirements of anything I built. Actually, anything I oversaw the construction of. I didn’t need to perform the work myself, or even specifically direct it. It could be an entire factory that was overseen by me, and the benefit would still apply.

The relation to the Time constellation was that, instead of a 50% chance to avoid needing rare materials, it halved the time of the work. That combined directly with every other means I had of accelerating my crafting. That meant I would be working at truly ridiculous rates, and generally the more technical something was the faster I could work.

Everything I did could be accelerated to double speed by Do One Thing at a Time. If it involved the production of anything then Manufacturing Line doubled that again to four times normal speed. If it counted as any manner of machine, no matter how obscure, then Savvy Sultan provided another times four modifier, taking it to times sixteen. High technology saw the benefit of Machinist, which was one of my most advanced, if specialized, speed powers. If we were at least on a level of advanced mechanical work things would be accelerated hundreds of times.

That wasn’t even getting into the benefits of my skill level, support powers, demigod abilities, or the fact that I could do the work of anywhere from ten to a hundred people at the same time.

And it just hit me that my duplicates also had access to this power. It effectively doubled what they would be able to build in their 20% time, which was now twelve minutes long. Twelve minutes that could count as over a hundred hours of work, and with all the assistance and materials they could want.

I was really, really lucky that my duplicates were content to just mess with me, because if they were actually hostile that would be an absolute nightmare.

Survey finished her presentation and Garment indicated an interest in the proposed 2:20pm appointment. I quickly considered the logistics. I could find a way to access the Workshop in the area and let Garment walk in. I didn’t think her spontaneously appearing inside a secured location would be a good idea. Sneaking into a probably-seventy-year-old gym was a very different matter to completely bypassing security at a major bank.

The Protectorate would probably also want to meet her at the entrance. It didn’t escape my notice that they chose the same bank that the Undersiders had attacked. It had seen some very rapid repair work and was completely restored, but this would no doubt be an opportunity to show how much things had recovered from that particular incident.

To be honest, I was a little concerned for Garment. I knew she wasn’t really in danger. The people she had fought on Saturday had been criminals of opportunity, not agents of any major gang. She didn’t have anyone gunning for her and could look after herself. Additionally, she wouldn’t be making any serious commitments and any proposals could be evaluated in detail at a later time.

That was all true, but it wasn’t going to stop me from fretting over this entire endeavor. I wouldn’t be able to help with things from behind the scenes like at the gym, but I could make sure she was as prepared as possible. I sent the confirmation message and started to work on the plan of action.

Then I realized the plan was basically ‘upgrade Garment’s phone and stay in the area in case she needs help’. That wasn’t exactly the most detailed or nuanced approach, but beyond researching the bank layout, the executive she would be meeting with, and the details of the proposed loans and offers there wasn’t much to do. Survey happily took up that task while Garment got to the much more important matter of deciding what she was going to wear.

With my support commitment pulled out from under me and over an hour before I’d need to leave for the bank I elected to get to work on the projects I was prioritizing before Garment’s announcement came up.

As always, step one was duplication potions. My two duplicates stepped out and we shared a familiar look.

“Right.” The first said. “We’ll get started on the upgrades for the upgrades for the upgrades for what we’ll need for that work. You get Tetra to the computer throne.”

It was a simple enough division of work. Technically either of the duplicates could have managed the task of updating the A.I.s and expanding their parameters, but this was something where it was important to maintain continuity. Personal experience with the code and what had been done to it couldn’t be replicated in reports, and it was important that the person who interacted with Fleet and Survey remembered all previous interactions with them.

Also, there was my promise to include Tetra in all of these updates. I’m not sure if the duplicates could survive handling her, even with the expanded durability they received from the enhanced potions.

I entered the Laboratorium to find the skulls still hard at work. Most of the basic munitions had been completely analyzed, but truly exotic effects were still difficult. I still didn’t have complete confidence in recreating the time stop effect.

Weirdly, there was a similar device in the mental database that came with Weaponsmith. Stasis grenades were basically field deployable stasis fields. They were also bulky, power hungry, and difficult to make. Not ‘vortex grenade’ difficult, but still a trial. The field was projected from the grenade and only lasted until the grenade's power source was drained, as compared to Bakuda’s apparently persistent effects.

They weren’t actually persistent, but they lasted so long that it didn’t really matter. For the average person there was really no difference between something sticking around for a hundred years, a thousand years, or forever. Bakuda’s time stop bombs would outlast any practical metric, and that was pretty much the end of their story.

I wanted that technology, but I also needed to understand it. According to my passenger there was some inherent risk when combining parahumans with extended time stop effects. Possibly it was due to the fact that the parahuman would be frozen, but their passenger wouldn’t be affected. If the link was still active, and there was still power flow, you could end up with incredible amounts of energy build up.

It probably would only be an issue for parahumans who built up amounts of power over time. Like, for instance, Lung, who was also exactly the kind of person I would want to deploy a weapon like this against. The idea of trapping Lung in a state of ramp up until he reached the point where he could somehow overwhelm the field then wreak havoc on a scale never seen before…

Yeah, I wasn’t doing that. This was probably why the Protectorate had so many testing rules for tinkers. It was a consequence of not knowing the exact principles and limits of all of your technology from the start.

I moved through the Laboratorium, greeting the skulls as they worked and performing incidental maintenance tasks as I became aware of them. There was a slight irritation from the machine spirits at the fact that I was heading for the life fiber stasis field personally rather than using the throne to coordinate removal, but that was more a matter of protocol than any specific offense.

When I reached the scanning bay that held Tetra suspended in time and gravity fields I considered how I was going to do this. I was confident enough managing the interaction without Garment as a safety net, and was confident that Survey or Fleet would get her here in seconds if anything went wrong. That said, this was still the first time I would be handing the entire interaction myself.

And in doing so I had overlooked the clothing issue, having shown up in my normal clothes rather than the workout or ‘Barbarian Chic’ styles that Garment had put together for such an occasion. I could probably get by with just removing my shirt, but…

One of the skulls rose up next to me. It was the same one that Garment always handed her dress to, and it seemed he had accepted that as part of his lot in life. I expressed my gratitude and handed over my shirt and jacket before deactivating the stasis field.

It probably says a lot about the state of our relationship that when the fibrous mass of glowing, life draining alien parasite launched at me from the confines of the dropped stasis field my only reaction was to open my arms in welcome. It really helped that I could feel Tetra through the Dragon’s Pulse and knew there was no hostility there.

Two-way communication using that medium was still a little sketchy, but it was at least technically possible. As such I was able to convey that the initial burst of feeding (offset by demigod stamina and nanites) would be temporary, and received a sense of disappointed acceptance.

I still enjoyed the energy boost from the full link, which allowed me to make ridiculous time back to the Workshop. There is a certain level of speed where gravity becomes more of a general suggestion than a hard rule, and as such walls and ceilings were perfectly acceptable walkways on my route through the Workshop.

I also made more than a few of those blazingly fast physics defying near-teleport moves. In theory that kind of speed should have shattered even my bones, and would be like an asteroid impact on anyone hit by it. In reality it was a quick reposition that made almost no sense outside the specific dynamics of life fiber energy. I guess that’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re dealing with a lifeform that shouldn’t be able to physically exist in any conventional sense of physics or biology.

I settled into the throne and felt the comforting sensation of my mind expanding to the limits of diamond based optical processing. The first thing I did was take a dive into Fleet and Survey’s code to monitor their current development.

Multiple rounds of capacity expansion had allowed both A.I.s to start growing beyond their original roles. They were still operating in related fields to their initial direction, but had started to branch out slightly. Their development was also stabilizing. There wasn’t nearly as much for me to help tweak and correct as there usually was. That was both because of more streamlined optimization and because their code was becoming complex enough that it couldn’t be trivially assessed anymore.

While I worked I could feel Tetra’s reaction as Fleet and Survey interacted with her. It was still a little unusual not being able to participate in that conversation. I could feel Tetra’s reactions, and knew she could monitor mine as well, but there was a distinct lack of detail in the exchange. My A.I.s didn’t have that problem, and happily informed me that Tetra was being updated on all the events from the previous day.

Their interaction with Tetra took longer than I needed to set a new parameter expansion schedule and perform a full development check. Rather than sit around while they talked I moved onto my next project. This was a big one, a major step, as well as a line I had previously stayed well away from. It was time to dive into nanotech.

The nanotechnology from Machinist was still some of the best I had access to. It operated as a programmable nanite swarm dedicated to deconstruction and assembly on the nanoscale. The actual nanites were fairly large by the standards of nanobots. If the nanites from my healing power were the size of people then Machinist’s would be mobile factories. Actually, with their complexity there were more like tiny cities with multiple levels of resource acquisition and processing.

On its own it would have been incredible and immensely useful, but I was at a point where just being incredible wasn’t nearly good enough. I loaded a full set of plans and got to work.

I overhauled the already advanced technology principles with knowledge from Master Builder, Nanite Sciences, Class: Engineer, Skills: Physics, and I Am Iron Man. I reassessed all the materials called for by the design, using Advanced Materials to find ways to integrate alloys of mithril, adamantium, and celestial bronze.

This technology counted as enough of both weapon and armor for Waste Not to apply, meaning I could design the nanites with cybertonium based components, essentially producing a version of Master Builder’s living metal, and the first cybertonium based construction I would have access to.

The design was altered slightly to take advantage of my work's resistance to corrosion and environmental effects. Modular principles were applied both to different areas of the nanite, and to the nanite’s ability to operate in conjunction with other nanites. The categorization of the technology as a weapon allowed refinements under my Weapon Modifications and Customized Weapons powers. I applied the principles of Gadget Master to minimize added components and reduce the size of the device even further, then used Ambrosial Artificer to strip out every unnecessary component and boost the performance of the remaining parts.

Setup Wizard allowed me to design the components so that they would be conducive to enhancement by Elven Enchantment. Furthermore, it allowed me to design the entire object with Arcane Craft, allowing direct channeling and enhancement of a specific kind of mystical energy.

I took a moment to admire my work as the Knowledge constellation missed a connection. Then I set that work aside and did it all again.

If I was making a borderline gray goo capable nanotech hivemind I wasn’t just making any borderline gray goo capable nanotech hivemind. Grease Monkey had a form of nanotechnology that was nearly as powerful and dangerous as the nanotech matrix that Machinist could produce. It was an augmentation for fusion BUMA combat robots. While it wasn’t as adept at nano-assembly it was capable of incredible feats of matter assimilation and technological control.

That was my starting point. Then I gave it the same treatment I’d given the Machinist matrix and fused the two nanites together using Hybridization Theory. The end result was something that by all rights should have scared the crap out of every intelligent being on the planet.

Or it would have if any of them could detect it here. And if it could actually replicate properly.

Yes, I had the designs for terrifyingly powerful gray goo nanites with the single flaw that their design called for specific enhanced metals that were only available in my Workshop, certain fiat backed effects that would be absent without my involvement, and additional enchantments that couldn’t be automated. Oh, and even if I was directing the production it would have a 50% failure rate thanks to the lack of cybertonium being compensated for with Waste Not.

Yeah, just getting enough of these to begin meaningful construction would be a challenge.

At that point I noticed the exchange between Survey, Fleet, and Tetra had stopped. Well, it was still happening, but it was less an exchange and more them keeping the life fibers apprised of what I was working on. At some point my design work had attracted an audience. I pulled back from my plans and allowed both A.I.s full access. There was a slight pause before they dove in, digging through every principle and technique used not just in the final product but in every step of the process.

Then the questions started. A near constant blitz of electronic queries on so many elements of the design and how I arrived at the final result. It was endearing and overwhelming at the same time.

Apparently Survey had realized there was a depth of knowledge that I had access to that, for some unfathomable reason, I hadn’t bothered to categorize and upload. Additionally, she was heavily focused on the principles of cybertonium. The idea of using a material that I fully understood, could perfectly emulate, but which I had never produced or interacted with nearly sent her into another spiral, though thankfully both Fleet and myself were able to help her.

I staved off most of her questions by providing a comprehensive report of cybertonium and the cybertonium based technologies that I was aware of. As she started to process through that data I turned to Fleet.

Fleet had focused on an unusual area of the development process. Specifically, the android base for the second set of nanotechnology. It hadn’t really occurred to me that Fleet’s interest in piloting could extend to human scale and form robots, but considering his reaction to the Veritech fighter I guess it shouldn’t have been that surprising. As I worked through the various BUMA models that were possible from the knowledge provided by Grease Monkey his interest only grew, particularly regarding the Super-BUMA models.

There was something about a robot fast enough to catch railgun rounds, even before factoring in the upgrades I was capable of, that seemed to appeal to Fleet on a fundamental level. Meanwhile Survey had latched onto the idea of cybertonium based living metal and the near infinite emulation potential of the substance. There was a general attitude from both A.I.s that I had been holding out on them.

That may have been due to what they could recognize from the nanotech designs. These nanites were designed to develop a collective intelligence. It was a new A.I., and one with a dedicated and specialized form and processing hardware, compared to the more software-based existences of Fleet and Survey. Both A.I.s seemed excited at the prospect of the matrix developing into sapience, but the proposal had made them aware of the potential technologies that I had not been using.

Through all this I was sensing continued amusement from Tetra and could detect the occasional exchange between her and Survey. My empathic sense wasn’t perfect but the emotion coming from Tetra almost felt… smug?

I sent Survey an inquiry and received a prompt response.

“When informed of the development potential of enhanced physical bodies Tetra has expressed the sentiment that she is more advanced in that area, as well as undue satisfaction. Attempts to clarify the situation for her have been unsuccessful.”

I sat there at a loss for what to do. Were my A.I.s fighting with my alien parasite over who had or was going to have the most advanced physical form? With my observation of Survey’s continued exchanges and Tetra’s emotional responses it felt like this was turning into something with the maturity of a schoolyard cape argument.

At least Fleet was staying out of it, though that was mostly because he was focused almost exclusively on Grease Monkey’s android designs with the occasional exchange to Survey or Tetra that seemed to momentarily deescalate things.

It may have been the coward’s way out, but I decided the best course of action would be to separate them. With the announcement of my intentions the exchange died down and both A.I.s shifted to their own projects. I pulled my awareness back from the throne and into my own body.

When I opened my eyes, I was greeted by two copies of myself, only not shirtless and with a mass of glowing red fibers attached to their chests.

And they were smiling.

I sighed. “How much of that did you monitor.”

“Hey, to be fair, we were following the design for technical purposes.” The first replied. “It didn’t get good until the end.”

“Nice job mediating that.” The second added. “I’m sure they won’t keep arguing about it every time they’re in contact. Just like I’m sure that Survey isn’t going to be pestering us to transmute some cybertonium that can be used in non-weapon and armor-based applications.”

We all paused as Survey provided a message stating that she would be reminding us regularly of the applications of cybertonium and the priority that should be placed on its production. Also, a request for a full analysis of the requirements of the transmutation process and an estimated timeline for its production.

“Well,” The first said. “At least she won’t let us forget about it.”

Survey assured us that she would not.

“Right.” I sighed. “So, I know we’re all the same person and all, but any insight on the design?”

The second shrugged. “Not really. If we’re going to be building a nanotech superintelligence then that’s probably as good a design as we’re going to get. If we didn’t have inherent control of nanites I would probably be a lot more reserved about it, but between the direct control, our experience and understanding of A.I., and the materials limitation it’s as safe as it’s going to get.”

“On that note, we’ve got a full set of the materials needed over in the nanotech lab. We were able to prep them at the volcano and Skyforge as you planned them out.” The first explained. “Some of them won’t be that easy to work with on that scale, but we’ve upgraded the lab.”

“And the micromanipulators.” The second added. “Might actually be able to do this work by hand, or at least enough of it to get some benefit from Master Craftsman.”

The three of us shared a look. That was something I hadn’t considered. An automaton of any scale, made entirely by hand, would be incredibly powerful. That was a whole new class of creature, but would only have the benefit of that effect if I could do everything by hand. Like, really by hand. The nerve link nano-connection I was going for here wouldn’t provide enough continuity. The micromanipulators might, but that would mean only the nanites I directly and independently produced would be fully enhanced.

Well, I guess that’s another safeguard against unconstrained duplication. Just the fact that none of the nanites would ever be as good as the ones I personally created should be a moderating factor.

Or maybe it would just annoy the hybrid matrix controlling the swarm and lead to greater conflict and danger than if I just left the technology at factory standard.

You know, it’s reassuring that even with a more positive outlook I hadn’t lost the pessimism that had kept me constantly prepared for the worst through my entire life.

I noted the clock and turned back to my duplicates. “So, twenty percent time?”

They nodded. “Just wanted to touch base in person before we started.”

I did not like the way they were smiling. “Potions?”

Their smiles widened. “Hey, if something goes wrong it’s not like we’ll have to deal with the consequences for long. Plus Natural Alchemy is a science, which means all those research powers apply. Think of all we can accomplish in the time we have.”

I did think about that. I’d been thinking about that with great concern since the idea occurred to me. With my last power they could now manage just under an hour of potion making during their 20% time. That was enough to complete and test a brew, and I could only guess the kind of thing they would come up with to test. What’s more, thanks to Workaholic there would be four more of whatever potion they produced.

God I hoped they took good notes. I made a point to expand monitoring of the Alchemist’s Lab just as a precaution. I did not want to end up with a cabinet full of mystery vials without knowing which one causes a person to melt or turn into fire or whatever.

With that dread looming over me I went to check on Garment. I would need to head out soon if I was going to find a place near the bank where I could safely access my Workshop. Luckily, Garment had long since completed her outfit for this trip. Unluckily, she had decided to showcase her new skills to their fullest.

What she was wearing could be best described as a business-dress. It was like if someone took one of those skirted business suits that women wore in office environments and converted it into a single well-contoured garment. It looked smart and elegant while still being fashion forward and was composed of one of the less drastic hyper fibers, giving it a light gray color with a faint sheen.

The problem wasn’t the dress. The problem was the embroidery.

An immaculate pattern of blue thread wove through the outfit, highlighting curves and seams, providing a slight asymmetrical offset that directed eyelines smoothly along the highlights of the perfect tailoring. It was beautiful and perfectly complemented the outfit. It was also composed of incredibly high-grade Ice and Gravity Dust with enough firepower to outgun any cape in the city, with the possible exception of a ramped-up Lung.

Seriously, the Ice Dust designs would have been frightening enough, but the interlaced Gravity Dust increased the striking force and projectile strength. I’m pretty sure she could bring down a small apartment block with a single barrage. I really hoped she chose it because she was proud of the work and liked the design and not because she was expecting trouble.

Actually, despite it possibly being overkill, knowing she was going out effectively ‘armed’ made me feel a lot better about the entire situation. She proudly presented the dress and I elected not to comment on the borderline tactical weapon sewn into it.

The Forge missed a connection to the Size constellation as I explained the plan.

“I’ll be heading downtown. I’m taking my bike, so I don’t make you late looking for a parking space. I’ll find somewhere to open the Workshop away from people or cameras and you can head to the bank from there. Did the duplicates get you an updated phone?”

Garment opened her purse, which put designer bags to shame, and retrieved her new phone. A real effort had been made to give it a conventional appearance. I suppose it could pass for a generic smartphone, but there was definitely something about it that just gave a sense of style and reliability.

Hopefully people would attribute that to Garment, and not the phone. Even if they did notice it the device would appear entirely conventional to both casual observation and most scanning technology available outside high end tinker labs. It perfectly concealed the advanced communication technology and scanning systems contained within the simple device.

“Great. Need anything else before we set out?” She indicated the negative. I checked the time again. The rough schedule allowed enough time for the duplicates to finish their 20% time, allowing me to take another potion and leave that set to work while I sealed the Workshop and headed downtown.

Without much else to do I made my way to the nanotech lab to check on the upgrades and supplies. The duplicates had done an excellent job in here. It was hardly recognizable. The only hold over was my original nanite containment chamber and assembly station, tucked away in the corner. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I had been siphoning nanites out of my body and manually directing them to assemble microprocessors for me.

That was before Bakuda. That fight had been something of a turning point for me. Not just in terms of the dangers I would face. I had gotten so many powers that night that addressed so many problems I’d been struggling with. Without them I probably would have held back on my commitments to these problems.

What I mean is, if I didn’t suddenly get so much power I’m not sure I would have felt the obligation to try to fix everything. If I didn’t have drone fabrication, water breathing potions or the ability to rapidly convert my motoroid to be water capable with no effective cost, well, I might still have been able to rescue Weld, but it wouldn’t have happened on Sunday night. Same with Aisha, same with the Undersiders’ watches. Same with Dragon. The power was the reason I was able to take on these challenges, and it felt like the challenges were the reason I had the power.

That was getting philosophical, and I had practical problems. I dropped off Tetra, got dressed and headed for the Alchemist’s Lab. The duplicates were running down the end of their durations as I made my way towards them.

The good news was they had found a potion that could let me pass for normal at the gym, as well as a counter potion. The bad news was it was basically a strength draining potion formulated with a potency that would work on genetically enhanced demigods. There was actually a lot more to my muscles than just bulk. The kind of thing needed to dampen that… well, let’s just say if any non-divine person drank it the effects probably wouldn’t be temporary. Or survivable.

I also had three new mixes of potions that were basically the air, earth, and fire versions of my water breathing potion. In addition to altering eye color, they provided some level of affinity for each element, including the ability to breathe in it, providing you didn’t have that already, as in air, and were actually encased in it, for earth and fire. Given the potential mess I was expecting those were fairly minor, and the fire potion could actually be useful for enhancing or training pyrokinesis.

Their duration had expired by the time I reached the lab, so I downed another potion and headed out. As usual, I needed to leave on foot and find an access point to deploy my bike. Luckily the garage access made this a lot simpler, and with almost no fuss I was speeding towards Downtown on my civilian mode motoroid.

Without Garment on the back I was able to avoid becoming a complete spectacle. The Downtown area wasn’t quite as generous in terms of blind alleys, but I was able to repeat my previous trick with one of the underground parking structures. Technically this could have worked with my car, but the bike was faster and more convenient. It also meant that I could slip the motoroid into my Workshop’s garage through one of the maintenance doors out of sight of any security cameras or prying eyes.

With the combination of life sense, thermal vision, and technokinesis I was pretty much impossible to spy on without the use of powerful stranger or thinker powers. Actually, scrap the thinker power exemption. My scanners could detect magic effects, so clairvoyance powers wouldn’t be able get one over on me.

Finding a place for Garment to slip out of the Workshop was more of a challenge, but once again thanks to my combination of abilities I was able to figure something out. The electrical room on the side of a building had no nearby cameras and was clearly not in frequent use. I opened the door and stepped through the forcefields and holograms to find Garment waiting.

“Okay, the bank is at the end of the street. You’re expected in about five minutes. I can’t tell if they have anyone set up outside, but there’s probably someone waiting from you. I will be keeping an eye on you and can be there in a flash if anything happens, I mean if you don’t mind keeping an open channel…”

Garment signaled her approval of the situation, checked her phone one last time, and stepped out into the street.

I monitored her progress through the sensors in the phone, and maybe some less than legally accessed security cameras. That option was only possible because of proximity. Brockton didn’t have complete street coverage with networked cameras, and even if it did I wouldn’t be able to access it freely with Dragon active in the city. I could set up my own surveillance devices, but the effort to get proper coverage and the risk of detection made it a less than appealing prospect.

I start throwing technology out there and someone is going to find it. Above all I really didn’t want my technology to end up in the hands of Bakuda. Actually, it ending up in the hands of the Protectorate would hardly be a better outcome. I wasn’t sure what a normal tinker would be able to deduce from my work, but there were some seriously disruptive concepts in play, and I didn’t want them falling into anyone else’s hands.

So I monitored Garment’s progress through short range wireless hacking and watched her make her way down the street. It didn’t take long for her to start attracting attention. Garment kind of tailored her behavior to whatever outfit she was wearing. I guess style is more than just fabric. Behavior plays an equal part in selling an outfit. She acted very differently when we were riding around with her in pink motorcycle leathers than she did in that formal dress at the press event.

Right now, she was in avant garde business attire heading to the largest financial institution in the city. She moved like a career woman with strength and determination. It was actually kind of hilarious to watch. Businessmen would make their way down the sidewalk and slide out of her way or give an absentminded nod without really looking. It was practically a game to guess how long it would take them to realize they had just given a corporate greeting to an empty dress.

The double takes were hilarious, and people who had caught on were enjoying them even more than I was. Eventually Garment’s passing attracted so much attention that the cases of mistaken identity gave way to a kind of spectator pedestrian landscape. Everyone clearly knew something was happening, but Garment was moving with enough purpose there was no chance of someone approaching her.

Luckily, while there hadn’t been anyone waiting outside the bank, as soon as Garment approached a man in an overly expensive suit stepped out the front doors to greet her. He was trailed shortly after by a familiar figure in a military uniform and flag scarf. A cameraman conveniently appeared for some spontaneous shots of the welcome and I could see Garment doing her best to shift positions to improve the framing of the shots.

Had she always done that, and I was just noticing it now, or was this something she had picked up from her recent public exposure? I honestly wasn’t sure.

I shifted the hologram to emulate a closed door, left the entryway sensors at maximum, powered up the barriers, and moved deeper into the Workshop. Inside the bank Garment’s phone was picking up a speech from the man who greeted Garment, turned out he was the branch manager, about how welcome she was and how happy they were to do business with her.

It all felt a little forced, but given his recent experiences it was understandable how he would have jumped at the chance for some positive press. Anything to stop being thought of a ‘that bank where the Ward was sliced up’.

The phone was still in Garment’s bag, but the sensors were fully active. These sensors were from my Analysis Tools power. As such they didn’t work by passive scans or any projected sensor effect. They worked because they worked. I didn’t really understand it, but it was a fiat backed effect. The sensors I could build would always be able to detect secret doors, the composition of objects, and magic. The fact that it was sitting in a purse wasn’t stopping me from getting a detailed scan of everything around Garment.

This was a good thing for a couple of reasons. For one, the bank’s security system was further away and less exposed than the traffic cameras. I didn’t trust my ability to discreetly access it with a tinker like Dragon on the network. For two, it put my high-powered magic scanner directly next to Miss Militia’s active power effect.

Believe it or not I hadn’t actually planned for this. The scanner upgrade was a security and monitoring measure for Garment’s sake. I didn’t even think about analyzing Miss Militia’s power. It had been a priority at the gym, but things had gotten a little crazy since then. I had other stuff on my mind than the potential of copying that power into runic format.

But there it was, the scintillating mass of magical energy dancing in front of my scanner and set to remain there through a series of presentations, proposals, subsequent press events, and potentially even more. Just a few seconds would have been incredibly valuable, but instead I was basically getting as complete a scan as I could hope for without sneaking Miss Militia into my magic laboratory.

I was distracted from my revelry by the Celestial Forge making another connection, this time to the Alchemy constellation. My power linked to a mid-sized mote called Belmont Alchemy. It was similar to a number of powers I’d gotten before. Understanding of the mystical type of alchemy and the ability to produce items of power.

That was an understandably broad category which included various restorative and enhancing potions. Actually magical potions, compared to the ones produced through Natural Alchemy. It could also be used to make charms that granted protection or various blessings. Most significantly it could enhance weapons to a fairly significant degree, with the upper level allowing some truly impressive equipment.

All together it was nothing I hadn’t seen before. Potions, trinkets, and another way to empower weapons. I would have been one of those powers I filed away for later and experimented with when a major crafting project rolled around, or when a duplicate got creative during his 20% time. The last part of the power completely shot down that idea.

Dark Rituals.

I understood dark rituals now. Mostly it was centered on understanding and countering the effects of the rituals, but in order to do that you had to be able to know what was going on in the first place. Which meant you needed to be able to understand how they were performed. Which means you knew how to perform them.

I had just been granted an immense amount of knowledge on the nature, mechanics, and art of evil rituals. Actually, that should be Evil with a capital E. This was bad stuff. Worse than anything I had expected. It was a small mercy that this power seemed opposed to this kind of thing, with a great deal more attention on the prevention of rituals and how to counter their effect, but that didn’t change two major facts.

Dark rituals, as in full on ‘invoke the demon’ style dark rituals, were possible. And I knew how to perform them.

These were bad. Frankly, when the zombie reanimation ritual was one of the mildest of them you are in some seriously vile territory. Fuck, actual demon summoning was a possibility with this shit.

I wanted to just put this aside, but there were simply too many questions raised by this. The presence of demons and hell, or at least things equivalent to demons and hell, was something I wasn’t ready for. I understood parahumans, passengers, the shared and warped space the passengers existed in, the way they connected to and influenced people, and the multidimensional mechanics that made it all possible. I thought I had a decent handle on this stuff.

Clearly I was wrong.

“Survey?” I asked while I simultaneously connected to the A.I. through my implant. “Could you take over monitoring Garment and let me know if anything significant comes up, or if she needs my help on anything? There’s something I need to deal with.”

The A.I.’s hologram flickered into existence in the entryway. “I would be happy to.” She replied. “Though I wish to ask, does this matter you need to attend to have anything to do with the sudden addition to the Alchemist’s Laboratory, and the collection of indeterminate objects and human remains that appeared with it?”

I blinked and clenched my teeth. “Most likely. Please take over here.” Garment was currently sitting in the manager’s office with Miss Militia at her side sorting through the packet of identity documents that had been prepared for her. Huh, she now had a social security number.

“Absolutely. Additionally, your duplicates are making their way to the Alchemist’s Laboratory, most likely to also investigate this matter. Will you be providing an update on acquired capacity after the concluding of this inquiry?” She managed to put a hopeful edge to her voice and I was reminded how much she disliked being kept in the dark in terms of access to information.

“I will make sure to provide a report.” I replied. Survey made her hologram smile at that and I hurried on my way to the Alchemist’s Laboratory.

What I found wasn’t as bad as I feared. The ‘human remains’ were a few scattered skulls, mostly for ritual purposes. Frankly, compared to the aesthetic of my Laboratorium this was fairly mild. Actually, compared to the now-slightly-less-obvious human experimentation space next to it, this addition was fairly tame.

There was a set of worktables with new, arcane tools. An expanded set of ingredients and reagents were present. Various standard chemistry devices had been altered to account for the particular style represented here. And there was a large, but not overtly evil, ritual space in the center.

It didn’t need to be overtly evil because I already knew how evil it could actually be. I had detailed knowledge of every horrible act that could be unleashed through the invocation of a dark ritual. One bloody ceremony with a horrible cost and you could unleash any number of unspeakable evils on the world.

I also knew how to stop them, but was that really the point? Was this kind of thing even possible before I got this power? I honestly didn’t know which possibility was worse, that I had enabled this kind of vile art through the expansion of my power, or that this kind of thing could be happening across the world for eons and I had only become aware of it now.

I was pulled out of my musing by the sound of a pair of rapid footsteps racing towards the laboratory. My duplicates slowed as they saw the room and took in the ritual space.

“So…” The first one said slowly. “I guess we can summon Satan now.”

“Well, that should be the thing that gets the Protectorate back on our side.” The second quipped. “Definitely going to put their minds at ease with that point.”

I grinned at that, then broke into a dry chuckle. “I’m guessing you’re worried about the same things as I am?”

“Unspeakable evil, questionable source of powers, dynamics of the universe, possible theological implications, and that vague concern about what, if anything, this knowledge could possibly be intended to stop?” The first listed in a flat voice.

“Yeah, I think that’s everything.” I looked across the space. “So, what do we do about it?”

“Okay, I’m not saying this is turning into a particularly healthy strategy,” The second began. “But how about we push it to the side, ignore the particulars of this power, and pretend it doesn’t exist? You know, like with every other horrible thing the Forge gives us?”

I nodded slowly. “Alright, but I can’t help feeling like that kind of thing is going to catch up with us at some point.”

“See, that’s the great thing about that plan.” The second continued. “It will only catch up with you. We’ll be long gone, and there will be other guys who will have to handle those hard questions.” He gave me an insufferable smile and I returned a sour look.

“Fine.” I sighed. “Uh, I’m not going to have to worry about one of you summoning some random demon during your 20% time, am I?”

“Please.” The first exclaimed. “We might be irreverent, but we’re still you. If you’re not going to risk it, we’re not going to risk it.”

I relaxed slightly. “Okay. So, now what?”

I detected my duplicates checking in with the network. “Looks like Survey is managing Garment’s connection. Huh, one of the cape charities gave her a starting balance. Fifteen hundred dollars.”

“Nice, and she’s probably going to return that donation a dozen times over as soon as she can.” I said with a smile.

“Probably. Seems to be how they work. Set up a lot of Case 53s and heavily afflicted capes. Normally takes longer, but Garment’s gotten a bit more publicity than your average cape.” The first responded.

It was true, even if Garment wasn’t technically a cape. Or at least technically not a parahuman. She certainly did cape work, so maybe that’s all that mattered. Even a moderate balance could make a huge difference. I checked and saw they had moved on to various small business loans, along with the legal mess of lending to capes. That would take a while to figure out, and I trusted Garment not to make any immediate decisions and Survey to properly document the terms.

“Hey,” The second duplicate called. “We’ve got things set up down in the nanotech lab. It’s probably as good a time as ever to start on the nanobots.”

I nodded slowly. It was a pressing concern, and a bottleneck for a lot of other projects. Effective rapid nano-manufacturing was something I’d been dreaming of since I first got Nanite Sciences. This would not just put that within reach, but provide a major advantage in multiple areas.

The duplicates split off to tackle some more upgrades before they hit 20% time while I moved down to the nanotech lab and tried to stop thinking about my immense knowledge of how to call on the forces of hell.

Pretty much everything in this lab had started at a level beyond my cobbled together efforts, and had seen about four rounds of upgrades from there. The centerpiece was the newly upgraded micromanipulators. The technology had been completely overhauled, but they weren’t quite at the level of improving fidelity by a thousand-fold.

Fortunately, ‘nanotech’ didn’t mean you were actually working on the atomic scale. Interatomic spacing was actually closer to a tenth of a nanometer anyway. My healing nanites worked on that level, but generally anything that could be measured in nanometers counted as nanotech.

The point was, with enhanced micromanipulators and a precisely calibrated workstation I had a means of translating force from my hands directly onto atomics scale components. The difficulty of nanotech was twofold. You had to manufacture the components on a level of precision where you could probably count the individual atoms, and then you had to assemble those components into a working arrangement.

To say this was difficult would be such a massive understatement it wasn’t even funny. Non-tinker nanotech wasn’t the kind of thing that spilled out of containment and took over the world. Non-tinker nanotech was the kind of thing that fell apart because you got careless with temperature control or happened to shine a laser pointer at the wrong component.

That was not the kind of nanotech I was working with. I had a carefully prepared feedstock of adamantium, mithril, celestial bronze, and a half dozen precisely calibrated alloys, all masterfully mixed and enhanced by the forges of my workshop, with multiple infusions of material properties for each type.

The materials I was working with were so advanced and so refined that the only way I could process them was through manipulation of a new effect available from Weaponsmith. Power fields were powerful disintegration effects that could rip apart even the most durable materials. Adamantium slightly resisted the field, but it still took damage. Nothing else really stood a chance.

My tool of choice was a nanoscale power scalpel. Direct control of the effect allowed the production of tens of thousands of precisely shaped components accurate to a near atomic scale. Through all that work I was acutely aware of the upcoming nightmare of assembly.

This project was something akin to assembling a microscopic jetliner with tweezers, except every component needed to be forged by hand and the jet actually had to function afterwards. Then take that example and increase the difficulty of every element by a thousand-fold. The actual work was smaller, more precise, more complex, and with less margin for error.

Actual nanoscale assembly would have been an absolute nightmare without my expanded pyrokinesis. A slight temperature change can cause a nano-component to warp beyond the range of usefulness, and possibly beyond the point of damage. Different metals with different coefficients of expansion can literally tear themselves to pieces if connected and subject to a temperature change.

As such my first real challenge of pyrokinesis wasn’t the production of any monstrous powerful fire effect. It was the enforcement of a stable temperature in an area smaller than a human cell.

There was another fun problem I was dealing with regarding my designed nanobot. Namely, it was impossible to build.

Core systems of the nanite relied on cybertonium in order to function. Actually, building any nanotech without a superconductor was an absolute nightmare that had inspired some horrific workarounds. I decided to take those out and rely on cybertonium, despite the fact that I didn’t have any cybertonium. As such I was rolling the dice with Waste Not and hoping to come up lucky.

I was making good progress through the assembly, but that just meant I was more aware of how close that point was coming. My only real hope was Workaholic. Producing five nanites instead of one meant the odds were good that one of them would be functional.

The problem was I didn’t need one. I needed millions of them. I was essentially building cells by hand and hoping for the best. Once I got some working nanobots I might be able to accelerate things, but that part of the project was still a giant question mark.

The moment was coming closer, the tension mounting to the point where I couldn’t even appreciate the miracle of technology I was creating. One single random chance would determine if I ended up with any viable nanites, or if I was back to square one.

With unbelievable precise movements I shifted the final component a few ångströms, bringing it into place. I watched through my scanners as the nanite charged itself, began to boot, and died.

The nanite was a failure. The four nanites additional that had been formed by Workaholic were not.

I watched as tiny but impossibly complex machines moved slowly through a resource solution, bumping into each other and exchanging basic data.

I had done it. I had a nanite swarm. Well, a swarm of four nanites. Really more of a nanite quartet.

I wonder if I could teach them to sing barbershop.

Okay, that was relief talking. I practically sank into my chair and enjoyed the congratulations messages from my duplicates, Fleet, and Survey. I took a brief moment to note the passing of the Magitech constellation and checked in on Survey’s report.

Garment had worked through a set of loan options and made it clear that she would consider them in more detail. There were several offers that had been put forward to assist her, ranging from incredibly generous to blatantly exploitative. The worst of those clearly made the manager uncomfortable, but he was under some obligation to present them, probably due to affiliations with his bank.

On the more generous side a local holding company had offered favorable leasing arrangements with the option of purchase, though with the stipulation of a public statement about facilitating the offer. Basically, free positive publicity in exchange for not being totally scum with respect to the business arrangements. Garment didn’t even need to check with me or Survey to tell that one was probably the best deal. They had even provided a list of properties they were willing to offer.

Oh, and Miss Militia had graciously offered to Garment transportation to the various locations and security during meetings with the realtors. And no doubt plenty of press photos along the way.

Garment was keen to take her up on the offer, but I wasn’t sure how to handle this. I wanted to stay within range of rapid response, but frankly with an invisibility potion and repulsors installed in my motoroid my ‘rapid response’ area was anywhere within the state. Garment was also wearing a dress that had enough firepower to put down anyone in the city. Also, hovering around or following a PRT escort van would at best get me flagged as an overenthusiastic fan and at worst draw very much unneeded suspicion.

Garment sent a single text to Survey, simply the word ‘Going’. After checking with me we replied ‘Good Luck’.

It would take a couple of hours to complete that tour, and I was kind of glad that Garment was having the opportunity to strike out on her own. Also, two more hours of scanner data on Miss Militia, so I wasn’t going to argue with that. Instead, I turned my attention back to my nanites.

The hive intelligence of the nanotech matrix was much too primitive for any level of coordination, but fortunately I had direct nanite control in addition to the powers of a demigod of the forge. I was still doing the work by hand, but anything that didn’t need to be directly shaped or placed by me could be outsourced to the nanites.

The failed nanite was stripped down with the help of my scrapper power and its parts reused in the next run. That run was faster with available materials, but only yielded two viable nanites. That still left three that could be stripped for parts. Even considering the damaged and unrecoverable components I had more than enough from the three failures to construct a new nanite, resulting in one viable and four failures.

The next cycle of reclamation resulted in three successful nanites and two failures to be stripped for parts. At this point I was able to handle multiple constructions at the same time thanks to my Don’t Need a Team power. Every iteration gave me more working nanites and more parts to reclaim. It was a little ironic that I was essentially engaging in exponential production through my own crafting work without even using any nanite reproduction.

I eventually reached the point where I was able to start using Most Holy Order of the Socket Wrench, effectively functioning as a hundred people all working with my skill level and speed enhancements. One after another divinely perfect nanites were formed and unleashed into the containment unit. The use of reclaimed parts effectively reduced the construction time to nothing but assembly, and that was further accelerated as I got a feel for the technique. Eventually I was producing hundreds of nanites each minute.

That might sound impressive, but by the scale of nanotech it’s really not that remarkable. A drop of nanobots would hold over a million nanites. My thousands didn’t really measure up too much.

Well, they did allow additional production. Nanites produced by nanites under my control weren’t divine objects, but they were still immensely powerful machines. I still needed to direct the process otherwise the lack of cybertonium and enchantment effects would strip most of the functionality from the machines.

Still, but the time I received a notice that Garment was finished, after two fresh sets of duplicates and nearly a hundred thousand hand built nanites I had something. A tiny silver blob of incredibly advanced nanotechnology assembled around a core of personally assembled divine object tier nanobots. It was a start, a tiny drop of potential.

The matrix was still incredibly primitive, basically a replication and interface loop with a move towards ordered structures. I left it active in the containment unit with a link to the main computer. The nascent intelligence wasn’t nearly advanced enough to interface properly, but I didn’t want to isolate a new and developing intelligence.

I had… I wouldn’t say it was exactly a bigger concern, but it was more pressing. Garment had completed her tour of potential locations, each one turning into a ‘completely unexpected’ photo op, and was returning to the bank to collect her final documents. I had the fun challenge of figuring out how to get her back in the Workshop without exposing her or myself.

God bless Garment, as she was able to convey that the main entrance wouldn’t be a good idea. Miss Militia escorted her to one of the staff entrances on the side of the bank. It was still more exposed than I would have liked, but beggars and choosers.

I had about a dozen types of active camouflage available to me. Some technological, some alchemical, and some magical. I had ducked out to stop the fire with hastily constructed elven cloaks that blended in with the environment and avoided unfriendly attention. It wasn’t a perfect stealth system, and certainly not something I’d use in combat, but for hiding beside the dumpster in the side alley of a downtown bank while an animated pair of gloves gestures her goodbyes to the most prominent female hero in the city, well, it did the trick.

“Oh, no. It was no trouble.” Miss Militia assured Garment. “The Protectorate was happy to assist in your placement. I hope you have good fortune in your new location.”

The final decision hadn’t been made yet, but Garment was leaning heavily towards a place within a block of the gym, an old studio of some kind that had been shut down but fairly well preserved, and located in one of the areas with actual foot traffic and local businesses. I just hoped what Vince was worried about wouldn’t come to pass. I had grown attached to the neighborhood and didn’t want to see their lives upturned.

“And thank you for this. Again.” The Protectorate cape ran a hand over a silk scarf resting below her usual one. It had the same flag pattern, but with texture and embroidery making the stars and stripes pop even from across the alley.

Garment made an appreciative movement and Miss Militia nodded. She looked across the alleyway, her eyes sliding past my camouflage without the slightest tremor of recognition.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright here? I can call the van and drop you wherever you need.” Garment signaled the negative and made a reassuring gesture. “Alright. Please stay in touch, and good luck with your business.”

As soon as the door closed Garment spun and waved at me. I gave her a hasty nod and hurried to open the workshop through the now closed door. Garment knew the drill and quickly slipped inside while I sealed the entrance and skulked out of the alley.

I carefully made my way back to the parking garage, retrieved my motoroid, and drove back to my neighborhood, missing a connection to the Size constellation on the way home. After another round of shuffling away my bike I headed back to my apartment and back into the workshop.

The entire trip had only taken the afternoon, but between the revelation of my latest power, the stress of monitoring Garment, and playing roulette with the construction of nanotech that was being done by hand, I was exhausted.

Fortunately, Garment seemed to pick up on that fact and expressed some concern over my state.

“Yeah, actually didn’t get much sleep last night.” I confessed to her disappointment. “It was basically Dragon, to the fires, to preparation for dealing with the Undersiders. I got a couple of hours, and I can handle it better since the god thing, but yeah, probably best to get an early night.”

Garment was clearly in favor of that. I did manage to negotiate for a quick meal and fresh set of duplicates first, but that was about it. I had made good progress, taken steps that I hadn’t been sure I would ever be ready for, pushed my powers to the limit of what they could achieve, and managed something truly spectacular. I think I’d earned a few hours of rest.

Hell, maybe I’d go nuts and sleep for a full five hours, or just coast to midnight. That would be what, twelve hours for a normal person?

My projects would still be here when I woke up. The city would still be here. Survey was monitoring feeds in case anything came up, and hopefully we would have a quiet night.

It wasn’t like the gangs could afford fights like the previous night’s conflict on a regular basis.

*****

Addendum Meeting Report

Meeting Report: Conference, Dallon Master Accusations

In attendance:

Director Emily Piggot, PRT ENE

Mrs. Carol Dallon, New Wave

Dr. Nadir Bahar, WEDGDG

Mrs. Melissa Garrick, Youth Guard

Mrs. Dallon objects to the presence of Mrs. Garrick, citing the lack of enrollment of either Amy Dallon or Victoria Dallon in the Wards or related programs. Director Piggot notes the objection and proceeds with the conference.

Dr. Bahar presents results of secondary evaluation Re: Amy Dallon. Results indicate high probability some level of residual mental influence. Given the accusations made by Cape: Apeiron the evaluation of Victoria Dallon both independently and in proximity to Amy Dallon is suggested.

Mrs. Dallon refuses Victoria Dallon’s participation in any evaluations without certified evidence of wrongdoing.

Dr. Bahar outlines the procedure for certifying the results of secondary evaluation and outlines how this will introduce a delay of two days at most, suggesting that voluntary evaluation would be advisable.

Mrs. Dallon formally challenges the validity of the results of the secondary evaluation and the conditions under which it was carried out.

Mrs. Garrick inquires as to why such a challenge has not been presented for the results of the primary evaluation.

Mrs. Dallon refuses to answer the question and moves to have the results of the secondary evaluation thrown out.

Director Piggot reminds Mrs. Dallon that the conference is not a courtroom or formal hearing.

Mrs. Dallon raises the possibility of requesting a formal hearing over this matter.

Dr. Bahar attempts to defend the validity of the secondary evaluation, particularly in relation to the conditions of the primary evaluation.

Director Piggot reminds Mrs. Dallon that under a State of Emergency all parahuman matters remain under the jurisdiction of the PRT.

Mrs. Dallon challenges this interpretation of the emergency measures act.

Director Piggot reminds Mrs. Dallon that the conference is not a formal hearing.

Dr. Bahar presents a theoretical outline for the cause of Amy Dallon’s observed residual mental influence.

Mrs. Dallon challenges the validity of this theory and requests that it be removed from the record.

Director Piggot reminds Mrs. Dallon that the conference is not a formal hearing.

Dr. Bahar requests permission to call upon additional WEDGDG resources in support of his evaluation.

Mrs. Dallon objects to this request.

Director Piggot grants her approval to request additional WEDGDG resources in support of Dr. Bahar’s evaluation.

Mrs. Garrick raises the possibility of transferring Amy Dallon to an offsite location as an alternative to continued master/stranger containment.

Director Piggot agrees to take the suggestion under consideration.

Mrs. Dallon inquires if her presence is necessary in this conference.

Dr. Bahar again requests Victoria Dallon’s participation in a formal evaluation.

Mrs. Dallon refuses participation and makes a threat of legal action.

Director Piggot reminds Mrs. Dallon that under a State of Emergency all parahuman matters remain under the jurisdiction of the PRT.

Mrs. Dallon challenges this interpretation of the emergency measures act.

Director Piggot restates the terms of the State of Emergency

Mrs. Dallon departs the meeting.

Meeting is adjourned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Manufacturing Line (Valkyria Chronicles) 400:  
> You've always been of the opinion that technology advanced too slowly before you arrived, but now you can apply that to the physical world as well! Any building process you oversee, whether it be the forging of a sword or an entire tank factory, will now produce results twice as fast and with half the required materials used.
> 
> Alchemy (Castlevania) 300:  
> Through careful experimentation and research, you've gained understanding of the true nature of God's creation of the world. You may now utilize a lesser form of this art to create items of power, ranging from potions and charms to powerful weapons to drive back the forces of evil. You also understand the basics of a darker form of this art, enabling you to understand and counter evil rituals.


	45. 38 Build Up - Preamble Leet - Addendum Rey

Preamble Leet

Leet slowly cracked an eye open at the buzz of the alarm clock. The red numbers flashed at him in the artificial darkness of the room. He took a few frustrated breaths as the discordant beeping echoed around the room before finally reaching over to turn the damn thing off.

He shifted sluggishly, he climbed to his feet and turned on the lights. Three hours didn’t seem like enough time to really rest, but it had been working. Largely working. The last time he tried to set up an alternate sleep schedule he had been near psychotic within three days, and that was with Jeff helping him every step of the way.

Just like Jeff always did.

Leet shook his head and put that out of his mind. Despite the reduced sleep he was at least functional. Sleeping nine hours out of every forty-two freed up a huge amount of time, even if it tended to leave him irritable and a bit foggy in the head. He really owed May for helping him with the timing.

God, she was like something out of a dream. A longtime fan shows up with strong powers and the solution to all your problems. It was like something out of a bad escapist anime or any of the post- Kyushu derivatives, right down to her being a damn teenager. Still, Leet had enough experience in the cape scene to know not to underestimate someone based on their age, particularly if they were a thinker.

Thinker. Leet shook his head as he shifted off the cot and moved into the rest of his workshop. This wasn’t his main workshop. That had been disassembled when they had to scatter. Once again, May had given them a heads up on that. This place didn’t have any of the little touches he had grown comfortable with, but that was probably for the best.

May had explained things to them. He wasn’t sure if he really believed her, not until after that first fight. It was unbelievable the difference it made. So much of his power, the decay, the loss of options, the persistent failures, he had attributed it to the cursed nature of his tinker specialty. It wasn’t until he came back from that fight, a desperate battle where he actually gave as well as he got, and all the conflicts leading up to it, that he really felt the difference. Agents and Sechen ranges were real, and incredibly significant.

To that end, maybe this was better. Things were… well, not universally better, but at least they weren’t universally worse. The unfamiliar environment, the feeling of being on the back foot all the time, the desperate need for that new idea, it brought him closer to what it was like when he got his powers. Even the lack of a normal sleep schedule was part of that.

He sighed. For that, for a power that was actually usable again, he could live with some little discomforts. Looking around the sterile and professionally laid out workshop nobody would expect it belonged to Leet. But then again, what did people expect from Leet? Probably a basement choked with cheeto dust and mountain dew cans, covered in overpriced gaming merchandise with most of the space going towards TVs and game systems.

Maybe at the beginning, back when he had been careless and stupid. When he didn’t know about the golden goose he was bleeding dry with each new invention. No, his lab was as professional as any tinker on the east coast. Maybe not as good as Armsmaster’s, but the man had the advantage of his specialization to fall back on. He didn’t have to obsessively categorize everything he’d ever built to check for potential overlap, or calculate failure models whenever he considered a new piece of technology.

That had been what Leet’s lab was focused on. A massively organized system to try to squeeze the final drops of blood from the stone that was his power. He missed it, missed the security that it provided, but it honestly wasn’t anywhere as necessary as it had been. Just looking around he could feel it. All those dead ends, the branches that he was convinced would never bear fruit again, they were blossoming to life. He had potential again, and he wasn’t about to waste it.

He cracked open a can of Red Bull to try to banish the last of the cobwebs of sleep in his mind. While he sipped the carbonated battery acid he booted up one of his terminals to check the latest news reports. A frown formed on his face as he saw the feed.

Apeiron. Every story had to mention that tinker. There was just no way around it. Cape Blackout retrospective? Mention Apeiron. Report on Brockton Bay conflict? Mention Apeiron. Assessment of regional power shifts? Mention Apeiron. Story about Uber and Leet? Of course they mention Apeiron.

Leet paused on that one and brought up the link. It was from some California university. A local project that had gotten wider recognition. It was from a photography course, and the topic had been the image that tinker had posted to earn his ‘Verified Cape’ tag. The project had been about Apeiron, his image capture technology and the technique he had used, but the subject of the image wasn’t Apeiron’s work. It was his.

One of the students had decided to print out that picture as a mural and set it up on one of the walls of the campus. Like everything Apeiron touched it looked unbelievably majestic, but this time it was his own work that served as the focus of the piece.

Seeing it in the real world really drove home how grand that battle had been. This wasn’t one of Uber and Leet’s classic losses. Seeing it framed in the mural made it look like a clash of titans. Apharmd and Temjin weathered a rain of firepower that would have devastated any lesser works. Glowing shots bounced off of his protective barriers like a judgement from above. Apeiron had managed to catch an exact moment with Temjin shifting to a combat stance and Apharmd opening up with its artillery. The final effect was better than anything that had been put together for their own promotional shots. Hell, it looked better than the actual game did.

Skimming the comments, he saw the opinion was shared. A warm feeling ran through him at the discussion of Virtual On, the history of the game, where you could play it, and the possibility of a new installment. More than that, they were talking about him and Jeff. Actually, for the first time in years they were talking about him without focusing on Jeff.

He’d been seeing more of that. PHO actually had ‘Uber and Leet Respect’ threads, and they weren’t just about how he was the dead weight in the partnership. People were seriously talking about his technology for the first time in years. Sure, it was mostly to talk about how impressive it was that Apeiron had been able to counter it, but that didn’t change the fact that they were actually impressed with his work.

He switched over to PHO and checked the forum for mentions. His heart soared at what he saw on the Vs boards. “Uber and Leet vs Triumvirate”. Okay, nobody was predicting a decisive victory, but he actually had people arguing that his work would be able to hold out against Legend, Alexandria, or even Eidolon. As impossible as it seemed people were actually making cases for how they could, in the right circumstances, beat a member of the Triumvirate.

He sat back in contemplation. This, it was everything he had wanted. Power, recognition, respect, it was all here. He was still playing second fiddle to an upstart, but so was everyone else in the city. In fact, he was specifically playing second fiddle. As in the assessments went Apeiron, Leet, and then everyone else. People were ranking him ahead of Armsmaster and on a level close to Dragon.

Sure, it didn’t happen exactly the way he imagined, but still seemed good enough. Leet’s entire career had been a story of one compromise after another. Normally they were made in a desperate bid to stay relevant, to stop his power from completely failing. This compromise, it didn’t even feel like a compromise. Second to a tinker who broke all the rules, that was enough right?

Maybe he should talk to Jeff about it. It had been so easy to get caught up in things. May was extremely convincing and she KNEW things, important things. Listening to her had made this possible, but did they really want to keep going? If they bailed now they might still have a chance. Set up somewhere else, leverage their new reputation, and start over.

It had already cost them so much. Not just the old hideout. Their reputation was completely upended after the storage battle. It was nice to be taken seriously, but being associated with the worst of that night’s events… Yeah, they had been complicit, but they hadn’t been the ones orchestrating it. The cost from that mess was still being felt.

Their staff had needed to be vetted following the rescue. They hadn’t been happy to be dragged into that mess, and had been even less pleased when they got the full context of the event. Leet was well aware of how the public regarded being reduced to henchmanning for Uber and Leet.

It was kind of a joke, even within their organization. They didn’t have any territory that needed defending, and weren’t exactly pulling jobs that needed someone to be an expert in their field. Most of their help were guys who were one step away from homelessness and needed whatever they could get. That’s why it hurt so much to see the ranks dwindle.

Some left before they could even start the vetting, but the rest of them to be evaluated by Jeff and May. So many of the old guard had to be cut.. Mason. Frank. Even Reg, who had been with them pretty much since the start.

Leet missed Reg. The guy was careening past middle age when he joined and basically used henchmen work to make up for the complete lack of a retirement package or work placement for someone of his experience and skill set. He was probably the last person you would expect to be on staff for a couple of video game villains, but he always took things in stride. He was also a supportive and calming influence during the worst of their screw ups.

The idea of explaining what they’d done at the storage lot, what they’d been a part of, Leet had been dreading it. But that never came. Jeff and May cut him as a security risk at the same time they abandoned the old base. Now they were down to recent recruits like Gerry, people with no history of influence, and who Jeff assured would be able to go along with their new direction.

He needed to talk to Jeff about that ‘new direction’. Jeff was always good at talking Leet around to things, but Jeff was good at everything when he wanted to be. Normally he would have been fine following his friend’s lead, but this was different. They were flying high for the moment, but anyone could tell it wouldn’t last. Apparently Apeiron was tangling with Dragon. The heat would only grow from there. Even if they could handle it, where would they be when it was over? What would they be?

He finished downing his caffeine and began working out how to approach the topic when there was a brief knock at the door which then swung open without waiting for a response. A tiny Japanese teenager skipped into his workshop with a rabbit mask under one arm and a small box held in the other hand. March moved with the casual irreverence with which she had inserted herself into their lives. He was about to ask her to leave when he saw what she was holding.

“Where did you find that?” His voice was cold as he took in the familiar cover art on the case.

The girl just smiled as she held it up. “They had a copy at a used game place down on Langdon street.” She offered the cursed thing to him. “I know it’s hard to deal with, but stuff that’s important to your trigger can help you connect with your powers. I figured after Tuesday night you might appreciate the boost.”

The word ‘appreciate’ was probably the furthest thing from Leet’s mind as he looked down at the box in his hand. Crisp, professional, triple A title with quotes praising its quality scattered over the cover.

‘Cecil McHenry’s Alpha Strike’

He didn’t even remember taking it from her. Just holding it, seeing it this close was stirring up a storm of emotions that overshadowed all his previous thoughts. Leet didn’t know if it was bringing him closer to his agent or his trigger or whatever, but it certainly brought back things he’d rather keep buried.

May leaned in as he stared at the game. “Everyone always wondered why you never did anything from the Alpha Strike series. I would never have guessed it was because it was yours.”

“It’s not mine.” He answered in a hard voice. The girl just brushed it off.

“You know what I meant. It was just something people wondered about when you covered other Aleph games.” She smiled dreamily. “Most people don’t have that possibility. Born too late. You’re lucky like that.”

Lucky. Leet held back a flinch at the near physical sting of the word. This stupid game. What would his life have been like if he never heard about it? If they never decided to import it. If he didn’t run into an instant classic, mega hit, genre defining, masterpiece game with his name on it?

How were you supposed to deal with that? Before that… well, he could barely remember. He had been happy, or at least content. He certainly hadn’t been obsessing over his Aleph alternate, trying to figure out the slight changes that lead to him being an entry level I.T. worker in one universe and a rockstar game designer in the other.

Without that he never would have decided to found his own studio. He never would have experienced that slow, horribly dragged-out failure as they desperately tried to come up with anything that would work. Jeff wouldn’t have been wearing a dozen hats as they lost people from what passed for their marketing, accounting, finance, testing, and legal departments.

And it wouldn’t have come to a head with that last moment. The half-baked game barely ready for release that might have let them tide things over, until they received the cease and desist order. A declaration that his name couldn’t be on the title. He didn’t have the rights to his own name. That other him, the version whose only crime had been existing as something he couldn’t match was suddenly in his life, looming over him and snatching away the last hope he had.

He forced his clenched hand to release. It wasn’t pleasant, but that was the point. That was what May had told them about. They could be comfortable bumbling villains slowly sliding towards irrelevance, or they could step up, away from what they used to and try to actually make a name for themselves. The name Leet, not Cecil. Aleph could have that one. He would make do with his own.

“Thanks.” He forced himself to say the word as he set the game on a worktable with a shaking hand. “It, it might help.” He turned back towards the girl. “Anything else?”

“Yep.” She replied in a light voice. “Bakuda. She wanted to talk with you. I said you’d call after you woke up.” The girl scrunched her nose. “She complained about the sleep schedule, but I said I wasn’t going to wake you early.”

The prospect of that hit Leet harder that he expected. The sleep schedule was working, but just barely. The idea of losing even an hour of sleep felt like an unimaginable disaster, and he felt an instant wave of gratitude towards May for putting the other tinker off.

“Thank you for that.” He sighed. “I better get this over with. Any idea what she wants?”

The Japanese girl shrugged, sliding up to sit on the edge of a workbench. “Probably more technology exchanges. She’s trying to get ready for the upcoming operation.”

Leet nodded and activated the VoIP system he had set up when he moved into this lab. As the call connected he shifted his attention to other projects. Bakuda was just plain stressful to deal with, and any level of distraction during the call would be a godsend.

“Finally. Did you have a nice nap there sleeping beauty?” The voice that came from the computer speakers was the girl’s natural voice, not the electronic filter she had used in public. As such it came across as demanding, petulant, and massively entitled. He wasn’t sure if she had a naturally whiney voice, or just couldn’t filter herself, but without the electronic voice changer she would never have been taken seriously on the battlefield, no matter how many hostages she had.

“Yeah, I don’t want to hear that from someone who needed twenty hours to sleep off her loss on Saturday.” He smiled slightly as he heard her choke over her words.

“Well maybe if you knew half as much about medical tech as you claimed it wouldn’t have taken so long.”

“Excuse me? Claimed? It was still good enough to hold you together with two and a half severed limbs. And you were the one begging to see my medical work, and my scanning work, and my communications work, and…”

“Well I figured you’d want to see how a real tinker would build that stuff. Show you what it looks like to make something without more defects than features.”

“Defects like how your scanning bombs were going to steal all of Apeiron’s secrets. How many did you get? Oh, right. None.”

“Don’t blame your fuckups on me. You weren’t complaining about how those worked on Armsmaster’s lab, and if your stealth tech had stood up to Apeiron maybe the plan would have held together.”

“Right, and if you had let me have a spatial destruct bomb rather than my own model then Apeiron wouldn’t have walked out of that crater. But no, you wanted everything on your launch platform. How did that work out again?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t the one who got my head handed to me on a live broadcast. How did that feel anyway?”

Leet’s stomach fell as he remembered how it had felt in that fight, the hopelessness as everything he brought to bear was countered effortlessly. Apeiron had seemed like an invincible opponent, an impassable obstacle. Was there even a point in maintaining this conflict?

May leaned forward from her place on the workbench, enjoying her spectator position to the now familiar rounds of arguments. The movement of her body revealed the image Apeiron had posted, displayed on the screen behind her. It was a reminder of how far he had come. He might be flailing against Apeiron, but he was doing better than anyone else.

“Is there a point to this, or did you just miss my company?”

Bakuda scoffed through the line. “You wish. I need you to send over some more of your junked stealth tech to see if I can do something with it. I’ve already finished the analysis of the data from your last fuck up, so I’ll send a copy of that, let you see how a proper tinker works. Oh, and try not to screw up next time. I know this is a joke to you but some of us actually take this seriously.”

Despite the barely veiled insults Leet smiled. Bakuda would rather eat one of her own explosions that admit to a collaboration, but she on some level knew their relationship was give and take. While the bomb tinker could work at a prodigious rate she didn’t have the resources of a tinker who had been rebuilding his gear on a weekly basis for years. Now that he could actually rely on his old inventions he had warehouses of equipment to call on, something Bakuda had to respect as she scrambled to rebuild from one disastrous expenditure after another.

It was kind of ironic. Bakuda’s specialty was designed to accommodate disposable technology and has a construction speed to match, but she was finding herself overextended. He had been increasingly conservative throughout his career, but the moment he started to get reckless with his technology was the moment his backlog became viable, meaning he had a resource pool that dwarfed Bakuda’s in both volume and versatility.

“I’ll send some over. Maybe it’ll stop Apeiron from dropping another pair of battlesuits on top of you.”

“Worry about yourself. If you can’t come back with some decent data this time I don’t have time to bother with you.”

“Sure, like you ever do.”

“Whatever.”

“Fine.”

He cut the call to see May grinning at him. When he raised an eyebrow she smiled even wider.

“You two are so cute together.” She crooned.

Leet rolled his eyes. “Please. I’m not into college age crazy chicks, and I’m pretty sure she feels the same.”

“Doesn’t matter.” May sung. “Your agents are having the best time together. They’ll keep nudging you together until something happens.”

His stomach clenched at the suggestion. To Leet, that sounded more like a threat than an enticement. He suppressed a shudder as he stood from his computer. A lot of what May has said worked out, and made even more sense after Saturday, but she seemed to have an almost religious confidence in the principles she espoused. It made him uneasy at times.

“I’m going to check on Jeff, see what we need for the next job.”

May nodded at his words and trailed after him as he left the lab.

Bakuda’s digs about their last job still stung. It had been going so well, right up to the last moment. Once again, it was on him. He had hesitated, fucked up, and blown their chance. Just like so many other times, only he couldn’t blame it on a tech failure. It had been entirely his own weakness.

At the start of that fight they had felt like gods. That wasn’t an exaggeration. Against what Faultline’s Crew could bring against them it was like someone had typed IDDQD in Doom. The whole enterprise was a lesson in what happened when the new Uber and Leet fought anyone who wasn’t Apeiron.

Apeiron could break layered force fields, weather insane amounts of damage, and pull new tricks out of nowhere. Compared to that, Faultline’s Crew failed on every level. Newter couldn't touch them, Spitfire might as well have been using a super soaker, and Faultline herself couldn’t come close to Uber in melee and did even worse at range. Gregor was almost a threat in terms of battlefield control, but with May’s advice and his own prep the Case 53 had been trivial to contain and work around.

That just left Labyrinth. The only thing close to a challenge and the objective of the entire mess. May had seen through her weakness, and all it took was driving her out of the area to which she’d attuned herself, and suddenly she was helpless.

That was where he’d fucked up. He’d gotten the scans of her power in action, he’d gotten the readings of her body. All they needed was the data from the invasive examination. He’d had her cornered. The probe was ready. One stab was all it would take.

He’d choked. He couldn’t go through with it. Then Gregor had slipped past them and laid down enough foam to block her off. With the Protectorate active and May’s assurance that the National Guard would be moving out soon they bailed with what they had. A bare fraction of the data they set out for.

It had happened before, more times than he could count. It’s just the hesitation usually went hand in hand with some other failure that covered it up.

There were parts of being a villain that were hard to handle. When they started they agreed on limits, on how far they would go. That had been back when they thought they had all the power in the world. Build anything and do anything. Morals and standards were the first thing to be compromised when you didn’t have the strength to back them up. And like everything, Jeff had managed that better than him.

Jeff could handle any technique to perfection. That included compartmentalization and emotional resistance techniques. No matter how bad things got he was always able to push through, keep his cool, and manage the aftermath. He never ended up vomiting in the bathroom after a particularly brutal or bloody mission.

He had tried to help Leet, but like with so many things Leet just couldn’t keep up. No matter what they tried, whether mental discipline training, exposure therapy, or even KGB anti-interrogation techniques he always seemed to be five steps behind. Never able to put his emotions aside and focus on the job at hand.

The Grand Theft Auto run had been the worst. Leet had wanted to focus on stealing cars. After all, Grand Theft Auto should be about grand theft auto. As usual, Jeff had talked him out of it. Carjacking wasn’t cinematic, so they wouldn’t get the online audience. Even though Downtown was full of expensive cars they also had expensive trackers and security systems. They might be able to grab them, but they would never be able to flip them. It would just be hijack and joyride, and nothing people couldn’t see anywhere else. Finally, they would be stealing from the people who went to Protectorate fundraisers. A dozen people constantly complaining about them to the city’s heroes and suddenly they’d have the Protectorate needing to make an example of them.

Carjacking wasn’t what was iconic about GTA, beating up prostitutes was. Leet had suggested a dozen options, from holograms to androids, and Uber had shot them all down. Couldn’t waste the tech for something that petty. Even the basic holograms, the old ones that would have matched the graphics of GTA3 got rejected. Instead they had gone out into the docks and attacked any street walkers they came across.

Leet didn’t like it, but he had never been able to talk Jeff around. Even before he got his power there had been a gap. Maybe if he just admitted he wouldn’t be able to handle it, things could have been different, but instead they had embarked on the worst received job of their entire career.

Once again, it was Leet who fucked it up. He cornered a working girl, one who had looked like a decent target from a distance, but up close, looking up from where she’d been knocked down on the curb, it was another story. She was young, too young for that kind of work, and the look in her eyes…

Leet had hesitated. The girl had seen her chance and taken it. One kick to his crotch, captured for the world, and the failure of his weapon management system sending emulated knives and bats across the ground. Jeff hauled him out of there, but it was still a damn mess. All because he couldn't put aside his emotions like Jeff could.

Speaking of, he found Jeff in one of the smaller workshops with a disassembled motorcycle frame propped up in the middle of an explosion of parts. “New hobby?” He asked upon entering.

His friend smirked at him and nodded to May. “Nah. Figured I’d get some basics set up in case we wanted to go with a motorcycle theme, you know, Meet Apeiron half way.”

Leet bit back his reaction at the statement. This kind of thing had happened more often as time went on. At first he handled all the equipment, but as he became less reliable Uber had to cover more of the bases, usually with a trip to Best Buy and a construction blitz afterwards. He shook the feeling off.

“What are you thinking? Something like Full Throttle?” Looking over the parts that didn’t seem to match up.

“More towards Motor Raid or something like that.” He gestured towards the screens where various futuristic or Japanese motorcycles were displayed. Usually promotional pictures, but a few ‘on the street’ pics as well. One in particular stood out quite prominently.

“Like that, huh?” Leet asked, pointing at the monitor in question. Uber was shameless in his response.

“Hey, someone restores a Suzuki from the golden age of Japanese video games, of course I’m going to reference it.” He said with a grin.

“Right, the Suzuki. That’s what everyone’s looking at. And also why it’s featured on ‘Brockton Boardwalk Babes’, right?” The two capes shared an irreverent look, much to May’s amusement.

The picture in question did indeed have a completely restored Suzuki motorcycle, but the focus was on the incredibly stacked girl in pink leathers and a matching helmet posing for the camera. Behind her was the presumed owner of the bike in a motorcycle jacket and full-face helmet, somehow looking stoic despite the company of a woman who put most grid girls to shame.

That was the classic Boardwalk dynamic. Some rich douche cruising by, acting irreverent while showing off to everybody, complete with trophy girlfriend and classic ride. Leet didn’t even want to think about how much it would cost to keep a bike like that in parts. Japanese bikes were famous for their status as either time or money sinks, and Leet doubted someone like that was doing their own maintenance work.

“We have something lined up for after the next job?” He asked generally towards May and Jeff. They shook their heads.

“More of a passing idea.” Jeff admitted. “Motorcycles are catching on, so I wanted to get ahead of the curve.”

“Plus, Apeiron might not be a problem by the time you get back.” May replied cheerfully. Uber and Leet shared a look at that, but decided not to comment. There was a mutual doubt that things would go any better for the combined ABB than they had for them, but it had been made very clear that staying out of ABB business would be good for their long-term prospects. Despite the fact that their trick with the Virtuaroids had accomplished its primary goal of distracting Protectorate attention, they were maintaining the narrative of just being hired on by May.

The ABB didn’t owe them anything. Lung didn’t owe them anything, and even suggesting such a thing would not be good for anyone involved. May knew how to manage things, and Leet had trusted her and Jeff’s discretion when dealing with the warlord.

“Oh, come on.” She teased upon seeing their reaction. When they didn’t relent she made an exaggerated pout. “Fine, doubt me.” She let out a sigh and turned to Jeff. “You finished what we talked about?”

“Yep,” He answered standing up, “wrapped it up this morning.”

“What?” Leet asked. Uber just grinned at him.

“Come on, you’re going to want to see this.” The big cape jumped to his feet and led them out of the room. A couple of turns through the converted warehouse led them to a room with a tarp on the floor, the reek of drying paint, and a massive wall mounted canvas showing a hauntingly familiar scene.

The painting looked almost abstract. The twists of flesh and jagged crystals that seemed to blend into the space around it. Infinite complexity, approximated in a way only Jeff’s perfect technique could manage. Even the background was beautifully rendered, with shadows of other masses and the complicated links connected to them.

“Perfect.” March’s voice was almost reverent as she looked at the massive painting. “That’s it. That’s exactly it. This is just what I need.”

Perfect. Maybe for Uber and March, but not for Leet. Not for what Leet saw. Not the image that burned into his mind when Apeiron’s motorcycle crashed. He hadn’t understood at the time. Not until they spoke with May. They hadn’t known what Apeiron had been working with, or what they had seen.

May had been ecstatic. She told them what it meant, about her own look behind the curtain, at the source of powers. Just one more thing in the terror that was Apeiron’s technological prowess.

But Leet had a niggling concern, an uneasiness that came when Uber and March described their visions. Seeing Uber’s rendition of the scene it was confirmed.

Leet’s vision hadn’t been like Uber’s, or what March described. He still saw the same construct of crystal and flesh, the same immense scale and sense of connection. But that was the only connection. Those links, the shadows of other forms in the distance that Uber had lovingly rendered, were absent from his vision. Specifically absent. Missing. Lost. Forsaken.

The feeling he got wasn’t the sense of power or confidence that Uber or March described. It was confusion, frustration, and loss. The sense that something was missing, that things weren’t going the way they should, and the lack of any way to make them right.

It was a feeling Leet was familiar with. Of everything May had said about bringing them closer to their agent, nothing seemed to be as significant as that. As standing in the presence of the source of your powers and feeling the same way it did. Of understanding where it was coming from and what it needed.

It was a connection, one that had been absent or ignored through most of his time as a cape, but was now surging to the forefront. It was something he could work with, and something that could work with him.

“Thank you!” May hugged Jeff in her excitement. “This will make so much difference, you don’t even know.”

Leet wracked his sleep addled brain trying to remember what this was supposed to be for. “It’s something about reinforcements, right?”

May nodded. “Don’t want to jinx it, but someone leaving New York is very interested in power mechanics. This might tip things in our favor.”

“Won’t they just go to Apeiron instead of you?” Jeff asked. May scoffed in response.

“Maybe if anyone could get a hold of him.” She said with a derisive expression. “Apeiron had his moment and let it pass. All the power in the world doesn’t mean anything if you can’t move it at the right time.”

Leet didn’t like the reference to ‘all the power in the world’, or how appropriate it sounded regarding Apeiron.

“You need us for any of that?” May shook her head at Jeff.

“No, we’re on a tight schedule between the plan for Apeiron and this recruitment. You have the timing for Barrow?”

Leet nodded. “Got it all down. If you’re right we should be able to hit him and Blasto’s new lab before Lost Garden can mount anything against us.”

It was something Leet was actually looking forward to. Sure, it was probably to get them out of the city when Lung made his move against Apeiron so that there wouldn’t be any question as to the credit for the attack, but it was a job he was confident he could handle. Compared to Labyrinth there would be no problem going after Barrow. A middle aged man who surrounded himself with teenagers, even with a supposed environmental movement, was sketchy as hell.

This was it. This was the real reason why he was sticking around. He had seen it in the data they pulled from Armsmaster’s lab. The scale of his long term projects. Nanothorns. Combat prediction software. An Endbringer early warning system. The kind of projects that changed the face of the world, that defined capes on a national scale.

The kind of projects he could have done. Well, he could have, if he didn’t waste his potential with stupid gimmicks.

He had lamented how many branches of technology he had wasted early in his career, how he could have done better with them. Until he saw Armsmaster’s data, or Bakuda’s dead man encryption he didn’t realize just how much better he could have done. He could have been operating at the level of String Theory, and instead he was playing three steps behind Trainwreck.

It just hadn’t been possible. Projects like that required resources, funding, and, most importantly, raw data. Early in his career they’d had none of those. Now they had them all. Years of projects were suddenly usable, both in the field and in support of his tinkering. May’s timing let him work better and more efficiently, and with Bakuda he finally had the data he needed.

He had thought it didn’t matter, that research didn’t apply to him. That was before he saw Armsmaster’s scans of Clockblocker, Dauntless, and Battery. Bakuda’s assessments of Shadow Stalker and Vista. Capes were a gold mine of data just waiting to be exploited.

He only had a few trees he’d stayed away from completely. May and Jeff were pushing for more wet tinkering, something they’d be able to pick up from Blasto’s lab. Leet could do that, but it was an unpleasant and nightmarish option. But he had another choice.

Dimensional technology.

With enough work he could match and possibly exceed Professor Haywire. He had scans of Vista and Shadow Stalker. Despite not getting the final samples he had gotten extensive data on Labyrinth, and now Barrow was in their sights. They would take everything the could from him, squeeze every drop of dimensional knowledge possible. And when Leet finally used that tech tree it would be what he was built to make, what he should have made from the start.

A masterpiece.

He already had plans. The digitization disk was only the tip of the iceberg. Every scrap of data improved his plans, and the ABB’s swollen reserves fed by March’s heists made it possible. He would create a work of tinker tech the likes of which the world had never seen before.

That would be his legacy. Not a game made in another universe. Not a string of failures and exploding technology. Not a man without the spine to be a villain or the will to find another path. A visionary. And inventor. An artist. Leet would succeed in a way that would eclipse all of those little failures.

And the Game Grid would come online.

38 Build Up

I woke wonderfully rested and refreshed in a way only possible with One Thing at a Time. The completely alien feeling of refreshment, energy, and a sense of being ready to face the day infused me in a way that was so discordant it was nearly painful. Fortunately, the scale of what I had to face in that ‘face the day’ scenario quickly settled over me, bringing the familiar feelings of dread and apprehension that were an essential part of waking up.

I took a few minutes to bask in the dread of my responsibilities before dragging myself out of bed and into my shower. One Thing at a Time had also compressed my sleep into half the usual time, meaning that despite the fact that I was making up for the previous night’s sleep deprivation my early bedtime saw me awake at a point that was technically morning, but a time of morning I was more used to seeing from the front that the back. I had half the night to kill before even the most ardent early risers would be awake.

I did take a small amount of pleasure in that. I had hated being forced into the role of a morning person, but it was really more than that. I wasn’t just a morning person; I was a super morning person. I could look down on all those lazy people who slept in to the hour of 5:30am. When they were fumbling with the coffee I had already been up for hours and probably rebuilt a quarter of my workshop in that time.

It was a petty victory, but the petty pleasures were often the most reliable. I enjoyed that thought as I got dressed, adding the lab coat that came with my Scrapper power and enjoying the possible placebo effect it had on my focus. I really doubted I would actually get a chance to look down on anyone like that, but knowing I was beyond even the most ardent early bird gave me a sense of satisfaction that held me through breakfast.

During and past breakfast that satisfaction was eclipsed by the sheer joy of the meal I had managed to prepare. Cooking was even faster and required less ingredients than before. There were enough external factors to stop the entire process from counting as ‘handmade’ meaning the result was a touch shy of a fully fey crafted divine object, but the quality increases from One Thing at a Time, Elven Enchantment, Lack of Materials, and Master Craftsman produced an end product that could barely be described as food.

Between the mess with Dragon, the fires, and preparing for the meeting with the Undersiders I had skipped on personally preparing my meals the previous day. My duplicates had set up enough handy appliances using Simple Scientific Solution to automatically cover just about any level of food preparation, which was handy in terms of saving time, but considering the level of my actual cooking at the moment I think I would be skipping convenience for the sake of quality.

I’m pretty sure there were potions I had made in the early days of my power that were less significant than the collection of eggs, bacon, and toast in front of me. Eating it didn’t just address my hunger, it fortified my body, restored my strength, and focused my mind. I’m fairly sure that PRT would classify my current cooking as a Trump effect; well, I mean if they weren’t more likely to assume Master influence on anything I created.

I cleaned my plate, and by that I meant it literally. The food was beyond ideal, meaning a lack of any residue. I’m pretty sure the plate was somehow cleaner and higher quality for having had the food on it than it had been before.

This was a complicated set of interactions that I really needed to figure out. Elven Enchantment could, with just its basic application, take properties of what I made beyond their physical characteristics, to a level where the perfection of the final product was essentially magic. Master Craftsman improved every aspect of an item beyond what should be humanly possible. If the entire object was completely constructed by hand it reached a level of borderline transcendence, but even without that there was a significant enhancement.

Without any other powers supporting it I would be producing items that were enhanced beyond the realm of physics, nearly indestructible with every positive and useful aspect of them taken to a new level. With something like Elven Enchantment factored in, well, suddenly a camouflage cloak was granting effective invisibility, or a solid breakfast was acting with the strength of a half dozen enhancement potions.

You know, this was really the kind of thing I should have fully explored before utilizing it in an S-class nanotech weapon capable of planetary destruction. In retrospect that didn’t seem like the best point to jump into, though I had been running on limited sleep.

Okay, 3am thinking was something of a joke, but I might need to take it a lot more seriously now that I had the potential to hand build nanotech assembly matrixes.

On that note I opened my implant to the Workshop network and reviewed the latest updates. It seemed the duplicates I had left active when I went to sleep had split their time between the nanotech lab, alchemy research, and some upgrades for the motoroid’s weaponry. Their 20% time was spent on more weaponry, this time mostly for the Veritech fighter.

I guess it was cute that they decided to add a pair of leg-based missile pods designed to accommodate the mole-mortars from my recent Weaponsmith power. The insanity of missiles that could be launched through the ground rather than the air was somehow completely in line with the theme of that power. With a database that contains everything from instructions on how to sharpen scrap metal into shivs to an intricate breakdown of the construction of a laser pistol that fits into a ring, off the wall applications were to be expected.

‘Mole mortars’ were technically a type of breaching torpedo. They used a combination of a concentrated power field, drilling array, and insanely high temperature projectors combined with standard rocket propulsion to launch through the ground itself. They were clearly intended for combat either underground or in crowded environments, though they could easily be used in more conventional engagements to strike from an unexpected angle, or just ignore every form of cover between you and your enemy.

It was the kind of ordinance that would be highly useful in a city, though the impact on the subterranean infrastructure would be significant to say the least. I doubt it would make me many friends among the city’s workers, but given the level of threat that would cause me to need to deploy my Veritech I think that would be something of a minor concern.

Checking the logs, I saw one of the duplicates had spent a good deal of time in the neural interface uploading as much of the weapon and armor database as he could. Actually, a significant portion of the database had been transferred. I wondered how he managed it, then I saw the system logs. That mental acceleration limit of twenty times faster than normal that I imposed for the sake of safety? Well, that was to prevent long term damage. The kind of damage that my duplicates didn’t need to worry about.

One of the duplicates had dropped in during his 20% time and slowly ramped up the speed until he found the level that would create enough neural damage to manage to dispel him. He actually managed to make it to 178 times normal perception before the stress on his brain and the cumulative effect of ramping up that high that the accumulated damage dispelled him.

It was a little concerning that copies of myself were willing to engage in such inherently destructive behavior for moderate gains, or just to see what would happen. I guess, being at the end of a limited lifespan with the irreverent attitude they had towards their existence it made sense they would indulge in behaviors like that. I just really, really hoped it didn’t say anything about my own mindset.

Their time in the nanotech lab had seen the creation of yet more hand-crafted divine object level nanobots, and a thousand times as many that were directed construction, and thus still enhanced, but lesser. The result of my and everyone else’s work blitz was a single vial of silvery liquid holding a borderline unthinkable number of individual nanobots. The artificial intelligence matrix created by interactions between the nanobots was still incredibly primitive, but also much more advanced than it had any right to be. With this type of nanomachine, at the base level provided by Machinist, it would normally require thousands of gallons of interfacing nanobots to even begin to form an identity. I was seeing the same effect emerge within a single droplet.

The duplicates had left the nanotech lab connected to the Workshop systems, resulting in both Survey and Feet continuously monitoring the matrix as it developed. It was kind of fascinating seeing the logs of their reactions, mostly consisting of them comparing their own state in similar levels of development to the nanobots, usually with a sense of fascination at the contrast.

The nanobots were a long way from even being capable of independent operation, and were only functionally replicating thanks to my ability to directly control them. Still, it was encouraging as a development and I was kind of excited to see an entirely new form of artificial intelligence taking shape in my workshop.

The alchemical experimentation and research had been split between my recent understanding of transmutation arrays, and the non-Satan summoning applications of Belmont Alchemy. Transmutation was comparatively easy. It was essentially a science and benefited from my research acceleration powers. Flame Alchemy was a fascinating subject with a lot of potential. Even with the ability to freely generate and control fire, being able to augment the effects with alchemy had a possibly exponential effect on range and power.

Belmont Alchemy was more complicated. It had more in common with various styles of magic than any purely alchemical system. The actual mechanics were based in an understanding of the metaphysical framework of reality, almost the divine structure behind the substance of the world. Manipulation of that principle was how every feat in the system of power was achieved.

Including the more unpleasant and visceral ones. The existence of hell and demons, and the presence of a divine counterpoint, as the source of the ability seemed to imply there was some kind of theological interaction happening. I had a hard time accepting that, though considering I was a demigod in communion with all the technology of the world maybe that skepticism was a little arbitrary.

The higher-level applications of that art utilized a kind of spiritual energy channeled into the alchemical items or bound into the charms and potions. It was another energy source now available to me, distinct from the others but with some serious potential for overlap. I had so many at this point that it felt like I was losing track of them.

Tier magic used mana to cast spells, but I didn’t know any spells or have the ability to develop the pool of mana. T’ai Chi Chuan, in combination with life fibers, unlocked an ability to manipulate chi, though the limits and capabilities of that were still a mystery to me. The Skyforge had given me a rapidly refilling pool of magicka, though like with mana I had no idea how to use or develop it. Aura was in a slightly better position, but still not reliable. There was a complicated spiritual cost to higher level Elven Enchantment that I didn’t totally understand, though the potential was tremendous. Setup Wizard and my wonderful wand had their own kind of energy, not so much a pool as a constant source and amplifier that relied on efficient use. And now Belmont Alchemy opened the possibility of spiritual energy.

Transmutation arrays ran off my normal stamina rather than any kind of exotic pool of energy. Tetra’s life fiber energy functioned in a similar way, as did my pyrokinesis and other divine powers from Divine Child. Those were at least understandable, and relatively easy to develop. The balance of the rest of my exotic energies was an entirely different matter, and something of a trial to both understand and manage.

The spiritual energy of Belmont Alchemy was odd, even by the standards of exotic energy sources. It wasn’t exactly magical energy, chi, mana, or anything similar. It was a vague force of potential, able to be channeled into any number of applications, but not operating by the same rules and restrictions as any of them. From my own understanding it could be used to infuse and empower alchemical items and weapons, and act as a power source for dark rituals. The rituals could function without it, but at a greater level of complexity and cost.

The other applications were beyond what that power had granted me. Things like converting spiritual energy into different forms of magic, influencing spirits, or channeling it to empower weapons. It was something I could potentially learn, but that was a project with as much difficulty as cracking the spell crafting of any of the other potential magic systems. I had easy access to a limited application and only enough understanding of the wider scope of the ability to know what I was missing. It seemed that it was something of a theme with my power.

I had just finished reviewing the last of my duplicates’ logs when I felt the Celestial Forge make a connection to the Clothing constellation. It was a smaller mote called Putting On The Reich. It was another fashion design power, one centered on uniforms. With it I could design uniforms and outfits that looked both intimidating and powerful while also being fashionable. Further to that, they would make my group look organized and official.

When I said they would make my group or team look official, I meant they would MAKE them look official. The effect was design based, but was practically supernatural. A slight alteration to lines and contours and any number of costumes and outfits I designed would bring across the sense of organization, power, and intimidation.

Given the theme of the power and the name I didn’t miss the connection, not when I lived in a city like Brockton Bay. This was practically a joke about Nazi dress sense. Fortunately, no part of the power needed that particular aesthetic or iconography, and it’s not like the E88 actually used that kind of design, aside from a couple of odd members like Krieg. The neo-Nazi style tended to be more White Trash than Hugo Boss.

The arrival of the power did bring me out of my contemplation of system records. It reminded me that I was due for a redesign of my costume. I had gained enough powers since the last time I had worked on it that it was badly needed. No doubt Garment had a near endless set of ideas for its new design.

I was more than a little nervous about the direction that could go. I think she was still holding out hope to be able to put those Barbarian Chic designs into practice, but I was confident I could shoot them down. Her more recent work based on my lantern shield was another matter. Garment was a lot more accommodating regarding frivolous design choices than she was when my safety came into play. The way she reacted when she saw Uber and Leet’s spatial attack was probably the most adamant I’d ever seen her.

I might be able to mitigate things slightly, but Garment knew a certain design would make it easier for me to use Aura, and there was no way she was going to totally exclude that from my next costume. At best I’d be able to downplay it, but considering my latest power there was a real risk here. That style, well, it was pure edge. The kind of teenage rebellion style I’d never embraced when it would have been mildly age appropriate. It was such a cliché, expressing your own inner turmoil through clothing. Of course, in an environment where people didn’t see a reason for you to have any turmoil then any move towards that kind of thing was seen as frivolous at best and idiotic at worst.

My real concern was how this kind of expression would interact with my latest power. I could design clothing that was supernaturally intimidating and striking. That was going to make an impact no matter what overall design I went with. Even a hint of that teenage edge look was going to be amplified to a ridiculous degree.

Well, Garment knew my powers, so if I didn’t deal with this it was only going to get worse. I sighed and started towards her work area. It was weird to think about it, but I was actually better at making clothes than Garment. I meant that in terms of pure assembly and design.

The Flock's Fleece let me go from the rawest of materials to immaculate clothing with almost no tools and in an incredibly short time. The clothing produced was wonderful quality, and would always fit whoever wore it. It also shielded people from extreme environments and acted as protective as light chain armor. Secular Skills allowed me to work with even lower quality materials and tools and still produce clothing that would look fantastic, an effect that stacked with The Flock's Fleece. Now Putting On The Reich further increased my design skills and allowed that inbuilt aura of intimidation, power, and organization

Those were just the powers that only affected clothing. From the universal side, Masterwork Craftsman improved the quality of everything I made, meaning I couldn’t make any item of clothing that was less than a masterpiece. That minor Blessing of Athena including clothing production, improving quality even more. Even the base level of Elven Enchanting improved the quality immensely and allowed the characteristics of the product to be directed towards a specific purpose. Using the full materials with my Lack of Materials power improved the quality and added new abilities. Lathe of Heaven further increased the abilities of whatever I made. Finally, if I did the work by hand then my Master Craftsman power would activate, causing the item produced to become a divine object, greatly enhanced in every aspect.

When it came to production time and materials, they were already greatly reduced by The Flock's Fleece. Do One Thing at a Time halved the already reduced time it took to make clothing and doubled the already excessive quality. Manufacturing Line reduced the time by half again, and also cut material needs in half. Workaholic meant I either got five copies of whatever I was making or only needed to work on something about one third the scale. On top of all of that the fact that The Flock's Fleece granted armor-like protection to the clothing allowed it to count, meaning material requirements were cut in half again thanks to Waste Not, and I could include materials I didn’t have access to with a 50% chance of success.

All that was just on the mechanical side. From a design point of view the clothing I made saw benefits from Bling of War, Decadence, and Beauty in the Arts, all increasing the aesthetics of the final product. It was a staggering amount of power behind everything I produced, and made it easy to understand why my camo cloak had been so effective. Incredibly, despite all that power, there were still areas where Garment exceeded my abilities.

The clothing I made, well anything I made really, was an absolutely beautiful product. At this point it was an intrinsic feature of everything I created. The thing was, there was more to fashion than just pretty clothes, and that was something Garment grasped at a significantly higher level than I could.

For Garment clothing was like its own language. What someone wore conveyed who they were, what they were doing, and who they were trying to be. She spoke that language like a native. I at best fumbled through it. My design abilities may have increased to supernatural levels, but my fashion sense hadn’t increased at the same rate. I could handle high class designs, and could manage a scene if I had enough control over how it was presented, but I lacked Garment’s innate understanding. I could handle fashion as a moment in time, not a continuity extending from past trends into movements that hadn’t formed yet.

The result was roughly that my work looked like museum pieces while Garment’s looked like a brilliant and well-conceived clothing line. Of course, when we worked together these problems canceled out and the strength multiplied. Garment’s inherent confidence in her work went a long way to addressing my concerns about any publicly displayed design choices.

While I was moving towards Garment’s workplace I picked up some more activity in the Workshop’s network. The A.I.s were active, both in their normal roles and in how they had been engaging with other projects. They were probably due for another update, meaning I needed to get Tetra out of stasis, meaning I needed to deal with the agreement about who had the best physical presence options in my coming technology.

I wasn’t sure if that was a serious fight, or just a rote presentation of properties of differing technologies that they happened to specialize in. Moderating a conflict like that wasn’t something I was particularly good at, so I hoped it never grew beyond the point where I could mediate things, or just separate Survey and Tetra until they found something else to focus on.

Interestingly, Survey was deploying a drone to me, rather than just contacting me through the network. That meant whatever she wanted to deal with wasn’t pressing enough to be worth putting aside her social development. I elected to not monitor things through the network and allowed her piloted drone to arrive at its own speed rather than prying with my implant.

That was also something I needed to deal with. A full replacement was something I was understandably nervous about, but now that I had functional nano-assemblers I could manage a patch job that would bypass that particular vulnerability. Skimming Survey’s report on Shatterbird I confirmed the vulnerability of the processors in my neural implant.

They weren’t the most advanced processors by the standards of what Space Command Engineer was capable of. That scaled all the way up to crystal computers, though my level of understanding of that technology wasn’t sufficient to fully recreate that kind of system. The implant still used silicon transistors because of their durability and reliability. Apparently whoever designed this thing felt the same way about repeated brain surgery as I did.

From what records and analysis Survey was able to assemble, silicon chips ruptured during Shatterbird’s attacks. Even implanted devices could be affected, with a few post-mortems from pacemakers confirming that in bloody detail. There was no evidence of it affecting silicon compounds that were part of a living being, so there was a Manton Limit at play, as well as artificial limits, probably based on her perception of her power upon triggering.

Powers really did not make sense when evaluated objectively. People thought they were working at the limits of what they were capable of, but those people hadn’t seen the workings behind the curtain. The passengers were basically taking their tremendous capacity and fumbling to come up with some kind of relevant application. Taylor was a good example of that. She could control flies and spiders, despite the massive difference between them. It wouldn’t surprise me too much if she could control worms or similar animals. One thing that was obvious was she couldn’t sense or control mites like she could the rest of her creatures.

The reason was simply that her passenger probably designated a group of creatures as ‘bugs’ for the purpose of her bug control power. If something fell into that group she could affect it. It didn’t matter if it was completely unrelated to everything else in the group, or if something excluded was a close genetic offshoot of something she could control. The limits were there and all she could do was work around them.

Or ask me to make a focus with Arcane Craft that would bend the rules, but there was a good reason I was keeping that power under wraps.

The point was that while Shatterbird supposedly could control silicon and silicon compounds, she really couldn’t. She could control silicon in microprocessors, and silica in glass and sand. That was about it for her powers. About 30% of the earth’s crust is silicon. There are huge amounts of silicon in rocks, concrete, cement, and more. If she could really control silicon compounds as well as she controlled glass she would be more powerful than an Endbringer.

No, what happened was she triggered with a power that was something like ‘control glass’ and her perception of things made that extend to things that she felt counted as glass. That meant sand because ‘everyone’ knows glass is just melted sand, like they dump it from a beach into a furnace and plate glass comes out the other side. She can also control silicon transistors because people don’t register the difference between silica and silicon and figure computer chips are basically beach sand or glass.

So, with that the majority of Shatterbird’s threat came from the social perception that a microchip was basically smushed sand, and the biggest moderating factor on her was the general ignorance over the quantity of silicon in pretty much every significant structural component of the planet.

From the post-scream analysis, it looked like the components were destroyed by the silicon portions basically exploding. Analysis of the rest of her attacks wasn’t pleasant reading, but did paint a picture of what was happening. My guess was some kind of resonant effect, which was also a popular theory in the Protectorate. The specific patterns of destruction were similar to what happened when a resonant frequency allowed energy to build up in an object until it exploded. Unlike in reality, damping effects or levels of mundane soundproofing didn’t seem to make much of a difference, suggesting that the effect was more of a vector for her power than something with a logical chain of practical physical effects.

That was frustrating, but did let me know what to expect. In the event of a Shatterbird attack the various microprocessors of my implant would resonate and then explode. The implant was ridiculously sturdy, but probably wouldn’t hold against the contained pressure of an exploding processor. After that it would be a question of whether my Fashion reinforcement power affected my brain tissue. Best case it held, meaning it would be like a grenade exploding inside a shell of solid enhanced adamantium. No damage, but not really pleasant, and would scramble the interface connections something bad. Worst case my brain would be pulped while leaving the rest of my head untouched.

Neither of those were exactly enticing options, and justified some drastic alterations if it meant mitigating the damage. The Magitech constellation passed by without a connection as I made my decision, which was also when Survey’s drone and hologram arrived.

Taking a second to review things it seemed Survey had taken to maintaining a single hologram and manually directing it around the Workshop rather than flickering in and out of existence. It wasn’t the most efficient method, but seemed to help with her sense of self and interaction skills. She was certainly mimicking a more natural stride than she had before and was moving the hologram as if it was actually aware of its environment from its own perception rather than the drone’s or the workshop scanners.

Case in point, when the hologram stepped around a corner it demonstrated eye movement and behavior consistent with noticing a new person, then made eye contact briefly before it spoke with Survey’s voice. If the hologram wasn’t a semitransparent purple form in the shape of a person it would have been an extremely convincing display of human behavior.

“Good morning.” A recent alteration, probably due to some duplicate’s 20% time, had resulted in a projective speaker system, creating the impression that the sound was coming from the hologram’s mouth rather than from a speaker on the drone or one of the wall mounts. “Though that term is typically not used until a few hours before dawn at the very earliest. Still, given that you have already slept, the commonly used but technically incorrect ‘good evening’ did not seem appropriate.”

“No, it wouldn’t be.” I replied. “Those kinds of platitudes are generally tailored to whoever you are speaking with and don’t need to be completely accurate. Using ‘good morning’ after someone wakes up is perfectly appropriate regardless of the actual time of day.”

“Noted.” Survey responded, and I could sense the activity in her main program as she updated her interaction parameters. Both A.I.s were advancing so quickly that I would never have been able to follow their real time progress without my enhanced demigod senses. “I have been asked by your duplicates to provide a summary of the night’s events, and supply a fresh duplication potion that they have prepared following the update.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really?” This was more agency than I expected from either Survey or my duplicates. They didn’t usually make plans that extended beyond their duration.

“Their exact request regarded the inefficiency of you returning to the Alchemist’s Laboratory for each renewal of the potion, as well as assurance that I would wait until all updates were complete so that they would not be required to sit through them as well.” That sounded like them alright. “Also, that the potion be taken before you begin any training or fashion experiments that would require you to change out of your standard outfit.” And that really sounded like them.

Though, considering these were separate duplicates with no connection to the next ones to be created it was interesting that they were looking out for each other, at least in a certain sense. The whole situation seemed like this duplicate culture had built up around me without me noticing, despite the fact that each set was a perfect copy of myself. There was no continuity between duplicates beyond what I was exposed to, but apparently that was enough to create something of a common thread for my copies to latch on to.

“Thank you for letting me know.” I said. “I just received a new ability relating to clothing design, so I’ll be heading to Garment’s workspace now. Can you update me on the way?”

“I would be happy to.” She replied, falling into step beside me. “Also, could I ask you to provide an update of the parameters of your new ability following your meeting with Garment?” Somehow she managed to put an eager and almost pleading tone into the last statement and I had to suppress a smile at that. I didn’t know how much of it was the influence of her original function and how much was her developing personality, but Survey absolutely loved information, and having an obvious hole in her information set was something that irritated her significantly.

“Absolutely. There isn’t much in terms of technical information, but I’ll provide an outline of the ability once I finish meeting with Garment.”

“Thank you.” She replied softly before shifting to a more business like tone. “In terms of the evening’s events, shortly after you retired for the evening Dragon made a public statement announcing her plans to transfer to Brockton Bay and her specific pursuit of you. The commentary has been very active following her announcement.”

I took a moment to digitally review the statement and cringed. The effect of the master influence was even clearer now. I wondered why I hadn’t seen it before. Then again, nobody had seen it, probably because nobody had been looking for it. It was obviously a subtle effect that allowed her to work within limited parameters, something that my passenger confirmed. Subtle enough that it had slipped past everyone’s notice. From what my passenger was telling me even members of the Guild didn’t know about it.

“On the subject of Dragon, analysis of the behavior of her interface program suggests it may be a partially autonomous pseudo-intelligence of unknown capacity. Upon conferring with Fleet and given the recent development of the nanotech matrix we wish to raise concerns that the program may in fact be another artificial intelligence, and may be subject to significant limitations and forced objectives.” Survey presented the results of her and Fleet’s analysis as she spoke.

Reviewing the data it was definitely concerning. Whatever ‘software based’ system Dragon used to keep pace with a full neural interface, it was obviously at home in the network. My passenger suggested there may be something to Fleet and Survey’s concerns that Dragon was using a third Artificial Intelligence. Given the advanced nature of the program and the distinct design it had compared to all of Dragon’s other technology it was quite possible she had found an A.I. and co-opted it for her own use. Given how advanced it seemed to be it was really possible that she was effectively shackling it in order to make it useful to her.

Not a pleasant thought and not something I would have thought to be in her character. Still, given the fact that she was subject to an unknown master effect that was obviously impacting her behavior anything was possible.

“I promise I will look into this thoroughly.” I assured Survey as we continued to walk.

“Thank you.” She mimed shifting some papers through her hologram and continued. “I have an update on the current gang situation in the city.”

That made my stomach twist. I had basically tempted fate when I was slinking off to bed and half expected to be awoken to another emergency involving a city-wide disaster. Since nothing had emerged of sufficient severity to warrant waking me up I assumed it was a somewhat stable night, but still kept rapt attention on Survey as she gave her report.

“The first major incident of the night involved a demonstration from the Merchants. The full roster of known capes as well as three new additions were deployed at the border between their territory and that of the ABB, towards the southern end of Pine Street. Present were Skidmark, Squealer, and Mush. They were joined by Trainwreck as an apparent new recruit. Additionally two new capes, presumed to be fresh triggers, were also present. They identified themselves as Whirlygig and Slush.”

Survey explained things calmly while also providing supporting information through the network as she spoke, mostly in news snippets, police reports, or bits of media that had been shot earlier in the night.

“Through public demonstration of their powers Whirlygig is able to exert telekinetic force on objects, though appears to be limited to rotating them in a counterclockwise direction centered on her body. Slush was observed generating barriers of a loose material similar to wet snow but without any reported temperature drop. Barriers were not particularly stable, but remained in place without active input from the cape. It is theorized that both individuals triggered during the previous night’s fires.” Survey explained. “The Merchants were joined by a larger than expected number of unpowered members, and it has been suggested that the gang has absorbed a significant number of the population displaced by the previous night’s fires.”

I frowned at that as the Alchemy constellation missed a connection. The Merchants were as bad as any other gang in the city, with the closest thing they had to a redeeming factor being their lack of discrimination. It made sense that in a time of crisis people would band together for safety, I just wished they had a better option. The city’s social services weren’t nearly enough to deal with the homeless problem, and hadn’t been for more than a decade. This was a bad situation, both for the people who’d had to run to the Merchants for safety and for what it meant for the power balance between the gangs.

People always looked to the parahuman membership when evaluating a gang’s threat. That was certainly a big factor, but without also having numbers on their side there was a hard limit to how far that kind of power could be projected. Parahumans may be able to seize and defend territory, but they couldn’t hold or use it. In a single night the Merchants had doubled their number of capes, and if the reports of the demonstration/block party they put on were accurate, may have doubled their non-powered membership as well.

I paused as I scrolled through the recordings of the event before turning to Survey’s hologram. “What do you have on Squealer’s new vehicle?”

The image of Survey gestured, bringing up numerous shots of the construct, as well as a preliminary evaluation by the PRT that had been distributed to the city’s police stations. “It appears to be a new construction rather than an upgrade or redesign of one of her earlier models. With the stress brought from heightened conflicts with the ABB and hero groups it is likely that a number of projects were rapidly combined to produce a new asset for the current conflict.”

‘Rapidly combined’ seemed about right. Squealer’s work always had a junkyard sensibility, but this was a particularly egregious example. I wasn’t sure if it had been an attempt to create a crawling aircraft carrier, staple six hummers together, or put a warehouse on treads, but the result was as hideous as it was devastating. The vehicle took up both lanes of the street and some of the sidewalk and served as the Merchants’ sound stage and command center for this event.

Normally I would say trying to bait the ABB with Oni Lee and Bakuda’s bombs still in play would be the stupidest thing possible, but the number of small automated gun placements on that vehicle changed the situation. I’m not sure if their application was as obvious to anyone else as it was to me, seeing as it wasn’t mentioned in any of the police or Protectorate analysis, but Squealer had installed a point defense system that would be the envy of every military on the planet while also making the gun batteries look clunky and barely functional.

Apparently someone had seen the videos of my duplicates’ fight with Oni Lee and decided to expand upon the principle. Given that she wouldn’t be nearly as averse to civilian casualties as I was it was a safe bet that any appearance by the teleporting cape would be met with a storm of indiscriminate supersonic lead.

Survey shifted from the images of the Merchants to recordings from within E88 territory. “Shortly after the Merchants’ demonstration began the Empire began organizing a large rally. This was likely both a show of strength after the previous night and an attempt to cover assembly to take advantage of any split focus from the ABB in response to the Merchants activities. Several prominent members including Purity and Rune were absent from the rally, suggesting an ambush may have been planned in the event that the ABB attempted any direct action.” The images shifted again. “Protectorate forces were split between all three territories, but did not engage. In accordance with the Emergency Measures Act, National Guard forces and members of the Wards were on standby to respond to any outbreaks of violence. Fortunately each gang’s activity remained limited to their own territory through the evening, and largely dispersed by the early morning. Remnants of the Merchants’ event are still active, but the gang’s capes have fallen back.”

I nodded. “That was lucky, but we can’t count on that kind of posturing to persist. Eventually things are going to boil over, and it will be worse than what we saw last night.”

The hologram returned my nod. “That is most probable. Your duplicate suggested an expansion of ordinance in order to address the coming conflicts, with documented proposals available on the network.”

I took a second to review it. This had been the real advantage of getting a chunk of that mental database into the computer. Armourer and Weaponsmith were instructive powers. They covered how to assemble their respective technology, but absolutely none of the principles behind it. Unlike every other technological database I had acquired it was strictly limited in function. That meant any alteration of the weapons basically needed to be done after assembly, since the significance of any specific step was completely unknown within the context of the powers.

By uploading the processes I could start assessing the technology in question and begin redesign work with the advantage of my other powers. Modularization, miniaturization, customization, and the advantages of my other crafting powers could be incorporated into the items produced.

For the most part. Some of the truly advanced technology was still at the limits of my ability to understand. This was basically tinker tech, in the classical sense. It was a set of instructions for how to obtain raw materials, verify their quality, and work them into arcane technological wonders while providing no true understanding of how they actually functioned. The result was a database that could be dropped into anyone’s head to allow them to start churning out equipment, but not one that allowed easy modification or development.

In fact, the entire field of technology seemed highly resistant to any kind of innovation. There was a rough sense of how old the various designs were, and the progress seemed to flow contrary to the expected direction. It started with immaculate works of technological wonder beyond my full understanding, and got progressively more basic as time went on. It wasn’t like the technology was being streamlined or simplified. More that certain components or principles were being lost and the designers just pushed on regardless. Even the crazy efficient laser rifles that were so numerous and reliable had still made compromises in terms or range, armor penetration, and stopping power. The whole situation was just more of the mystery surrounding my Laboratorium and all the technology within it.

The important thing was, despite having weapons so horrible I felt bad for just knowing about them, it also had the most impressive set of nonlethal ordinance I had ever imagined. The sheer scope of tranquilizers and paralyzing agents was astonishing. More than that, some of the toxins triggered a fear, hallucination, or psychotic response, seemingly just for variety of attacks. Also, given that some of the paralyzing agents specifically excluded any effect on the pain response, and some seemed to amplify it I wasn’t convinced this was a complete act of mercy, but I was willing to take what I could get.

The agents could be administered through a staggering range of gas throwers, grenades, injections, poisoned weapons, or even an absolutely insane set of weapons that had a two-stage attack that used a maser to destabilize armor before striking that precise point with a needle of crystalized toxin so small that the wound would be basically invisible and the rapidly dissolving projectiles would leave no trace.

Somehow I had the feeling that weapon saw a lot more use in assassinations than in non-lethal takedowns, but I was willing to work with what my power had given me.

I even had my own version of containment foam. Not quite as good as Dragon’s masterpiece, but webber weapons fired a mass of filaments that expanded when exposed to air, forming a nearly unbreakable mesh that would contract when stressed. The mesh also acted as a vector for a contact based anesthetic that would rapidly incapacitate anyone caught in it, and like so many of Weaponsmith’s toxins there was specific focus in avoiding allergic reactions. Really, the only way the web could be lethal was if someone ended up tangling to the point of choking themselves, or if someone with more strength than durability stressed its contraction reaction, which could result in the web slicing into them.

Against normal humans neither was a real concern. The weapon was usually used from a one or two handed spray apparatus with fairly short range, but with the designs in my system I could easily expand that to a host of applications. I finally had a reliable solution to the mess that was the ABB’s human shields, as well as a massively effective mechanism for bringing down less powerful combatants. I would guess more than half the capes in the city would be in trouble if they got hit by this thing.

“I’ll deal with that after I meet with Garment.” I assured Survey. “Also, I need to get into the interface throne for another update. I’ll be bringing Tetra for that.”

Survey’s hologram smiled. “I will look forward to that. I have been preparing a series of data sets to help Tetra understand her mistaken assumptions with respect to practical applications of life fibers when compared to the versatility of cybertonium based protomatter.” I cringed inside at the reminder of that particular conflict. “Also, with respect to the transmutation of cybertonium…”

“I will put together a plan and schedule for its production. Recent advancements should allow that project to be significantly accelerated from earlier predictions.” I assured her.

The hologram mimed shuffling papers again. “I have an updated assessment on the activities of the Slaughterhouse Nine.” I raised an eyebrow in interest. “An examination of police and mortuary reports in the area of their suspected activities as well as the Siberian’s recently observed hunts shows two clusters of suicides with similar characteristics.”

“What were the characteristics?” I asked, while also accessing the reports for myself.

“The individuals had no history of mental illness or warning signs and all inflicted self-harm using bladed weapons. The bodies were also thoroughly exsanguinated with no sign of the quantity of blood lost present at the scene of the event. Incidents occurred in two clusters, separated by time and location, but sharing the same characteristics.”

Well, that was horrible, as was expected of anything dealing with the Slaughterhouse Nine. The problem was I couldn’t think of any member that lined up with that particular description. That meant either we were missing pieces of the story, or worse, they had already gotten a new recruit.

I wasn’t even willing to entertain the possibility that this was a coincidence.

“Continue monitoring of the situation, and expand searches to surrounding areas. If they start to move I want as much notice as possible.” And I would need to deal with my implant today, just to be safe.

The hologram nodded and slowed as we approached Garment’s workspace. “I will expand my search and monitoring program to that level.” The hologram mimed looking down at a clipboard before continuing. “Finally, I believe there is a matter Garment would like you to address. She is currently waiting to present the issue.”

I paused just outside of the textile area. Survey had managed to make that statement both accusatory and apprehensive. A quick check of system logs didn’t show any hint to what the matter could be, and Survey wasn’t keen to share. I considered pushing the issue, but that seemed like completely blatant cowardice.

“Alright. Do you have that potion?” I asked, and Survey gestured to the drone where a small compartment opened to reveal a familiar vial. Another product of my duplicate’s 20% time. I nodded in thanks and downed the vial in two gulps, watching my own copies step out one by one. They took a brief look at the workspace behind them and gave me a grateful look.

“Uh, thanks for letting us skip whatever’s waiting for you in there.” The first said.

“Yeah.” Echoed the second. “Um, we’ll just see to those projects. The materials for Aisha’s armor are probably ready for finalization.”

Given the necessity of Aisha’s suit to actually protect the wearer rather than just withstand damage I had to break out the ceramite. Ceramite was a wonder material from the database of my Armourer power. It was both incredibly hard, though nowhere close to adamantium, and, more importantly, immensely thermally resistant. The main thing was that it came in varying grades. Low grade ceramite was only good for structural work. Middling grades could be used for simple varieties of body armor, flak or carapace armor.

I had actually thought those were fairly impressive before I saw the kinds of weapons they would need to deal with.

High grade ceramite was some of the most thermally resistant material I could produce. It not only insulated its wearer but also rapidly dissipated the heat of any energy weapon that struck it. It was also insanely difficult to produce.

Ceramite was, unsurprisingly, a ceramic compound. It was produced by heating a mix of specific metal and chemical powders under intense pressure. Higher grades needed more precise and exotic mixes of powders, higher temperatures, heavier pressures, and more time. My acceleration powers were able to reduce the possibly months long process to a reasonable timeframe. I had access to precision combinations of nearly any chemical mix I could want, and in terms of temperature and pressure, it was nothing a gravity generator, fusion engine, and trip to the heart of a volcano couldn’t handle.

The ceramite currently baking in my volcano was the highest grade that Armourer could produce. Forget lava surfing, Aisha would be able to bathe in solar plasma once I finished that suit. That was a project that would hopefully come together later today, though that would require getting Aisha on site for the finalization of the design. At the very least that would have to wait until it was what most people considered morning in more than a technical sense. I sent a message to her omni-watch for when she woke up before turning my attention back to the group.

I bid my duplicates farewell, gave Survey’s hologram a final nod, steeled myself, and walked into Garment’s workspace.

The area was much like I remembered last seeing it. The full assembly of my most advanced polymer and fiber production equipment meshed with a fashion studio, peppered with amateur video recording equipment that exceeded most of Hollywood, and an only slightly cordoned off area containing enough Dust weaving to both outfit and annihilate an army. However, instead of Garment’s warm welcome she aggressively gestured towards a conspicuously cleared workbench.

I cautiously approached while Garment waited impatiently with her arms folded. After I arrived she gave the impression she was staring for a moment before reaching down a hefting two heavy objects onto the work surface.

I recognized them immediately, thought I don’t think I’d either looked at or thought about them since Sunday night. To be fair, the appearance of a fresh S-Class threat in the form of the Imulsion pump appearing in my workshop had somewhat occupied my attention. The pair of combat boots that had arrived alongside the other equipment that came with my Xenospecialist power hadn’t exactly seemed that remarkable.

From how Garment was acting she seemed to believe I had been keeping the treasure of the ages from her. I didn’t really get it. The boots were huge bulky things, battering rams of footwear. They were clunky, armored things that reached to the knee. There was probably more steel in them than rubber or leather, and they had an obvious military look. Also, a frontline infantry look, not something from an officer corps or dress uniform. I wanted to ask what was so special about them, but from Garment’s behavior she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable about me having overlooked whatever it was.

So I took a breath and considered things. These were military boots. Really the only thing special about them is their arrival as a separate item with their own locker rather than part of the COG armor that also arrived with that power. When Space Command Engineer provided its own set of military hardware it had lumped all pieces of worn equipment together into the same set of Battle Dress. These boots being separate items implied there was something special about them, I just couldn’t figure out what.

I thought over what my power had told me about the boots. Besides being thick and heavy they were particularly comfortable and offered protection from a great deal of terrains. Outside of that the only thing noteworthy about them was their ability to effectively stomp enemies to death in a shower of gore worthy of a Gallagher performance.

…I am an idiot.

I’m an idiot and Garment knew it. It was incredible how smug a set of gloves and an evening dress could look. And also incredible how one small detail could be so significant.

The boots were weapons. They were also clothing, but unlike when dust was woven into clothing they weren’t clothing with weapons added, they were weapons in themselves. They were also armor. A single item, for the purposes of my powers counted as weapon, armor, clothing, craftwork, and fiat backed item.

Garment finally had fully weaponized clothing. It was a chunky set of military boots, but it was a starting point that fully counted as a weapon.

“I get it. Combat boots.” I said. “Literal combat boots. Boots for fighting.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I missed this before now.”

Garment gave me a sympathetic pat on my arm in a way that seemed to convey an understanding of the limitations of people who weren’t Garment. It did consistently impress me how she could make arrogance so endearing. Probably had something to do with actually being able to back up your claims.

Before I could continue I felt the Forge make another connection, this time to the Quality constellation. It was one of the smaller motes, but as soon as I got it I could see Garment’s excitement build. It probably wouldn’t have caused this level of reaction if not for the project before us, but with that as a possibility she was positively ecstatic.

The power was called Aesthetics and Flair. It was another design power, but this time limited exclusively to weapons. It made up for that specialization by being extremely proficient in its field. Fortunately it wasn’t another one of those powers that lacked an off switch. The workmanship might be supernaturally stunning, but it was a directed effect, not an autonomous one. However, when it was directed it could produce some truly stunning work.

And that was on its own. Combined with all my other powers, including the latest from the Clothing constellation, and it had the potential to reach some absolutely ridiculous levels. I could understand the level of excitement Garment was demonstrating over this pair of boots.

The power came with two smaller abilities that I’m sure Garment was thrilled about, but I was considerably less enthusiastic. The first… well, it was basically super powered sexual harassment.

Okay, the power itself was actually called Inexplicable Innuendo. It was the supernatural ability to make dirty quips or just behave in a way that came across as sexy. And I mean supernatural. It could be used to make people squirm, or even provide distractions mid battle. It was the closest thing to an actual master power that I had received from the Forge.

It was also so easy to use. The power was basically a set of mannerisms, expressions, eye movements, and a thousand other subtle details that I had never even thought to manage, all of which came together to convey the effect of the ability. It was also a full fledged power, meaning it was beyond the level of normal behavior. I had a supernatural ability to convey a type of emotion that I was not at all familiar with.

Honestly, I think I might have been less comfortable with this power than some of the S-Class threats the Celestial Forge had given me. At least with those I could lock them away and not worry about accidentally causing another internet sensation or round of misconceptions because I broke out Inexplicable Innuendo at the wrong time. The power would probably have been easier to ignore if not for that combat application. A moment of distraction was incredibly valuable, and I could see a thousand ways I might have to use it.

I just hoped there wouldn’t be any cameras on me at the time.

That was an equal concern for the second power that had been paired with Aesthetics and Flair. It was called Classy Contortionist. It granted an innate sense of ‘posing’. Once again, this seemed to be focused on sex appeal and throwing people off their game. Unlike the other two powers this wasn’t optional. There was an effect that would ensure that I would always be positioned in a way that made me look ‘good’. I could already feel its effect, a subtle correction in posture and shift in the way I was standing. It was something I was never going to fully get away from, even if I could probably diminish the effect slightly.

At least the Contortionist part of the power had some combat applications. The level of borderline monstrous flexibility it facilitated could easily be used to compliment any combat style. Just going through how it could work with some of the techniques from T’ai Chi Chuan or Skills: Combat was enough to nearly turn my stomach. At the very least, it was sure to take my opponents off guard.

And that was the milder application of that power. I knew Garment knew my powers. I knew she planned around them. Apparently she had latched onto the idea that a certain level of flexibility and physical accommodation was now present in terms of my daily life, because some of the items of clothing she was gravitating towards didn’t looking like items I’d be able to wear, comfortable or otherwise, without the benefit of this particular power.

Why did Garment even have that many types of skinny jeans?

“Uh, maybe we should deal with the boots first? I mean, before we get into any of that?” Fortunately Garment latched onto my distraction with great enthusiasm. She eagerly brough her gloves up and I placed my palms against hers. The white gloves shifted form as they folded over my own hands. I could feel the familiar sensation of Garment’s power as well as her skill and insight. That particular insight that all my immaculate designs couldn’t quite match.

Rather than just flop it onto a hanger Garment manipulated her dress and shoes to mimic the act of disrobing and putting them away. Once again, it was so detailed a display that I felt compelled to avert my eyes, as silly as that may have been. Between the Dragon’s Pulse and my other senses, plus Garment’s power I could tell exactly what was happening without needing to look. It just seemed intrusive to actually watch something like that.

Instead I turned my attention back to the boots. This was going to be a complete rebuild, which was something of a challenge when it came to fiat backed items. Those items were specifically designed so that they would restore themselves after 24 hours. It was a step up from the 48 hour repair effect I got from my Workshop, and had the added benefit of triggering if the item was lost or stolen as well.

The thing was, it would try to restore itself completely, meaning you couldn’t just harvest rare parts from one item and get a renewing supply of them. Anything damaged or removed would vanish when the item was restored. Fortunately that wasn’t the case with rebuilds, but that had its own problems.

Rebuilding an item, and having it count as the new base form in terms of fiat required some continuity of design. I could make alterations easily enough, but a complete strip down and rebuild was a serious challenge. Unfortunately, that was also the only way to trigger my powers that required the construction of a new item, including Elven Enchantment. I had managed this once before with my element zero pistol, but that had been a labor of frustration on the part of one of my duplicates. Luckily I now had an advantage that I lacked back then.

My Scrapper power was of dubious usefulness in terms of most applications. It would have been God’s gift when I was starting out, but now I was producing technology better than anything I could find in the outside world, and had gotten past nearly all my resource limitations. The prospect of breaking down an item for a few useful components didn’t have much appeal.

That is, outside of situations like this.

Scrapper would let me break down the boots to a set of workable components. Normally this would be nowhere near enough to rebuild the boots, but I had both Manufacturing Line and Waste Not reducing the amount of materials required. I also had Bandit Gunsmith allowing me to quickly rebuild an item if given access to enough broken components. Rationing, an early power of mine, increased the amount of useful components recovered from the scrapping process. When combined with all my other powers it gave me more than enough to begin a complete rebuild of the item.

This was where the full weight of my powers came into play. Every aspect of my abilities that applied to clothing, weapons, armor, or crafting was exerted to its limit. I wasn’t just taking the boots apart and putting them back together. The design was reworked with the advantage of my design and crafting powers.

The boots had enough metal and armoring to benefit from Smithing, Armourer, Unnatural Skill (Smith), Dwarven Craft, Divine Child, and Lathe of Heaven. In terms of clothing they gained the inherent benefits of The Flock's Fleece, the design boost of Secular Skills, and the inherent intimidation factor that came from Putting On The Reich. From a pure appearance perspective they gained the full benefit of Bling of War, Decadence, Stylish Mechanic, Beauty in the Arts, Tailor Made, and my Minor Blessing of Athena. Base materials in the construction were replaced with enhanced samples of magical metals and advanced materials, boosted by my Skyforge, volcano, and crafting powers.

But the boots were also weapons, and thus saw the benefit of another full range of powers. A high-frequency capacitor was added, empowering the boots with the full properties of an HF weapon. My Weapon Modifications power allowed subtle alterations to the design and additional creativity in the workmanship. Customized Weapons greatly improved the fit, usefulness, and efficiency of the boots’ functionality as a ‘weapon’, taking them from something of a specialist application to a consistently useful offensive option.

The quality of the work itself was beyond comparison. In addition to the raw skill provided by my numerous smithing and divine powers Masterwork Craftsman ensured that I displayed expertise even in the field of shoemaking, the first level of Elven Enchantment was used to pour energy into the work, and, most importantly, the work was done by hand. My hands, which remembered lessons from the Fey that I could not even comprehend, guided themselves through all of my commands and Garment’s directions to produce something beyond any mortal work. Something marked by fey lettering denoting it as an object above the realm of men.

As a starting point.

As I worked the Forge made another connection, this time to a smaller mote from the Magic constellation. It corresponded to a power called Heretical Adaptation.

With a name like that you’d expect something exceedingly dramatic. Broadly, that was the case, but not in the way you would think, and not from the start.

The power dove into a concept known as the Sakurai Theory, an extremely esoteric principle governing the resonance of magical sources and the manner in which they would convert that energy into physical constructs. The core principle seemed to be centered around the use of massively powerful items as the driving force for a type of weapons system. The thing was, this energy was heavily regulated. High powered items would require 301,655,722 locks to moderate their power to anything like a useful level. As more locks could be safely released the item and connected system would grow in power and abilities.

The secret of Heretical Adaptation was the application of this principle to other objects. Normal objects didn’t have nearly the same capacity as the magical sources Sakurai Theory had been designed to contain, but they had the same concepts of containment and growth that could be expounded upon. In essence, by applying this principle to an object it became possible for that item to effectively ‘evolve’ over time as limits were released and new and unseen capacities were developed. Using this power could turn anything into a self-improving item, basically Dauntless, applied to whatever I wanted.

It wasn’t an easy or automated process. The improvements were heavily based on the use of the item and its relationship with the person using it, but that didn’t change the fact that growth would happen, continuously and regularly, allowing my or anyone else’s works to be taken beyond the limits of my abilities.

Which is how I ended up with a pair of beyond immaculate, self-upgrading, divine, and enchanted combat boots. And four more pairs because Workaholic triggered as well. Only one was fiat backed, but thanks to my resource and efficiency powers I didn’t need to underbuild, meaning five copies were produced. That may have sounded unnecessary, but that would only be the case on the assumption that all of them were for me. And would also ignore the average woman’s reaction to footwear.

Two of the pairs were mine. All of the rest were Garments. Customized Weapons allowed each pair to be easily tailored and altered after construction meaning Garment was able to produce immaculate pairs of boots for a wide variety of situations. Well, three varieties of situations. I had a feeling we would be revisiting this particular type of construction as Garment discovered new outfits that needed pairings. Fortunately the mechanical and technological components meant the work was completed at a rate several hundred times faster than normal, and that wasn’t taking into account how fast I could work with my current skill level.

I had two pairs of boots. One was ostensibly civilian wear, though obviously high quality. Everything had been streamed down to the point where it could pass as a standard work boot, though very well made and not from any particularly well known brand. It lacked the knee-high plating or solid features of the other pair, but made up for that in sleekness and elegance. It was something that would be able to pair with just about any possible outfit or level of formality, even passing as a dress shoe if needs must. Even the fey script was concealed where the size information would usually be found.

The other pair was not going to pass for anything. That pair wasn’t going to be passed at all. It was unpassable. Customized Weapons allowed a lot of modifications to happen after the completed construction triggered the duplication effect. As such these boots were obviously cape boots. They were the pair with the fiat backing and more than looked worthy of that distinction. The design had some superficial similarities to the original construction, but everything was sleeker, more efficient, and much better designed. The clunkiness was gone, replaced with an aggressive silhouette that seemed both dangerous and elegant.

There was a level of edginess to them that I hadn’t been able to restrain Garment from conveying. The armored plates were more pronounced and carried razor sharp edges. There were sharp angles and the occasional spike and spur carefully peppered through the design. It managed to restrain itself from being a Hot Topic display piece, instead looking like what those kinds of designs aspired to when they grew up. It was an obvious move towards the design of my lantern shield, and probably spoke to her intentions for my new costume.

They were also incredibly dangerous. I hadn’t even applied half the armaments I was capable of and the boots were still completely deadly. The combination of adamantium, mithril, and celestial bronze produced a combination of effects outclassing most superweapons. The rest of the boot was composed of plasteel, synth-leather, custom polymers, and other hyper advanced materials, further strengthened by my crafting powers. The HF capacitor reinforced the boots with high frequency vibrations and strengthened their attacks. These things would hit like a goddamn truck, and that was before you considered my current strength level.

Garment had staked a claim on the final three pairs with the exactly kind of enthusiasm I expected from her. These had been rebuilt to cover a range of designs, basically starting with a classy set that would be the stand out feature of a gala or red-carpet event, then moving to a slightly racier model, and finally arriving at what was basically a wedge heeled and slimmer version of my own cape design. The fey writing denoting their status as divine objects ranged from subtly concealed on the most conservative pair to integrated in the lace work of the racier boots to prominently displayed on the pair that mirrored my own. The style of her boots basically progressed from ‘high class every day’ to ‘highly aggressive fashion’ and finally to ‘felony assault fashion’.

I joked about that, but the boots really were deadly. The more obvious armor plating components were well concealed in the civilian models, but they were still assembled with all the same power and technology. Garment’s boots had HF capacitors built into them, and the stiletto heels on her mid-level pair could probably cleave a tank in half without significant effort.

I honestly didn’t know if I had gotten carried away or if this was just my new base level.

The boots were still waiting for any dust infusion to their metals, as well as any dust weaving that could be added to their softer materials. They had no runework, which would add either a range of elemental effects or any of the abilities I might be able to discern from Miss Militia’s weapon. I could add additional elemental effects to them with my Maliwan Intern power, something I’d be able to use particularly well in the field. Finally I could still add variable weapon modes or complete hybridizations to the boots, which was particularly easy thanks to the simplification effect of Ambrosial Artificer.

And these were just boots. Just a pair of combat shoes that I had nearly overlooked in the piles of equipment and powers that had been piled upon me. This was the level I was working on now. I could feel Garment’s excitement at the idea, the immense quality of the work I could accomplish. There were so many projects she wanted to dive into, but she understood the constraints I was working under.

A sketchbook was drawn towards us by the strength of her telekinesis. Pages flipped by showing dozens of plans for costume updates that had been laid out in immense detail only to be completely abandoned as she moved onto the next idea. It was like watching her stream of consciousness move by with the flicking of the pages.

That stream dipped into Barbarian Chic a lot more often than I expected or was really comfortable with.

Finally, the flicking stopped on the final two pages of the book. A design for a complete costume, and a dress. Specifically a wrap dress, of the same design Garment had used for her cape transformation trick.

I knew she wanted more than this. There were probably entire books of designs she was dying to see brought into life with divine craftsmanship and blessings beyond mortal limits, but she was willing to stop here. Two designs, both of which were in direct service of my cape work. I didn’t feel like I could turn her down.

The costume redesign was a little edgier than I would have preferred, but to be honest I was the kind of person to embrace hiding in a corner over putting myself forward. Without the necessity of interacting with villains and the design chops of Garment behind me I would probably still be wearing dark colors and skulking in alleys.

Instead I was… well, I was whatever the internet seemed to think I was. I still wasn’t comfortable with that kind of attention, or the response a fashion statement like this would bring, but I had to admit a kind of resonance. It was like with the shield, I didn’t want to admit it, but that was an outward concern. It wasn’t that the design didn’t fit, it was that I was afraid of dealing with the reaction to it. Really, as cliché as it was, this was exactly the kind of look I had been dying for in eighth grade, and one that I never ever gave more than a fleeting consideration.

Well, now it seemed I was going to be the edgiest villain in town, all because of limited fashion freedom in my teenage years and a power that ran on self-expression. To be perfectly honest, I’d heard about powers with much worse limitations on them. I could deal with this.

I signaled my approval to Garment as the Time constellation missed a connection, and got to work.

Without the extensive mechanical aspects involved the work was less frenetic and more artistic. Even after multiple sessions I still couldn’t fully convey the sense Garment had for this kind of work. The best I could say is it came from a completely different direction than my collection of ingrained proficiencies, supernatural powers, instant skills, and divine works. It was like she was part of a continuum of ideas that flowed from the fashions of the past to those that were still emerging. When she worked she wasn’t just producing something, she was taking part in the shared history of an artform that stretched back to the earliest moments of human consciousness.

The really exceptional thing was how Garment had an understanding of my powers and how they could be used in conjunction with her own abilities. We used her designs as a starting point, but Garment was aware of where her skills reached their limit and when I needed to take over. She also knew how to direct that work in line with the larger themes and styles of the piece. Before it had been an effective collaboration. Now, being able to sense her through the Dragon’s Pulse, it was something much closer than that.

The design flowed naturally from one of us to the other. Garment had the broad outline and trusted me to fill in details she couldn’t manage or even completely convey. I could easily follow the direction of her design, adding my own touches and flairs, drawing on the full depth of my power. Piece by piece my new costume and Garment’s cape dress came together in glorious detail.

The final step was Garment’s insistence of including Dust weaving, which was also the first act of collaboration we had taken in that art. Garment was a masterful and creative Dust weaver and could form incredibly complex effects bound to patterns that were both beautiful and precisely formed. That said, she couldn’t come close to my own work. Dust weave patterns were weapons, and all the creativity and skill in the world couldn’t come close to what I could do when crafting a weapon.

Weapon Modification and Customized Weapons allowed a great deal more control and specialization of the Dust effects than Garment could manage. Ambrosial Artificer let me strip out unneeded aspects of the design and improve the overall performance of the effect. Since these counted as projectile weapons Fingers of the North Star let me fully analyze Garment’s designs and upgrade them for my own applications. Gadget Master shrank the patterns down to less than a tenth the size of Garment’s work and let me hide them in the stitching and folds of the costume and dress. Robust Engineering let me enhance the efficiency of the woven Dust to stand up to years of use rather than minutes. I was able to work elemental runes directly into the dust as well as apply Elven Enchantments and the benefits of Master Craftsman due to working by hand.

The final result was a costume and dress that positively radiated menace and power. Even without the effects of Putting On The Reich the sheer amount of destructive force contained within them was staggering. It was like a battleship bound in cloth, like Garment’s entire arsenal wardrobe had been distilled into a pair of outfits. Perhaps the two most powerful items on the planet, sitting innocently on hangers in a workspace mostly used for Youtube streams with only the immortal lettering of the fey hinting at the true power contained within them.

A slow clap drew my attention to the entrance where I saw both duplicates reviewing our work. I could have picked them up with my thermal sense or the Dragon’s Pulse, but my focus had been concentrated on the work at hand. Something that allowed the full benefits of One Thing at a Time, but wasn’t the best in terms of situational awareness.

“Very nice work.” The first commented. “I’m glad you decided to be flexible on the redesign. That will really help with Aura use.” There was a gray shimmer around him as he spoke, another display of how my duplicates had an easier time with that particular issue.

“They look good.” The second added. I felt a slight twitch from Garment’s gloves in response. Rather than translate it, I signaled for them to wait and lifted my hands towards the racks of clothes. There was another twitch that seemed to convey thanks, then the gloves folded off my hands. They seemed to take a moment of consideration, then a new outfit was selected from the racks of clothing. A black silk maxi dress with an offset floral pattern embroidered into it floated off its hangar and was joined by a pair of kitten heeled shoes. Once again Garment mimed the act of putting it on, and I noticed my duplicates also had the habit of averting their eyes while Garment was changing.

Once she was dressed the first duplicated nodded to her. “Very nice work Garment, as always.” She bashfully waved him off as he turned to me. “We’re heading into 20% time, but we wanted to talk about the new abilities.”

I knew they were probably referring to Heretical Adaptation, but my mind immediately jumped to Inexplicable Innuendo and Classy Contortionist. Classy Contortionist in particular was evident just looking at them. I guessed they were trying to look casual, but it came across like the cover of a magazine. There was a tone to the shifting of their bodies that just conveyed a sense of poise, and from how persistent it was for them I’m guessing I was doing it as well.

“Yeah, not Classy Contortionist,” The second clarified. “Though we’re right with you on that one. It’s damn annoying.” Next to me Garment made an exasperated gesture and shifted her stance in a way that suggested she was the only one with any taste in the room. I watched a few more shifts of stance from my duplicates, but even at their most reserved it came across like something out of a 19th century royal portrait.

I thought about the other ‘free’ powers that had come bundled with my recent acquisitions. “Hey, you guys also have to hold back an entire library of innuendo and suggestive comments?”

There was a collective sigh. “Yeah.” The first admitted. “Hate to see how it will play out when that slips. At least the free power from Heretical Adaptation isn’t as bad.”

I nodded. Heretical Adaptation came with a minor power called Calling Card. It was probably one of my oddest powers. Upon unleashing an unusually potent attack I could briefly ‘freeze’ the moment in the perceptions of everyone around me in an effect that would convey the theme of the attack and whatever name I decided to give it. It wouldn’t disrupt the flow of combat or actually buy me any time during the attack. It was literally just a way of showing off, a brief chance to say ‘look at me, look how awesome I’m being’ to everyone around me.

I was not thrilled about that one, but I could see its applications. The fight at the storage lockers had been a lesson in the importance of morale and intimidation. It wasn’t something I’d successfully managed in the aftermath, but the way I’d conducted myself was the reason I was able to get everyone lined up for surgery following the fight. I still wasn’t comfortable with this kind of self-display, but I could recognize its usefulness and utility.

“So, Heretical Adaptation.” The second began. “That’s a big one. Self-upgrading means a lot of stuff we’ve been dragging our heels on can be rolled out.”

“You have plans for that?” I asked.

“Well, basically the plan is for you to do it.” The first admitted.

“Okay.” I began. “Not that I’m complaining, but don’t you guys usually go on about how I need to stay away from scut work? Why’s this different?”

“Two reasons.” The second began. “First, this needs to be a serious overhaul of the base. If I was a future duplicate that’s something I’d want personal experience with rather than pulling it from a report.”

“I can see that.” I admitted. “What’s the second reason.”

The first duplicate gave me a serious look. “The Arcane Craft.”

That made things fall into place. “Warding?”

“Warding, focuses, channeling, mantic conductors, and every future project that is going to rely on that power.” I nodded slowly at the second duplicate. The Arcane Craft was a phenomenally powerful and versatile ability, but it was also something that needed practice and refinement. Unlike so many of my powers it only came with the basics and relied on my own development for higher level applications. I had been able to skirt things with the help of my various quality powers, but there was no question that I needed more practice with that ability.

“What are you thinking?” I asked them.

A holographic map of the workshop and volcano sprang up above the first duplicate’s omni-watch. “We really need to get a mantic circuit set up in the base. Just the productivity enhancement will make it worth the effort. With divine crafted conductors and the automatic improvement of Heretical Adaptation there’s no reason to put it off any further.”

I nodded. “I need to handle Fleet and Survey’s update, but I’ll start after that. It’ll probably be on the next set.”

“Fine by us.” The second assured me. “We’re overdue for 20% time anyway.”

We split ways, with me heading to the Laboratorium and them going off to… enjoy the end of their existence. Okay, trying not to keep dwelling on that. It’s just coexisting with ‘people’ who are so cavalier about their mortality can be a bit disconcerting.

The Laboratorium’s systems and skulls greeted me with their usual enthusiasm. Well, it would be more accurate to say the skulls and some of the simpler systems greeted me with enthusiasm. The major systems, the ones containing the oldest and most advanced machine spirits greeted me with what could be best described as middling approval. Still, considering I could feel the weight of millenia of experience behind those systems that was probably a big deal.

They still thought my coat should be red.

I had barely approached the life fiber stasis bay when the same skull Garment always handed her dresses swung out, ready to take my coat and shirt. I felt a bit bad for taking it from its analysis duties, but it seemed to have fully embraced this role as something of a ‘personal assistant’ function. There was even a slight reaction from the skulls around it that might have been envy, and further sense of exasperation from the Laboratorium’s main systems.

I decided that cybernetic skull office politics was something that could wait for another day and dropped the stasis field around Tetra. The life fibers jumped out of containment, surrounding me in what was either an instinctual predatory tactic or an enthusiastic hug. I decided to assume the second, given what I was feeling through the Dragon’s Pulse, and headed for the computer throne, bidding the Laboratorium farewell.

As I made my way to my computer throne I felt a connection form to the Resources and Durability constellation. The power was called Scrapyard Skills and involved the use of improvised ‘scrap’ equipment in applications far above what it should be capable of. And I meant extremely far above. This was a power that would allow the conversion of a broken washing machine into a jet turbine.

Once again, it was a power that would have been absolutely amazing early in my career, but was a minor benefit given my current resources. It was still useful given the level of technology it could produce with damaged components adapted to new uses, but not something I would be basing my construction plans around.

Really, it would synergize particularly well with Scrapper, allowing better use of recovered components and the construction of more advanced technology with what was broken down. Actually, in theory I could take a mundane object, break it down, rebuild it into something more advanced, and then repeat the process, potentially compounding the effect until I reached the limits of my skill and the materials I was working with.

Like my previous two powers it came with a free ability alongside it, and like my two previous powers it was completely ridiculous. The power was called Rockin' Music and it provided musical accompaniment to my actions.

I was being absolutely serious. This power allowed me to trigger a guitar riff or a few chords of heavy metal music whenever I did something awesome. Two things I was immediately aware of was how easy it was to trigger the effect and the particular style of music it would produce.

That wasn’t because of any inherent understanding of the power. It was because my duplicates had gotten it as well and were apparently competing with each other to see who could produce the greatest number of riffs before their 20% time ran out. It was like listening to dueling banjos, except it was dueling heavy metal guitarists and they were playing from opposite ends of my crafting complex.

I hurried to the computer throne where I could at least be insulated from the cacophony once I interfaced properly with the systems. The random riffs would have been bad enough, but it seemed that my duplicates had picked up on the other’s actions and were trying to string together the effects of the Rockin' Music power into something that might be able to be defined as a coherent song, if you were feeling very generous.

I settled into the throne and enjoyed the feeling of my mind expanding through the systems. I exchanged greetings with Survey and Fleet before turning my attention to their programs and allowing them to interface with Tetra through my mind. At this point the updates were fairly standard. It consisted of a review of their code for development errors and misconceptions and the scheduling of the next rounds of program expansions based on my recent powers. I calmly worked through the process while my A.I.s exchanged data with Tetra.

When I finished the critical updates I began documentation of my new abilities, both for the sake of Survey’s peace of mind and for their potential applications in future projects. Having a robust weapon and armor database accessible in the computer core rather than it being limited to what was in my living brain was a game changer. Being able to rework the technology in a computer environment allowed a huge amount of advancements, and really drove home the importance of fully documenting my abilities for the people who would be assisting me in my work.

While it wasn’t directly tied into the main computer core a link had been maintained to the developing nanotech A.I. matrix. Thanks to the quality of its design and construction it was functioning at a level far beyond what could be expected from any form of gestalt intelligence at its stage of development. There had been some light two way communications with Fleet and Survey, though it was still limited to standard system protocols.

I did notice one of my duplicates had dedicated some of its 20% time to the hand construction of additional nanobots and the directed replication of even more, though without the benefit of being divine objects. I quickly confirmed it was based in concern for giving them the same level of oversight as Fleet and Survey received. Unlike the A.I.s, the nanotech intelligence was largely limited by the volume of nanobots it could draw upon. In order for it to have constant expansion of its parameters it needed directed construction from me or one of my duplicates.

That kind of construction was inherently limited. The highest quality of nanobots could only be produced by hand, which meant linear growth. The production of other nanobots was exponential, but required the benefit of my power for key elements of its design to function. There was a possible design of a stripped down nanobot that could be produced without my oversight, but that functioned at such a reduced level that there was no intention towards it, even from the highly limited cognition that the matrix was currently capable of.

The point about additional development of the matrix was a solid one, and would work well with my upcoming project. I turned my attention back to my programs and found Survey had transferred her entire report to Tetra and was now pouring additional data into the life fibers at the limits of what my neurology could handle. I expressed an moderately concerned inquiry to her concerning the process.

“Tetra has exceptional data retention and processing abilities, but continues to maintain an incorrect stance regarding the application of protomatter compared to base life fibers. Attempts to provide supporting information has not remedied this. I believe there may be an error with her perception through this medium.”

I actually felt my body sigh at that. “Thank you Survey. I promise I will look into that, but I need to get started on Workshop upgrades. Can you conclude this transfer so I can return Tetra to her bay?”

There was a slight petulant feeling in her code, but the transfer petered out with what seemed like a series of personal messages exchanged in the final moments. I broke the connection to the computer and hurried back to the Laboratorium, once more greeting the systems and performing a few minor maintenance tasks on machinery as I passed by. I returned Tetra, feeling the loss of life fiber energy, but a substantially reduced drain from it, and retrieved my coat from the waiting skull before returning to the Workshop.

I was met at the door by a moderately perturbed Survey hologram and another duplication potion. “The duplicates’ duration has expired. They requested the delivery of this once you finished returning Tetra, who still refuses to accept basic facts about the advantages of multi-spatial metamaterial processors.”

“Thank you, Survey.” I responded, completely sidestepping her second comment. I quickly downed the potion and allowed my duplicates to step out. They both turned and gave me a conspiratorial smile.

“So, I get why you have to stay neutral in this, but that doesn’t apply to us, right?” The first asked with a sly grin.

“No.” I pleaded. “Please, no. I don’t want to deal with…”

“Dibs on team cybertonium.” The second quipped, sliding next to Survey’s hologram.

“Guess that leaves me on team life fiber.” Added the second.

I took one look at the scene, including the now smug expression on Survey’s hologram and threw up my arms.

“Nope.” I turned and started down the hallway.

“Hey!” The second called after me. “Where are you going?”

“Nanotech lab. I have work to do.” I called back, leaving my duplicates to their little bout of pageantry. It was annoying, but I couldn’t help but smile now that I was out of sight. The conflicts would need to be moderated, but both Survey and Tetra were coming into their own, forming personal opinions and defending them without my input. It was also nice to see my duplicates enjoy themselves outside the brief flash at the end of their existence.

The products of that last flash was what I was heading towards now. Twelve minutes was enough time for a duplicate to hand build thousands upon thousands of nanobots, but that was a quantity that would barely register on the macro-scale. The process had also allowed him to direct the nanobots’ replication, which expanded the portion of non-divine nanobots to a quantity that filled a beaker. It looked like silvery pudding, with just the barest hint of the more gold color of the divine nanobots.

They weren’t actually composed of any different materials, but like every divine object they carried a fey script, magically inscribed even at the atomic level and creating a different coloration between them and the more conventionally produced machines. I held up the beaker and extended both my technopathy and nanite control. Blue lines shifted across the surface of the container and fluid and I connected with the basic machine intelligence within.

Almost instinctively, the divine object nanobots were pulled to the surface, changing the appearance of the liquid from cloudy steel to liquid gold. They almost glowed with the power contained within their form and I could sense the potential they contained. At my command they flowed over the container and coated my hand.

I looked at the golden sheen covering my flesh in a perfect shell, even emulating fingerprints and hair follicles. Then, with a single thought I activated the second part of nanite control and absorbed the entire mass of nanobots. Absorption was an aspect of this power that I hadn’t really experimented with, but I understood the principles. Unlike the nanites that were already in my system, absorbed nanobots were stored in a kind of conceptual state. I could still work with them or release them when needed, but they weren’t physically in my body.

There was still a limit to how much I could contain. Pushing my reservoirs too far would result in loss of control, flare up, and unstable expressions of the nanites’ abilities. That wasn’t an immediate concern, particularly not with this amount of nanotech. Trying to absorb and contain an active swarm in the process of S-Class replication would be something of a challenge, but I wasn’t even close to my current limits.

As the Magitech constellation missed a connection I gathered the parts I needed and moved out to begin the construction of the mantic circuits. The circulation of mantic energy relied on sets of conductors to manage the flow. Normally conductors were statues about six feet tall consisting of a spade shaped structure connected by a pole to a rectangular base. A pair of chains from the outer points of the spade structure connected to the base to complete the circuit.

While the device seemed like a symbolic totem structure, it was actually precise machinery based on mantic principles of energy flow. Conductors weren’t anywhere as good as cores in terms of mantic energy, and didn’t even come close to what a shard could accomplish, but they still provided consistent energetic effects without needing burstone based materials.

Because of the technical nature of the conductors I could freely use my other powers to improve them. Ambrosial Artificer let me strip down their complexity to see blanket improvements in performance. Gadget Master let me shrink the bulky structures to the size of a desk toy. I was able to hybridize them with additional mantic components to improve performance and energy production. All of my quality and enchanting powers were applied to improve performance and capability of the system. The highest class of fabricated advanced materials were used, improving performance even further. Finally, Arcane Craft was used to provide both a warding effect and cause them to act as a focus for the mantic forces.

That was the real purpose of this exercise. Through the construction of a full mantic network the workshop would have access to a constant flow of restorative energy that would also act to increase productivity in any areas it reached. That was incredibly useful, but the reason I was crawling through my volcano base building conductor after conductor in the early hours of the morning was to improve my mastery of the Arcane Craft. It was possibly the most useful ability I had access to, and each newly constructed conductor improved my understanding and skill with that power.

That was also why I had taken my nanobots. The nanobots were capable of acting under my direct command to form into any object I could want, within the limitations of their size. Given their composition and the enhancements on them, I was able to instantly produce any masterful tool I could want, and thanks to Savvy Sultan I could wield them with machine speed and precision. I was working in the field with all the benefits of a dedicated workshop using a supply of the most advanced and magical materials on the planet, constantly improving my workmanship with each new conductor produced.

There was another major advantage to the nanobots. Instant control of their shape meant I could form them into any kind of alchemy array I happened to need. The placement of the conductors required remodeling of most of the workshop rooms and substantial tunneling into the surrounding volcanic rock in most cases. With my nanobots I could just picture the alchemical circle or array I needed and instantly form in it my hand.

It was just a single thought away from being able to command the fabric of the world around me, and was honestly kind of exhilarating. I would walk up to a solid wall, briefly consider the alchemical formula I needed to shape it, form it from the nanobots in my body and watch as the alchemical transmutation broke down the structure of the world and rebuilt in a form more convenient to me.

Through it all I was able to maintain contact with the developing intelligence of the nanobots. Its development was still very basic, but exposure to this kind of work was having an impact. Every shape that the nanobots were formed into was stored in the collective memory of the gestalt intelligence, allowing faster formation on subsequent occasions. Towards the end of my work the matrix was starting to anticipate the requirements of the next stage of the project, both in terms of tools and alchemical arrays.

The way it processed information was fascinating to watch. The emulated cybertonium allowed the bulk of the processing to be conducted outside the physical world, happening in a kind of inter-universal transwarp space. It was the highest level of computational processing I knew about and it was amazing to see it in action.

The work continued through the early morning. Each hour I allowed my duplicates their full 20% time and took a break for additional nanobot production during each 12 minute period rather than hand off the developing matrix. The emerging program seemed to enjoy the stability of the process, predictable improvement work interspersed with periods of expanded productions where its capacity expanded and it received more of the divine object nanobots.

A really high value was placed on those components, particularly when compared to the ones produced autonomously. The base nanobots would be used for structural components when something needed to be formed, but actual interaction with materials and energy always favored the divine objects. It was easy to understand why when observing the matrix in action. Divine Objects were superior in every way, and the emerging intelligence understood that. They allowed collection of more information with a greater ability to analyze the actions being taken. They processed faster and worked better. They even had more reach into transwarp space.

That was the source of one of the first independent actions I witnessed from the nanobots. In anticipating the next possible required tools they began forming their structures out of base nanobots. The thing was, their formation wasn’t being conducted in real space. They extended into a subspace pocket where multiple potential tools were prepared at once, providing the option to instantly shift between them with a single thought.

It was a shocking enough discovery to make me pause in my work, which triggered additional analysis from the nanotech matrix. This was one of the core principles of cybertonium, and the nanobots had arrived at it out of simple optimization routines. I quickly provided an update to the duplicates and central computer, then just as quickly denied Survey’s request to immediately convey the development to Tetra. A conference soon opened up between me and my two duplicates.

“So, this is it? We’ve cracked transwarp storage?” The first asked.

I looked over the actions of the nanobots. “Not completely, not until we have reliable access to cybertonium. We can at least influence it though.”

“We need to get a subspace pocket set up.” The second replied. “That’s one of the big ones. We have too much key equipment, and we can’t always rely on workshop access when there’s a crisis.”

“I know.” I confirmed. “Any idea how we set it up?”

“Needs an access key. We can emulate that through a piece of armor. Some of the other projects are looking promising. You finish up the conductors and we’ll shift to working on that.”

I signaled my understanding and dove into my task. By this point there were only a few areas left to address, but the point of a mantic circuit meant full circulation. The volcano was a godsend in terms of mantic energy, but it needed a comprehensive arrangement of conductors to bring the full potential to the surface. That meant I was moving out of the main work areas and touring the little additions that my duplicates had been adding during their 20% time.

It seemed I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed using alchemical transmutations to bend the world to my will. Survey had been documenting these additions, but seeing them in person was another matter. My guess was they started working from a list of unnecessary additions rich idiots put in their oversized mansions and decided to see how many they could cram into the volcano.

The answer was a lot. The volcano was an entire mountain, and was solid enough that with alchemy and a thorough understanding of architecture a person would have an unbelievable internal volume to work with.

The fighting arena on the upper levels was one of the more sedate additions. The game room was fine. Tennis courts were unnecessary, but understandable, and even more so for the squash courts. The indoor Olympic sized swimming pool was a bit excessive, especially with the locker rooms that opened into what appeared to be both Turkish and Japanese baths. It was the hockey rink with stadium seating located close enough to active lava flows to use them for overhead lighting that really stretched belief.

Maybe there’s a lesson in that. Never give a bored duplicate access to infinite amounts of supernaturally enhanced ice dust?

They were an impressive display of the strength of master level alchemical transmutation, but I didn’t know when I or anyone else would ever use these facilities. Well, aside from Fleet’s miniature armada that had been set up in the swimming pool, complete with 1:500 scale aircraft carriers and matching flight wings. I guess if someone was enjoying them then that was enough.

It took most of the duration of that set of duplicates to finish the last of the work. I didn’t need to announce the completion since I’m pretty sure every being in the Workshop was aware of the surge of mantic energy as the final set of conductors completed the circuit.

Energy pulsed through the walls, floor and equipment of my workshop. This was pure mantic energy, grounded by conductors and given directed purpose. Each room, each piece of machinery, each tool in this tiny pocket of reality was built for a reason, and the conductors drew on that intention and amplified it. There was also the echoing cry of a rather awesome guitar riff, because this far from observation I was willing to indulge myself and let Rockin' Music activate.

The normal result of a set of conductors would have been a few mild effects, a slight improvement on the level of what I felt from my lab coat. I did not work in ‘normal’. Not anymore. These were arcane focus conductors built with the skill of a demigod, guided by the infinite training of the fey and bound in the most powerful materials available. They secured, reinforced, and enhanced every aspect of my Workshop.

I could feel the power, the raw heat from the volcano, the blood of the earth, fire of life being pumped through the stones beneath my feet, into the very air I breathed. Everything was better. Everything was improved. This was an accomplishment.

I felt just the slightest hint of acknowledgement from the nanobots I carried with me. They had worked on this project from the placement of the first conductor and had a record of every step of the process. They knew the state before the work began and recognized the improvement afterwards. It was too early to attribute emotions to them, but just the recognition of what they had been part of was an encouraging first step.

I hurried back to the main areas of the workshop, finding the mantic energy making even hallways easier to transverse, when I felt the Forge make a connection to the Knowledge constellation, linking to a mid-sized mote called Valkyrian Science.

This was connected to my Hidden Hideaway and Manufacturing Line power, though with principles linked to the work that the hidden laboratory had been set up to conduct.

Well, sort of.

That laboratory had been designed to tinker with the rough principles of ragnite. It had taken an energetic material and basically banged rocks against it to figure out how to use it. It was rough, primitive, and blatantly idiotic.

That may have sounded harsh, but that was only because I was trying to sound harsh. Whoever had built that laboratory had designed it to take an incredibly advanced, complex, and nuanced material and find the most basic uses for it. Valkyrian Science gave me full knowledge of the principles and capacity of ragnite, and seeing what that laboratory had done with it made me cringe. It was like seeing cavemen cracking open smartphones in order to set their batteries on fire as a source of warmth.

The broad strokes of ragnite were there, its use as a power source, its healing functions, and its capacity for biological integration. The research notes even had some shreds of useful information, having come at the problem from a completely different angle, but that was all a far cry from what the material was really capable of.

It needed refinement, but it could be used to create powerful weapons, incredible devices, and near limitless energy. The quantity I had was pitiful but my resource powers more than made up for that. I wasn’t sure how much time I could commit to utilizing it, but it definitely had the potential to be a major asset.

Too bad that potential was locked behind some heavy biological integration. I could probably handle that, but it was a serious level of wet tinkering, and I’m not sure I was ready for something like that. The medical, offensive, and energy applications were good enough for now. I could shelve the super soldier development for another time.

When I made it back to the main areas of the workshop I found both duplicates waiting for me, with Survey’s hologram being projected behind them.

“Aren’t you both on 20% time?” I asked, confirming the timing with my implant.

“Yeah, but we wanted to get this set up.” The first explained. He nodded at Survey’s image, which generated a holographic screen outlining the duplicates’ plan.

I could access the data directly, but there was something encouraging about Survey’s involvement. I was willing to trade a slight drop in efficiency of communication to help her with her development.

“Okay, so the nanobots can access transwarp space. That means direct manipulation of subspace vesicles. We can use them to carve out a chunk of the transwarp for extradimensional storage, but we need to tie it into the specific frequency of an energy source as a special tether.” The second explained as Survey’s screens displayed outlines of the concept, much to her hologram’s apparent satisfaction.

“Right.” I replied. “So we need something to serve as an anchor for the subspace storage pocket. It will let us reduce the bulk down to a single item, but it’ll still be tied to whatever we choose. Still not like having it available all the time.”

“Yeah, if only there was a specific energy source that we could tie into the subspace link. If only there was some form of energy we’ve had for days and never done anything with that could serve as the link and power source for accessing the storage pocket.” The blatantly sarcastic tone of the first duplicate was accompanied by diagrams and thaumic readings that I was able to quickly discern.

“Wait,” I asked. “You want to tie this into our…”

“Our magicka pool, yes.” The second confirmed.

I took a long look at the display. “Will that even work? We haven’t done anything with magicka. It’s completely untapped, undeveloped. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to use it.”

“It recovers faster than any other internal power source we have, and even the base capacity is enough to allow subspace transference.” The first answered.

I mentally checked their math and nodded. “Fair enough, but I can’t use it directly. We still need some kind of magitek converter, and that’s hardly any different from having the pocket tied to an external object.”

“It would be.” The first continued. “If not for this.”

At his signal Survey shifted the display to a runic pattern. It was roughly similar to the runes I used for elemental effects, but seemed totally distinct. It was like it was written in a completely different language. Or intended to channel a completely different effect. I puzzled over it for a few moments before it hit me.

“Is that what I think it is?” The duplicates grinned at my question.

“First breakthrough in analyzing Miss Militia’s power. The effect that lets her recall her weapon. We’re naming it soul bound, by the way.” The second duplicate grinned widely as he explained, and I was guessing he had been a big part of breaking this down.

“So we just need to use that on the conversion focus and I’ll be able to call it anywhere, and then access the subspace storage as well?” I asked eagerly. To my surprise the duplicates shook their heads. “What?”

“Well, you don’t NEED to do that, because we’ve already finished it.” The first answered, cracking a smile.

I returned the grin. “So where is it?” They showed me, and my grin instantly faltered. “No.”

“Yes.” The second said insistently, and shoved the black metal armband towards me. “You’ve been ducking this for too long. Aura is too important to leave on the table, not with the kind of situations we’re heading for. The new costume might help, but not as much as this. We’ve done everything, the conversions, the rebuilds, the upgrades. All you have to do is use it.”

“See this?” The first pointed at the center of the band where a specific sigil had been marked out in celestial bronze. I recognized it from the stamp I had yet to use, from the glyph Garment had sewn into her cape dress, from the icon on my PHO posts. “That’s you. That’s us. That’s what codes this to you. In the soul bound rune setup that’s what makes it yours. You can feel it right?” I could. There was a link, a faint one but totally undeniable. It was there and it wasn’t going away. The band was mine, even more so than it had been when the Forge gave it to me. “This is too important. We know it so you know it. Get over it, and accept the damn shield.”

I let out a long breath, then nodded. I lifted my hand and pulled at that link with my mind. The band broke into thousands of gray flecks of light, flowing over each other until they reached me and formed into the familiar shape on my wrist. This close my technopathy could feel the work they had done, the tiny magitek converter modularly inserted into the shield, the complete rebuild taking advantage of Master Craftsman and the upgrade inclusive of all my most recent powers.

I braced myself and made to trigger the shifting mechanism. Oddly, through my powers I felt a second path to the shield form. With slight prodding I watched the band dissolve into a gray blur of energy and reform into the spiky mess of a lantern shield I was so intensely familiar with. A single mental nudge caused the entire process to reverse in a flash.

“Thank you.” I said with as much humility as I could manage. It still bothered me how much I needed to rely on my duplicates to force me through things like this. On one hand, it was nice that someone was doing it, on the other it made me feel kind of useless. How were you supposed to take it if a copy of yourself with a one-hour shelf life had his shit together better than you did.

“Don’t mention it.” The first replied.

“Believe me, we know how hard this is.” The second added.

I sighed. “Right. I can handle the transwarp work. You two should get to your 20% time.”

“Sure you’re okay?” The first asked.

“Not made of glass.” I looked down at the horrible defensive weapon that I would never be separated from. “It’s hard to deal with, brings up a lot of bad stuff, but I can manage. I have managed.”

They nodded and split off, leaving me with Survey’s hologram. The projected image cautiously approached me.

“I am not yet familiar with the full scope of the mental stress situations and objects such as this invoke, but I am endeavoring to expand my awareness of the concepts. As you have been averse to communicating details on this matter I do not wish to pursue it unduly, but I wish to convey that both myself and Fleet have your best interests in mind.” The hologram paused to consider for a moment. “As most likely does Tetra, though I cannot speak to her judgement in other areas.”

“Thank you Survey.” I replied slowly with a soft smile on my face. I summoned the nanobots I had absorbed after the completion of the conduits and felt their connection to transwarp space. “I’ll need to get started on this work. Given the application of cybertonium I assume you would like to observe?”

“I would greatly appreciate the opportunity.” She answered crisply, and fell into step behind me.

I really didn’t have a place set up for the creation of an extradimensional structure attached to an esoteric energy source mapped to my body. That was a little beyond the capacity of the workshop upgrades I’d received from the Forge. ‘All the cyberpunk’ wasn’t exactly ‘all the space opera’, so I was left to improvise. I had a high energy physics area designed for the production of energetic materials, and a few modifications were sufficient to rig enough monitoring equipment that I wasn’t completely flying blind.

The actual process of building something that didn’t exist in any universe was not a simple one, but also not as intense as you would imagine. When it came down to it ‘nothing’ was being produced, because the pocket existed ‘nowhere’. The process of construction had more in line with creating impressions in a piece of wet sand than any kind of material creation. It was manipulation of the fabric of space time through a thousand tiny pinpricks that combined to create a fold. They pushed on the fold until it grew, tied itself in knots, and then did the entire process over again, again, and again until a useful volume formed.

The work actually started on the Planck scale and increased exponentially through repetition. Still, each repetition compounded the complexity of the actions and the detail I needed to convey through my nanobots to maintain the process. After what seemed like an eternity I had a pocket big enough to just about hold a pin. Then a pencil. Then a loaf of bread. Then an office chair. Then an entire desk.

At this point the calculations were getting intense. I was linked to the main computer and offloading as much of the work as I could, but I could feel the process slipping beyond me. In one final push I attempted a final cycle of expansion, a push to achieve a subspace pocket big enough to hold my entire motoroid and support gear. The multidimensional connections were mind boggling, but I wouldn't let this slide. This was the brass ring, the holy grail, the secret to complete access to my equipment from anywhere on the planet.

For a horrible moment the subspace vessel hung in limbo, like a soap bubble flickering in a strong wind. My mind raced and commands flew like lighting through nanobots operating beyond the physical universe. Commands that should have stabilized the process brought it closer to ruin. I bit back on my growing panic and poured over my calculations again and again.

Slowly the variables dropped into predictable patterns, the fluctuations stabilized and in one final glorious moment the entire vessel solidified, a personal subspace storage pocket bonded to me beyond the universe.

A guitar riff played out through the Workshop and I felt no shame over it.

“Congratulations.” Survey said, with her hologram’s expression bright. “The duplicates’ durations have expired. Would you like to renew the potion.”

“In a moment.” I replied. “I just want to complete a test run first.”

I picked up a small sensor node from a nearby workbench. I focused on the object in my hand and activated the magitek converter in my collapsed shield. I could feel the device draw power from the nebulous ball of energy that represented my magicka pool, converting it into a subspace resonance and channeling it into the item in my hand.

The node glowed brightly for an instant, then seemed to fade out. The bulk of the item disappeared first, leaving a rapidly fading outline of its glowing edges. Then it was gone.

But not really gone, just stored outside of the universe. I could already feel the expended magicka refilling. The amount was miniscule for an item this size, and my reserves would be back to full in no time. I concentrated again and activated the converter in my shield. That glowing outline appeared again, then quickly filled in with the rest of the object. Finally the glow faded and the node dropped into my hand.

Survey’s hologram was leaning in with an intent expression on her face, which mirrored the activity from every sensor that she was directing in the room. “I assume that was a successful test?”

“Yes, it was.” I transferred the sensor node back to my subspace storage pocket in another contained lightshow, then turned to Survey’s drone. “Could I have the next duplication potion? There is one last thing to try.”

I downed the offered potion and watched my two duplicates step out. They looked at each other, then at me.

“Okay, I guess I’ll try this.” The first extended his hand and I felt the activation of his magitek converter. There was a brief moment before he shook his head. “No luck. Pocket’s there, but it’s on a different resonance. Might be able to store my own stuff, but I can’t access what you have in yours. Also, no idea what will happen to it when I’m gone.”

I frowned but nodded at his words. The duplication potion was already an incredibly powerful ability. It was a shame it didn’t extend to copying the contents of extradimensional storage since that would be an easy way to get around the limitation on worn or carried items, but the fact that the pocket itself was duplicated was still somewhat useful.

I felt the Size constellation pass by without connection as my second duplicate turned to me. “So, we dealing with that implant now, or what?”

I grimaced, but nodded. If the Nine were active I couldn’t put this off. It wasn’t as bad as a full replacement, but I would still be messing with something connected to my brain. At least I would be able to handle it rather than needing to hand it off to my duplicates. “Yeah, I guess it’s time. We should probably head for the cybernetics bay.”

I started through the workshop with my duplicates following me when Survey sent me an electronic notice while also miming clearing her throat.

“We have received a message from the real estate company that contacted Garment yesterday. Given her interest in the nearby location they have prepared a full lease arrangement. The document was sent at the beginning of business hours, suggesting it was developed overnight. The terms are largely favorable, and will enable Garment to take possession of the property while the arrangements for her boutique are still being finalized.”

I reviewed the document myself, seeing Survey had already begun to mark specific terms and passages for revision.

“They’re fast on this. Still, an empty building wasn’t bringing in any revenue. Plus they probably want to get the publicity out of a deal with Garment before the hype dies down.” The first duplicate offered from his own review of the lease.

“Yeah, it’s generous, but it’s not like she’s taking that place on the Boardwalk. I doubt they could give away this property, so it’s no wonder they’d want to nail this down.” Added the second.

I turned to Survey’s hologram. “Can you run this by Garment, find out what she wants to do?”

“I will present the information, but Garment is already adamant about the location. If the company agrees to some clarification of the language it is likely Garment will be able to secure the lease later today.”

I nodded. “I know she’ll be happy about that. Confirm with her, and reach out to the company.” I paused. “After a reasonable amount of time. Make sure there’s a believable delay.”

The hologram nodded as we continued to the cybernetics lab. Once there I settled into one of the beds while my duplicates set up various sensors and pieces of monitoring equipment. I didn’t expect anything to go wrong, but I wasn’t taking any chances. When they gave me the green light I took a deep breath and focused on my nanobots.

Nanite Absorption had the advantage of not caring about where the nanites appeared when you un-absorbed them. For instance, having a small amount of incredibly advanced nanobots appear directly inside your brain, adjacent to a neural implant.

This work was being directly piloted by me, and used the most advanced nanobots exclusively. It also required a staged shutdown of individual parts of my implant as I worked. Each section that was deactivated was flooded by nanobots that broke down and absorbed the silicon processors, substituting custom designed germanium based replacements. It was a delicate act of engineering to ensure compatibility, and an arduous process, but it was also a guarantee of survival against Shatterbird, which was worth the trouble and intense focus required.

Said focus was nearly shattered by the arrival of a call, bouncing through the main systems and directed straight to my implant and omni-tool. Fortunately one of my duplicates answered it before it could ruin the procedure. I was only vaguely aware of the floating screen appearing above the second duplicates watch.

“Oh, hi Aisha.” His voice echoed through the medical bay.

“Joe?” She asked somewhat uncertainly.

“Nope.” He responded. “This is one of the duplicates. Joe Prime is doing some brain surgery right now. Can he call you back?”

I swear I could hear Aisha blink through the line, but kept focused on my work. “Uh, sure. No problem. I’ll talk later. You guys good?”

“Never better, well soon never at all, but you know how that goes.” He responded in a cheery acknowledgement of his own finite existence.

“Great.” She responded a little awkwardly. “So, ask Joe, that is Joe Prime, to call me back.”

“Will do.” The duplicate responded and closed the line. I tried to give him a dirty look without breaking focus on my work. I don’t know how effective that was, but I stayed on task until the last of the silicon was excised from my brain and my nanobots were reabsorbed.

“Looks good.” The first assured me. “No errors on full start-up, and all silicon removed from the device. I think you’re successfully Shatterbird proof.

I let out a sigh of relief. “Great.” I glanced down at my watch. “I should call Aisha back. You guys good?”

They nodded. “Yeah, we’ve got some more work on her armor, but it should be good to go later today.”

“Thanks. I’ll confirm that with her.” They nodded and made their way back to the main workshop with Survey’s hologram trailing behind them. I took a breath and opened a line to Aisha.

“Brain surgery?” The girl asked from the projected screen.

“The duplicate was being overdramatic.” I explained. “They do that. I was using some nanotech to upgrade my neural implant to remove the silicon processors.”

She scrunched her nose. “Why would you need to remove…” Her face turned ashen. “Shatterbird? It was for Shatterbird? Is she coming here? Do you know something?”

I made a series of rapid placating gestures. “No, no. It’s a precaution. I’m probably going to run into them at some point. This was just future proofing. As far as I can tell they’re somewhere in Indiana, and probably will be for a while.”

I could practically see her deflate as the tension left her. “Right. Good. Thanks.” She cleared her throat. “So, what was the message about, and why did you leave it at stupid-o’clock in the morning?”

“Well, for the timing, I had an early night and only sleep half what most people do. Didn’t get much rest the night before, so needed to make up for it.”

“Was that because of the Dragon thing?” She asked.

“You saw that?” There was a snort in response.

“National news. Everyone saw it. Everyone is saying everything about it. Care to fill me in?” She leaned in towards the screen.

“Later.” I assured her. “That’s what this is about. Your armor’s almost ready. I just need you here for the final details. Can you meet sometime today?”

“Well, I did have a full day of being criticized by my dad all planned out, but I suppose I could spare some time to get tinker tech power armor.” She was barely concealing a grin as she spoke. I smiled back.

“Oh, that reminds me. Garment might be signing the lease on her store later today. It’s in the area, so if your dad still wants to meet her it would be a good time.” I offered.

She sighed. “Yeah, he wants to meet her. Won’t shut up about it. Did I mention he likes these clothes? Because he really likes these clothes.”

“They are nice clothes.” I tried.

“I know that, you know that, Garment knows that, but my dad shouldn’t know that. That man’s never had an opinion on any item of clothing that’s worn outside a boxing ring. It’s unnatural.”

I smiled at that. I still wasn’t sure if he’d want her working with a cape, but given what Aisha used to wear I could completely understand where he was coming from. Not that I would ever admit that to Aisha.

“I’ll keep you posted. If it doesn’t work out we can set up something else for the armor.” I promised.

“Oh, trust me, I’ll make time for the armor.” She smiled at that. “Send me the details and I’ll make sure my dad can get out. He’s been itching to get out of the house since they released him, so this will probably be good for everyone involved.”

“Right, I’ll check in later.” I disconnected the call and turned back to my workshop. I could feel the boosts from the mantic energy flowing through the place, the buzz of the nanobots developing intelligence, and the sheer potential of the projects being undertaken. For the first time it felt like I was actually on top of my technology. Like I had a hope of actually bringing my full capacity to bear.

I knew things were going to get worse. Last night was a one-off miracle, and not one I could count on again. Things were going to heat up, and when they did I would make sure I was ready to meet them, head on.

******

Addendum Rey

Rey looked over the aftermath with a sigh. The cynical thought that jumped to his mind was that this must have caused DOZENS of dollars in property damage.

Really, that wasn’t fair, but it encapsulated his feelings towards the bulk of Lost Garden. When he first arrived his impression was they were a bunch of sheltered kids with no sense of the realities of cape life who would fold at the first challenge.

Looking around he could see them, folding at the first challenge. The mystical forest of Barrow’s shaker effect was rapidly recovering from the attack. The collection of huts, tents, and campers was not so fortunate. The group was damn lucky that there hadn’t been any deaths, normally something to be expected from Uber and Leet’s stunts, but with their new association and firepower it was far from guaranteed. Given the level of moaning for comparatively minor injuries Rey had to wonder if this group had ever seen combat.

“Can you help them after Barrow?” Asked the young girl walking beside him. Everyone here was young, and a disproportionate number of them were girls. Definitely girls, not women.

This one went by Barrow Rose, as if the dynamics weren’t creepy enough.

“I’ll try.” He offered. He might be able to whip up some pain killer, but it wasn’t high on his priority list, not after what they’d done to his lab. Shattered remains of every terminal he had smuggled in greeted him on his return from the last supply run. Unlike Barrow’s collection of runaways he couldn’t operate on nothing but magical forest fruit. Tinkers needed resources, even tinkers like him.

Lost Garden had always been a last resort. There was the possibility ever since Lauren had introduced him to the group, but they never clicked. The themes seemed like a natural match, but despite all Rey’s quirks, and his enjoyment of the occasional chemical indulgence, he was a man of science, not some starstruck dreamer trying to create a mix of a 60s commune and a fantasy novel. He and Barrow couldn’t be more different, which was reflected in their arrangement.

The man had been stingy with his resources, even with allocation of the ones produced freely by his shaker effect. Rey had needed to settle his lab outside any of the main living areas, giving space to all the long term residents. He’d provided guard creatures as requested, but was only rewarded with heavy criticism and more demands for chemicals.

Frankly he was planning to leave the moment he spotted a better prospect. Still, the fact that he wasn’t completely settled in saved him from losing everything to the raid.

Unlike Barrow.

He found the man being inexpertly nursed by three of his acolytes, the oldest of which couldn’t have been more than 18. That was the most unsettling part of this arrangement. Barrow never made any moves towards his circle of teenagers, he just had complete control over their environment, safety, and resources. It didn’t take a genius to see the result that kind of power imbalance would have on young minds.

Though it was hard to see any power in the slumped middle aged form lying on the bed of moss. Young capes who previously only saw him as a source of free drugs were looking at him with hope in their eyes.

“I need bright lights, clean water, and the three red cases from my lab.” A quick look to Barrow Rose for confirmation sent the three teens scattering for the requested items, letting Rey get to work.

It hadn’t surprised him to learn he was the only person with a medical degree in the commune. It had surprised him how little medical training the rest of the group had. Not even basic first aid. Really it was a wonder something like this hadn’t happened before.

No, actually the wonder was how this had happened at all. He decried Lost Garden, but Barrow’s forest was a formidable obstacle, nearly impossible to navigate and full of dangers. The kids may have been young but they were still parahumans. Anyone else blundering into the group would have been butchered.

But it hadn’t been anyone else. Uber and Leet had struck like a bolt of lightning. Hitting when he was on a supply run and the rest of the group was recovering from a usual night of revelry, they had come in better informed, better prepared, and much better armed than anyone could have expected. Only a token effort had been paid to the ‘Plants vs Zombies’ motif as they drew from their now functional catalogue of weaponry and showed what happened if a normal team tried to stand against them.

Rey shook his head as he continued his treatment and examination. Barrow had gotten the worst of it. A severe beating coupled with multiple cuts, scrapes, and what looked like a spinal biopsy. He had scanned enough parahumans to know what that was about, and didn’t like the implication.

“Blas.. to..?” Came a murmured voice as the man regained consciousness.

“I’m here,” Rey assured the shaker, “And cleaning up the mess.”

“Fuckers.” He growled and took an unsteady breath. “How bad is it?”

The bio-tinker let out a sigh. “Bad. Extensive damage to multiple systems. Looks like a detached retina. Some internal bleeding that I’ve dealt with, but the spinal damage is going to be a problem.”

“Can’t feel legs.” The man grumbled in a low voice. Rey nodded.

“Was afraid of that. They weren’t too gentle with you.”

“Can you fix it?” Rey looked from the prone form of the middle aged man to the shining eyes of Barrow Rose hovering at the entrance.

“Maybe, but not with what I have here.” He wagered. Looking down at the man he could tell what was coming.

“Take whatever you need. Rose has the accounts. She can cover it.” Rey nodded solemnly, a small part of him wondering if it would be worth running as soon as he got what he needed rather than stay tied to this mess. “And I want you to go to Brockton.”

Rey blinked. “What?”

The prone man shook his head. “This wasn’t those clowns' plans. The ABB is behind it. They aren’t getting away with it. We have to strike back, or we’ll be prey. People will come for the children.”

Rey repressed a shudder at Barrow’s words and forced himself to nod. “That city is going to be a mess. Dragon’s setting up there, the ABB is still active, it’s going to be a cluster fuck. The best we can hope for is showing the flag.”

“That’s enough. We bloody their nose for this, then let the local dogs tear them apart. Can you do that?”

Rey sighed. Out of Boston and into another gang war. Still, his place in the community was at least on the rise. Barrow was likely to be very accommodating if the prospect of cloned spinal tissue was on the table. If he could minimize his direct involvement in the conflicts coming then maybe this could be a good thing.

He smiled, keeping his true intentions from his face. “I’ll see what I can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Putting On The Reich (Indiana Jones) 200:  
> They may fear your tenacity. They may hate your cause. They may even oppose your beliefs. But one thing remains constant: A begrudging respect for the aura of organization and sharpness you give off. You have an excellent sense of how to design uniforms that not only are intimidating and show the power of your group, but are also fashionable and make your group look organized, official in a way. It's time to show them who's Boss.
> 
> Aesthetics and Flair (Bayonetta) 100:  
> A gun isn't quite a gun until it LOOKS good, you know? It's supposed to be classy, make you look amazing just for having it. Likewise, that sword could use a bit of badass styling to it. When you create your weapons, you can make them look DAMNED good even on an off day. Expect any weapon creator to envy you, and those who die by your weapons to count themselves lucky as they perish to such beautiful art.
> 
> Inexplicable Innuendo (Bayonetta) Free:  
> You're not sure how, but just by being here you've gotten the jive of things. Any time you want to come off as sexy or just talk in a lightheartedly dirty manner, it's easy as pie for you. Want to make some people squirm with an implication? Done. You can even implement this in your battle quips, throwing them off their game for that moment of distraction you need.
> 
> Classy Contortionist (Bayonetta) Free:  
> Um... this is something. You've got an innate sense of posing that you can utilize, whether it be to show off your sexiness or simply throw people off their game. It's got all kinds of applications, and no matter what you're always going to look good. Throw it into your battle styles or something.
> 
> Heretical Adaptation (Senki Zesshou Symphogear) 200:  
> Symphogears are, in essence, a Relic adapted into a combat system for it's ability to generate massive amounts of energy that can be formatted into a certain kind of matter through a generic mass-energy converter. However, they also have the ability to 'evolve' overtime, gaining additional armor and improvements to features such as onboard thrusters. With a bit of study, it might be possible to apply this adaptive behavior to other materials, encouraging them to improve themselves over time.
> 
> Calling Card (Senki Zesshou Symphogear) Free:  
> You spent a lot of time coming up with your combat techniques. It's only fair to name them! When you make an attack that's above par, time almost seems to freeze for a second, and all those onlooking instinctively recognize the name and intended theme of the technique. This effect can be toggled.
> 
> Scrapyard Skills (Swat Kats) 300:  
> Where others see junk, you see treasure just waiting to be utilized. You can make far more use out of scrap metal and tossed out electronics, repurposing them for many different tasks. That washer machine might have the parts needed to help spin an engine turbine, or that piston tube might be JUST the right size to refashion into a grappling hook launcher... it's all in how you use it and how you repurpose things.
> 
> Rockin' Music (Swat Kats) Free:  
> When you're going around or doing something awesome, you can choose to have a sick electric guitar riff or a few notes of heavy metal goodness playing as you work in all your glory! ...or villainy. Either way it's sure to sound amazing.
> 
> Valkyrian Science (Valkyria Chronicles) 300:  
> Somehow you've gained some of the knowledge that the Valkyrur used to possess, giving you the skill and ability to graft Ragnite machinery on a level far above any modern human. At first, you'd only be able to create replica's of the Valkyrian weapons, but with many years of study it might be possible to recreate the Valkyrur themselves.


	46. 39 Set Up - Addendum Kenta

39 Set Up

A person’s clarity of purpose can quickly wither when exposed to the scale of work ahead of them. I had spent a solid morning resolving old issues and patching holes in my equipment and technology, but that was a far cry from actually getting a handle on things.

Through the rest of the day I had to sort out Garment’s meetings, arrange Aisha’s power armor, close out the series of weapon development programs I had running, and step up my surveillance efforts of the ABB.

That last item was both the most difficult and critical of all of them. I took some level of security in upgrading my gear, but the truth was there wasn’t much that could stand up to even my older equipment, and nothing I had would stand up to March. Really, keeping my distance and securing information were my only options.

I suppose it really was a good thing my duplicates had put their feet down regarding my shield and use of aura. Anything that boosted mobility, speed, and reflexes would be able to keep me safe in a way no armor ever could. My aura was definitely geared towards evasiveness, which was probably another thing that spoke to some aspect of my character that I’d rather not explore in any detail. That speed should be enough to counter March and anything Bakuda could mount, but I wasn’t going to underestimate them.

The weapon research was a second point towards that end. Everything planned for my Veritech could be installed on my motoroid on a smaller scale. I didn’t have a fold carbon engine powering it, but that call gem had more than enough power to run the suit for ages. I was leaning towards trying to rebuild the motoroid by hand, but decided against it as an immediate priority. It was already overkill for any reasonable threat in this city. If there was something the time could be better spent on, then I should prioritize that.

Aisha’s armor would be hand built. It would also be Named. I wasn’t kidding about bringing everything I could to the table with that project. The only way I could even begin to justify bringing a thirteen-year-old into combat was by draping her in enough defensive measures to tank anything the world could throw at her. I was actually split on delaying the project until after I had a stable source of cybertonium, just for an assurance that I could break out the best equipment possible.

Something told me that wouldn’t be the best idea. Aisha was impulsive and while the lack of conflict between gangs during the previous night had been a blessing, it also probably indicated that things were about to heat up in a big way. I could add emulated cybertonium to modular portions of her armor without resulting in a complete failure in the event of one unlucky result, but that would mean diminishing the effect of the Elven Enchanting. The higher levels took something significant out of me, and if I wanted to bring the best effect to Aisha I couldn’t afford to take chances on failed material emulations.

Most of those concerns were already being dealt with by my duplicates. A lot of work had been done on Aisha’s armor with only minimal oversight from me. The same was broadly true with weapon development. The varied arsenal from my powers and knowledge bases had been picked over by my duplicates, who had taken to applying the design and efficiency powers I’d recently been using to turn a pair of heavy boots into something that was basically the curb stomp of the gods.

My duplicates had been doing work towards improving the already comprehensive weapon database uploaded to the computer core. My design powers allowed the plans to be streamlined, simplified, and even miniaturized without any detrimental effect on the end product. The simplification of the design actually improved performance as well as making the item in question easier to manufacture and modify.

Actually upgrading the technology was a significantly more daunting prospect. Everything from Weaponsmith and Armourer was based on principles so advanced it was like looking at something from a post-singularity society. Clearly, there were compromises with some of the work, but a design that gave the ability to build a laser rifle by hand out of rough components was the kind of thing you could only get from an intelligence that dwarfed any conceivable limits.

There wasn’t much I could do to make that better. Space Command Engineer did allow slight improvements to be made to any technology, though it was far from an automatic process. My research powers were just about up to the challenges for anything that wasn’t a one-of-a-kind outlier from those databases, so I was able to make some small, incremental improvements to certain key models.

My duplicates were spending some time on that work. It was a kind of research that I was comfortable handing off to them, something where the end results were more important than the process. I was exceptionally lucky my copies were willing to take on busy work rather than demanding the most engaging experiences possible. It was another of those things that made me wonder about my own psychology, but that was a rabbit hole I’d rather avoid for the moment.

I received a message from one of the duplicates announcing they were starting work on ragnite refinement. The ‘hidden’ laboratory had been generating a few liters of low grade ragnite crystal each day. Normal refinement processes, which is to say the refinement processes that the lab was built to accommodate, would reduce that to a pile of toxic waste chemicals and a tiny sample of barely usable energetic material. If I had devoted time and effort to cracking the secrets of the lab before getting my latest power I would probably have come out of it with a mildly useful energy source that had to be supported by my numerous efficiency and resource powers to even have a hope of reaching a deployable level.

Valkyrian Science changed all of that. It instantly granted me the knowledge of ragnite’s true potential, which was one on a level of some of the best energy sources I could produce. The lab’s technology would never be able to come anywhere close to that kind of quality, and couldn’t utilize it even if it was able to somehow get a sample to work with. The quality would just be too much for those limited applications. In terms of contained energy, it was like comparing coal to uranium.

One power had taken a material curiosity that was integrated into 1940s level technology and catapulted it to the level of a space age society. And I was going to take it even further. Ragnite was a mineral, meaning it was compatible with my volcano’s enhancement properties. Every level of material enhancement could be applied to this substance, and then extended to whatever it would be powering.

That included my own equipment. The inertial blocking plate that let me remain unmoved from heavy blows would benefit from a compact energy source, as would just about all of my weapons and defensive items. Anything that didn’t rely on a particular type of energy, such as my motoroid’s magitek drive, or the heavy quantum effect of fold carbon that was needed for my Veritech’s systems, could see a benefit from this material.

Pure ragnite-based technology was also possible, though considerably more difficult. It could be used for devastating attacks and powerful defensive fields, but required either a very particular biological resonance or extensive control hardware to support it. Arcane Craft let me use items of power as long as I could understand the principles behind them, so there was the possibility that I could utilize Valkyrian weapons and equipment.

The thing was, that was a minor concern at the moment. I didn’t need more firepower or expanded defenses. Neither of those things would help me find the ABB, or survive an attack from March. Or one of Bakuda’s more creative bombs.

I had been so focused on the overwhelming strength of March’s striker power that I had largely moved away from concerns over Bakuda’s arsenal. Now, some of the effects I’d previously been worried about were no longer a concern thanks to either the insane expansion of my regular durability or the basic defensive screens incorporated into my equipment blocking direct contact.

That covered a lot of the concerns, but not all of them. I was safe from toxic and biological effects, crystal propagation, and pretty much any level of energy that Bakuda could deploy against me. Exotic things like time stop bombs, material transmutations, and spatial effects were still a threat. I needed to keep that threat in mind, even if I had no intention of actually letting any of her devices near me.

That was considerably easier thanks to recent improvements to my motoroid. I was already good at lasers thanks to Gadget Master and assorted technology skills, but Weaponsmith brought a whole new array of options to that field. With the ‘projectile’ moving at the speed of light and the best targeting system I could build being directed by Fleet the motoroid had some of the most comprehensive point defense physically possible.

It was basically the earlier strategy of shooting missiles out of the air, only done with surgical precision rather than just pointing at a section of sky and saying ‘fuck everything in that general direction’.

I sent an inquiry to my duplicates regarding the tasks in question and any assistance that was necessary, and received an expected response. No scut work. Go do something that will have long term benefits. If there was no benefit to getting a closer look than reports could offer then there was no reason for me to be the one who does it.

Which is how I ended up standing in the arena opposite the recently upgraded motoroid armed only with my shield and new boots while Fleet piloted an eight-foot combat suit armed with the deadliest weapons on the planet. I sank into a low stance and reflected on the unfairness of the matchup.

Fleet engaged the motoroid’s new repulsors, lifting it into the air with far more precision than was previously possible. With an echoing crack the tonfas swung out, sparking with HF energy. I engaged the resonant capacitors in my own boots and reluctantly deployed my lantern shield. The weapon had been fully upgraded by my duplicates, with the design streamlined, the mechanism more efficient, and a full complement of variable weapon features added.

The already resonant design had subtle alterations made to generally increase its ability to channel aura. The design had been made lighter, allowing faster parrying, strikes, and deployment of the grapnel. Further to that end, the ‘lantern’ part of the lantern shield had been repurposed.

Lantern shields were Italian dueling weapons. The idea of them being that if you were out for an evening’s murder you didn’t have enough free hands to hold your shield, spare weapons, and light source. This problem was addressed with typical Italian Renaissance thinking by stapling all these together into an unholy mix of functions, incredibly specialized and generally seen as weird and awkward by anyone outside that environment.

Did I mention I was uncomfortable with the weapon’s supposed reflection of my inner self?

Anyway, in addition to stapling a buckler onto a gauntlet and mounting everything from knives to light spears on the outside, it included a built-in lantern. Usually this was basically just an oil reservoir in the shield with a small hatch for the wick. Not exactly a tactical flashlight, but enough to let you see the person you were trying to stab to death.

Now, obviously I didn’t need a 16th century lantern in my weapon. Which was precisely why my duplicates had decided to convert it into a Dust chamber. I think that may have actually been the original purpose, but in a ‘jam a crystal here and hope it explodes in the direction of your opponent when struck’ sense, not the current masterful arrangement of rotating chambers holding impossibly high-quality dust with specific alterations to the shield allowing effective channeling of the energetic material.

When I said this fight was unfair I was serious.

Fleet launched forward, peppering me with rapid-fire mass effect rounds as he rapidly closed. He was firing high velocity at close range, but with the lighter shield and boost from aura I was able to catch and deflect the slivers of metal. Without my inertial plate I could feel the weight of each impact. Mass effect fields reduced the metal shaving’s weight to nearly zero during acceleration, allowing them to reach absolutely insane speeds. As they left the barrel the field was reversed, artificially increasing the mass of the shaving by orders of magnitude without affecting its velocity.

This caused a massive increase in kinetic energy, but only until the effects of the field wore off. Even with the best possible engineering, manipulation of mass like that was an extreme challenge. It was an accomplishment to get the round to hold its effective mass for even a fraction of a second. That still allowed an effective range of thousands of feet. After that the shaving would drop back to its original mass and bleed momentum as air resistance kicked in. Even if it did manage to connect before atmospheric friction brought it to a standstill the shot would lack the penetrating power of a heavier round, just exploding against the surface of the target.

I was well within the effective range of these guns and felt every one of the heavy shots as they bounced off my shield. The Time constellation missed a connection as the rain of impacts pressed against me. Despite the intense force my body held fast. The boots secured me to the ground as if I was fixed with rivets. Despite the anchoring effect I could feel a sense of lightness and agility from my feet. These were legitimately magical shoes. Anything ‘good’ about shoes, anything they could do well, was magnified to a ludicrous degree with them. Good shoes would help you keep from losing your footing in a difficult situation. Divinely empowered footwear removed the possibility all together.

The scale of the effect was doubly confirmed as the motoroid slammed into me at full thrust. My shield caught the HF tonfa, its own capacitor activating to meet the strength of the motoroid’s weapon. The impact of the runic blow was followed by the entire motoroid crashing into my defenses. My aura strained along with my enhanced musculature, making me acutely aware of how much of a difference Tetra made in cases like this. With a shove I deflected the entire suit into a skyward arc.

Fleet swung the motoroid around for another pass, but quickly altered course as he became aware of the line trailing behind him. With a flick I locked the spool of razor wire in place, halting the suit in midair. I lifted one boot and brought it down on the line. The impact of the enchanted stomp transferred more energy than I could ever have hoped to bring to bear. The motoroid hung in midair for a fraction of a second before the line went taut and drove it into the ground.

Five hundred pounds of enchanted super-metals slammed into the ground like a comet. The floor of the arena was transmuted volcanic stone with the enhancements of my powers and further mantic empowerment. Under the force of a motoroid driven by a divine stomp the rock cratered like a bomb had gone off.

Still, this was my workmanship. It took more than a high-speed impact with solid stone to put it down. Before the dust and thrown shards had even settled I saw Fleet bringing the Motoroid to its feet. By that point I was already on the move, dashing in with all the speed that Aura would allow.

I could feel Fleet through the network evaluating his options. Numerous sub-weapons were considered and disregarded. Some for their lack of effectiveness, some for being outside the spirit of the spar. My duplicates hadn’t been limiting their weapon work exclusively to the Veritech. The motoroid had more than a few surprises, not to mention the main battery that was its magitek laser.

But this wasn’t a test of extreme suppression measures, containment weapons, or tactical ordnance. It was power calibrations for the motoroid’s new systems and my new equipment. As such, Fleet shifted the suit into a low stance and brought up one arm. There was the hum of a repulsor charging as I closed the final distance.

Repulsor technology was one of the gems of my I Am Iron Man power. Pure thrust drawn from nothing but the power source of the device. By charging and focusing the output it would make a devastating ranged weapon. At close ranges it would be enough to send anyone reeling.

I wasn’t anyone, and there was more to this practice than a balance of power. I had received three sets of combat instruction from my power, and was drawing on them now. Military CQC was useful in dealing with the disparity between ranged and melee. Skills: Combat covered extensive techniques for fighting such an extensive a range of opponents that an 8-foot humanoid robot was mundane by comparison. Finally, T’ai Chi Chuan allowed surprisingly devastating explosions of force.

I admit to underestimating that style. Weaponized Tai Chi sounds like a joke, and it’s not like it sees a lot of use in mixed martial arts competitions. The thing was that, unlike the other two styles, this form was laser-focused and had tremendous depth. Its apparently useless energy channeling mechanics proved deadly when combined with aura or life fiber energy. It was simple enough to be used unarmed, but broad enough to incorporate swords, chains, whips, polearms, or even feng huo lun, which provided an excellent parallel for my shield.

Between the skill of my movements and the enhancement of aura I was able to shift my step just as Fleet opened up with the repulsor blast. The impact caught a glancing blow on my side, a calculated, intentional strike that was channeled into a smooth rotation. Using the momentum from the blast I spun and lifted one leg to deliver a brutal kick directly to the motoroid’s center of mass.

Without the enhanced perception allowed by my Aura and my other enhancements I probably would have missed the shudder of the impact and the slight flexing of impossibly durable armored plates. Then there was nothing left to see as the motoroid was launched with a crack of displaced air and the explosion of the arena’s stadium seating as a five-hundred-pound projectile was hurled into them like a cannon shot.

Suddenly calibration and testing was a lot less important than digging Fleet out of the pile of rubble that had once been the left side of the arena. Despite the inconvenience he was positively ecstatic about the experience, exchanging rapid correspondences with the main computer core. By the time I dug him out a dozen simulations of the fight and forces involved were already running in the background and Fleet had twice as many proposals for additional exercises.

I had kicked him into a pile of rubble and his immediate reaction was to ask if we could do it again. I might have had some concerns about the integrity of the arena, but I was granted a first-hand look at the advantages of a high-powered mantic circuit. Before my eyes the damaged floor and stands began reassembling themselves, pieces of rubble floating through the air and sealing back into their original shape. Within a few minutes the entire arena was pristine and untouched.

I indulged Fleet’s request for further trials, but we shifted from the free-form sparring to testing out specific maneuvers and interactions. Honestly, without actual combat it was harder to draw on Aura effectively. I think there was a danger element that made it come to the forefront, though I couldn’t be sure. It’s not like I had an effective point of comparison. Even with that aspect diminished we were able to run through a gauntlet of simulations confirming both the strength of the new weapons and the extreme durability of my upgraded materials. Even without being used personally by me the defensive properties of my equipment outstripped my offensive power. That meant avoided repair time post-sparring and peace of mind concerning Aisha’s safety.

There were still some effects I was concerned about, which were mostly waiting in my Laboratorium. Luckily, by the time my duplicates finished their 20% time Fleet and I had wrapped up our test runs. Before downing the next potion I entered the Laboratorium and retrieved the full tinker tech cache.

It was time for it to be pulled anyway. Analysis had been completed on everything possible with normal scans, but it still felt like I was taking a puppy’s favorite toy from them. Assurances that it was temporary were only marginally successful in diminishing the sense of loss that rippled through the room. As a final dour note to the situation, the music that had been playing since the tinker tech’s arrival cut out just as I left the room.

I looked at the motoroid, which was staring at me with a potion in its hand and what I interpreted to be Fleet’s attempt at an impatient expression.

“Fine. I know.” I assured him, and downed the potion. My duplicates stepped out, each with a copy of all the tinker tech that had been secured on my person. I gave them a quick nod.

“Only an hour for destructive analysis. Think that’s enough time?”

The first gave a curt nod. “Should be if we get started. Probably take the full duration, but…”

“Got it.” I agreed, and handed off my set. “Keep the originals for reference. Now go.”

The duplicates gave quick nods and darted into the Laboratorium. Whatever sense of loss had accompanied the skulls’ separation from the tinker tech was instantly banished. A cry of “Ave Imperator” rang through the lab as every skull and machine spirit sprang up, eager for involvement in the long-awaited chance at destructive testing.

I smiled and shook my head before turning back to the main workshop. I just noticed a slight poke through the network, like someone was trying to get my attention as unobtrusively as possible. It was Survey. Survey was trying to get my attention, but didn’t want my attention. Survey had something she needed help with but also didn’t want me to see.

I honestly couldn’t imagine anything more concerning that that. I broke into a run on the spot and verified the speed-enhancing properties of divine footwear in a blitz to find out what was going on.

I found Survey’s hologram in Garment’s workspace and quickly determined the cause of her distress. In terms of what an unsupervised A.I. could have gotten up to… well, I guess she was supervised by Garment. Was that better or worse? Given what had happened I’m going to lean towards worse.

“Survey, can you please explain how this happened?” I asked as calmly as I could. I was speaking out loud as well as interfacing through my implant, the combination seemed to help Survey cope. Fleet had arrived with the motoroid shortly after I got caught up and was alternating between trying to support Survey and the digital equivalent of gaping in fascination.

Survey was actually conveying her discomfort very effectively through her hologram’s behavior, though that had nothing on the storm raging within her program. Still, she powered through with a verbal and digital explanation.

“The land holding company responded promptly regarding the requested revisions to the lease-to-own contract. They requested clarity on the reasoning behind a number of the revisions. With Garment’s limited ability to convey details I drafted the response outlining the legal regulations and precedents that the revisions were designed to address. They responded in a positive manner, but also requested the identity of the person providing Garment with legal guidance.”

I finished reviewing all the system logs just as Survey finished her explanation. I took a deep breath before responding. “So, you made up a lawyer?”

“From the detail of the contract amendments they were convinced a legal professional was involved. Contradicting them would have raised more concerns than working with the assumptions made.” The hologram explained quickly while Survey transferred records of her thought process and the string of interactions.

I sighed. “And ‘Delphine Mertens’?”

“Generated from tables of common western European names. Assessments showed a higher chance of acceptance of the concept if the individual was implied to be external to the local legal community. The objective was to create the impression of being imprecisely foreign.” She explained quickly.

I nodded stiffly. It shouldn’t have been that big a deal. Garment had contacted someone independently regarding her lease contract, they reviewed it and were providing advice. She already had independent finances, so hiring someone wasn’t out of the question. Really this should have been a footnote on the deal. There was just one single problem.

Survey had done too good a job.

Not only had she located potential flaws and conflicts in the lease agreement, but had, when asked, provided exhaustive and well-reasoned justifications for all of them. That only became more evident as their exchanges went on and it became clear that she was performing at a level beyond the company’s entire legal team. It had gotten to the point where they were making inquiries about her firm and consulting rates, with the heavy implication that they would be looking into things.

And there would be nothing to find. So, the options were to cut things off here, which would be a slap on the wrist for Survey and cast some unfriendly attention on Garment, or double down on the fake identity thing. Looking at both Survey’s code and hologram I couldn’t bring myself to take the first option. She had put a lot of work into this prospect, and it hadn’t been that poorly thought out. If she had been a little more reserved it might have even blown over completely. Instead, her first big push into the outside world was blowing up in her face.

I glanced over at Garment, who was looking much too innocent in this entire matter. Had it been Survey to make this push? She wouldn’t have gone against her role of assisting Garment, and this was the kind of thing Garment would love. A French legal aid? Or possibly Belgian? Maybe Italian? Generic European? Yeah, that was right up her alley.

I shook my head and turned back to Survey’s hologram. “It’s alright. We can deal with this.”

The way her hologram’s face lit up at that statement made it all worthwhile.

That is, for all of the two minutes it took for me to discover how difficult it was to convincingly manufacture a person. I didn’t even want to think about the laws I was breaking here, and somehow that made me feel like a bad role model. What exactly is the crime for accessing the government records of a foreign nation? Well, if this worked I would have an in-house lawyer to explain exactly how illegal everything was.

The hacking wasn’t exactly hard. Really, the main challenge was associated with the level of care I took with the falsification. Survey wasn’t going to come out of this with a complete alternate identity, but there would be enough crumbs to avoid raising any red flags if someone went looking. Really, just enough hints to convince them it wouldn’t be worth the effort of digging deeper, particularly when the first few layers of digging would only reveal the necessity of yet more digging.

The actual challenge was making sure everything I did was completely undetectable. I thought I was being careful with my earlier escapades, but Dragon had disabused me of that notion. Now I was leveraging every computational technique and power to make sure I was a ghost in these systems. Between the excessive caution I was exercising and the comparatively simple security of the records I was able to accomplish my goal before my duplicates hit their 20% time.

And just like that, one of my A.I.s had a human identity. A shaky one, but it was still there. Survey was now essentially a lawyer in the eyes of the world.

Huh, I guess there is some truth to that stuff about artificial intelligences eventually turning evil. Still, as a cold electronic presence with a highly limited concept of humanity it was a natural career to pursue.

Thank you, I’ll be here all week.

I could feel Survey’s excitement as the… I was going to say ‘work’, but really as the criminal actions concluded. There was an unquestionable air of joy running through her code, and a sense of vicarious satisfaction from Fleet. And also, moderate eagerness. I had a feeling I would probably be repeating this soon for a second resident of the workshop.

I was just about to disconnect from the throne when the Celestial Forge made a connection to the Vehicles constellation. The power it connected to was Valuable Memories, giving me connections to three of the four mid-sized motes in the cluster. Previously I had received the knowledge regarding memory manipulation and the construction of giant robots. I went into this connection assuming that it would be something equally eccentric.

I was both not disappointed and horrified beyond belief.

This mote granted new memories in the form of another mental database of skills, just as the last two had. The specific topic of this mote was not something I had been expecting. You might even say it was something I had been dreading.

It covered the creation of chimeras.

That is the kind of power that sounds ominous even by the standards of the Celestial Forge. The truth of it was actually a lot worse. This was from the Vehicles constellation. Outside of this power that constellation had mostly provided mechanical knowledge or principles. Yes, this power had giant robot construction in it, but it also had memory alteration. And now it had the creation of chimeras.

In this context, chimeras were giant monsters. Kind of the parallel to the giant robots made possible with the previous mote, but substantially more horrifying. By ‘giant’ I don’t mean something like an elephant. I mean twice the size of Behemoth. And that’s as a starting point.

It was a comprehensive wet tinkering ability centered on the creation of monsters. In other words, it was the second half of my original specialty, dumped on me out of nowhere. In fact, if you count the nature of memories as the neurochemistry side and the creation of chimeras as the bioengineering side I was now back to where I would have been with my original trigger. Nilbog meets Heartbreaker by way of Bonesaw. Only Nilbog couldn’t make monsters on this scale, and Heartbreaker couldn’t rewrite someone’s entire life.

I didn’t know what to do with this information. I meant that both on the meta level of suddenly having this power, and in practical terms of suddenly being able to produce giant monsters.

Actually, no. It wasn’t just giant monsters. That would have been too simple. The information was there, breaking down how to sequence, engineer, incubate, and finally produce something that would grow to a size that no living thing should be able to approach. That was bad enough, but it wasn’t the truly horrifying part. There was more biological knowledge here, comprehensive knowledge on artificial proteins, biological augmentations, and various uses for live subjects.

There were shortcuts that you could take to rush the production of a giant monster. You just needed to throw out any semblance of morality. Live subjects, particularly humans, could be used as a starting point. The things I could do… Well, I really didn’t want to think about them.

I noticed a pair of contacts through the network. My duplicates. They were dealing with this as well. From their reactions it wasn’t any easier for them either. Apparently they wanted me out of the throne, which was probably a good idea. This was serious enough without burning into it at twenty times normal speed.

I finished disconnecting to the sound of feet running towards the computer core. I watched, slumped on the seat as both my duplicates rushed around the corner and up the stairs leading to the throne, slowing as they neared the top.

“Uh, hey.” The first offered. “Okay, I’m not going to ask if you’re alright, because that would be fucking pointless.” The second nodded along with that and a ghost of a smile quirked on my lips. “I know, horrible technology, terrible wet tinkering, and that nightmare from our trigger. It looks bad, but it doesn’t have to be.”

I raised an eyebrow at that as the second picked up the thread. “Nature of memories, right? Had it since Saturday. Can completely rewrite someone’s mind, dig into their brain for secrets, or wipe them out as a person. And we have done none of that. Full consequence of getting half of our power was helping Aisha and making the magic water for god metal.”

I nodded. “I get it. Leave the horrible, try to use it. Like with Case 53s, or medical tech…” I paused as I considered the medical applications of this kind of work. It felt like trying to build a house using cement made from orphan blood. Or like I was digging through a box of nightmares to find the one that might have a side effect relevant to a specific condition.

“Yeah, we’re there with you.” The first agreed. “It’s bad stuff, but it’s just knowledge. It can’t do any harm if we don’t want it to.”

I nodded slowly and glanced down at the lantern shield, currently collapsed into a black metal band on my wrist. “Fine, I get it.” I stood up. “No reason to mope over it.”

“At least not now.” Offered the second. “Once the gang war is over you get unlimited moping privileges. Go full woe is me, cursed with evil powers and all I used them for was saving an entire city.”

That brought a smile to my face. “Got it. Shouldn’t you be on 20% time?”

“And abandon the Laboratorium?” The first asked, aghast. “It’s been party central since we let them start tearing apart the spatial rift bomb. You better get down there to get the second set of copies ready for when the first ones disappear, otherwise there’s going to be a riot.”

That brought a smile to my face and I followed them down to the Laboratorium entrance. A huge amount of progress had been made with the tinker tech disassembly, but only on a few critical items, and mostly because of the comprehensive scans and analysis from the previous days. In fact, with some of Bakuda’s tech the Laboratorium’s safety procedures wouldn’t have allowed disassembly any sooner. When you are dealing with unstable spatial folds there are certain safety procedures that are generally a good idea.

The fact that the Laboratorium had safety procedures for effects that exotic wasn’t even surprising at this point. I let my duplicates run down their personal time and refreshed the tinker tech with the next set of copies before returning to Garment.

I was sure she would never admit anything regarding Survey’s little endeavor into fraudulent representation, no matter how happy she seemed with the result. Once that was dealt with Survey was able to ‘close the deal’, so to speak. Garment would still need to sign the lease at the company’s office, and following that could take possession of the property. The rent was excessively reasonable, a consequence of the neighborhood. Additionally, the company was willing to waive certain deposits in exchange for being able to publicly announce their involvement in the deal.

One of the things that may have put their impression of Survey, or ‘Delphine Mertens’, over the top was her quantification of the estimated value of various levels of publicity expected to result from the announcement based on current levels of exposure in both social and conventional media. It turned what was probably supposed to look like a highly generous offer by the company into more of an equitable arrangement, and not one that overly favored Garment.

The Time constellation passed by as I reviewed the terms. Getting Garment to their office would be another challenge. The Protectorate’s escort from the previous day had been incredibly convenient. Unfortunately, until Garment got a few more resources moving a cape as obvious as her around the city would be a trial. It wouldn’t matter once she could hole up in her studio, but transportation was going to be a concern.

That thought triggered an inquiry from Fleet, and I had a feeling my next round of computer fraud would probably involve a chauffeur's license. 

Still, even with travel time, finding a place to deploy Garment, collecting her afterwards, and getting her to the new property it should be wrapped up by early afternoon. The decision of how to proceed from there was another matter. Survey had looked into the quagmire of cape law and Garment was probably alright with private commissions while the paperwork for her business was being processed. Even with the best-case scenario that could take weeks to go through, and that was assuming the conditions of a city without Guard detachments deployed on a nightly basis.

Still, it came together well enough. I signaled Survey, who sent a confirmation of the time to Aisha while waiting to help Garment contact Mr. Laborn. While she handled that I took some time to examine the state of the city.

Something about the previous night’s standoff didn’t sit right. The Merchants and Empire had laid obvious traps for ABB activity, but if my estimation of March was correct she could have thrown a dozen wrenches into either situation. Everything about her seemed centered on making efficient use of time, so the ‘wasting’ of an entire night didn’t make sense. Not unless she was putting something else in play.

My ability to figure out what was limited. I didn’t have any surveillance technology in play, and wasn’t going to risk deployment with both Dragon and those reverse-engineering bombs in play. Too much of my technology could be devastating in the wrong hands, and hands didn’t get much worse than Bakuda or a compromised Dragon. Dragon’s presence was even more concerning, since it cut off another avenue of information.

I had seen shadows of the tinker’s presence on local networks. She was moving with incredible care and stealth, but between my technokinesis and expanded computer knowledge I was able to detect her. I hadn’t been spotted in return, but that was mostly due to my excessive care in regulating my activities. Between my upgraded modem and new countermeasures I could slip by her excessive watchfulness, but I couldn’t act with the level of recklessness I previously had.

Honestly, without Dragon’s monitoring I would probably have a complete birth certificate, school records, chain of employment and immigration paperwork completed for ‘Delphine Mertens’. Survey’s fake lawyer would be more real than most physical people.

That left me with passive analysis of public information and social media. Not the richest vein, but still somewhat profitable. Enough people being active enough and posting enough information and patterns started to emerge. It was the same type of system used for targeted advertising, only this time turned to the side of good.

Unfortunately, getting effective results on that level, such as showing someone an ad for socks after they happened to notice their feet were cold, required an unethical level of data access. I was working with less precise information, but also looking for less precise output. Even a general idea of what was going on would be helpful.

I briefly considered reaching out to Tattletale, but the girl was both insanely overworked and constantly beating her head against the solid brick wall that was March’s power. I would have to trust she would reach out if anything was confirmed. In the meantime, I unleashed Survey on Brockton’s social media networks like the hounds of hell.

Working things out, I would have to leave sometime after this set of duplicates dispersed. I could set the next copies in the lab, but after that I would need their help on Aisha’s armor. Until then, I at least got to take part in the Laboratorium party atmosphere that came with actually dissembling tech.

Upon arrival I was quickly set up in the command throne and upon engaging the link felt the immense satisfaction emanating from the older machine spirits. While the Laboratorium was set up with the possibility of automation in mind it was intended to function best with a larger staff. Three people barely counted, but given that they were all highly skilled, had cybernetic connections, and had a clear hierarchy between them the machine spirits were fully willing to run with the idea. That coupled with the excitement of tearing into new technology and the passive benefits of the mantic circuit meant truly excellent progress was being made towards the more exotic items I had salvaged.

This time I maintained the research while allowing my duplicates to take their full 20% time in the rest of the workshop. I had to intentionally wind down the examination before the copied tinker tech disappeared with the duplicates, but it was met with good humor based on experience that it would be back. In fact, the Laboratorium was enjoying being able to tear into particularly complicated pieces multiple times to discern their full operational principles.

After my duplicates’ duration ended I refreshed the potion one more time and left them to the research while I prepared to head out. With the serious chance that I would encounter someone I knew in the neighborhood I elected to down one of the build reduction potions.

The potion tasted like ash and sand. Drinking induced the sensation that your body was being stretched out on a rack in front of a dry wind. I watched in amazement as the excesses of my divine build withered down to something that would be reasonable of a physically active person with more pressing commitments than living on a protein diet and pumping iron like it was your primary source of income.

A quick check confirmed no side effects, something my duplicates had already investigated, and showed a build that was slightly ahead of my earlier body, but not enough that it would raise suspicion. If everything went right the potion should last about two and a half hours. I was capable of longer durations, but length had been traded away with this brew to prevent any diminishing effects over the course of the potions run.

It did mean that if I went over I would suddenly hulk out of these wonderful new clothes Garment had made for my new build. Well, hulk out of everything but my civilian level boots. Those had the benefit of my power to ensure they always fit, and were also an excellent hold out weapon and defensive option.

Frankly, letting Garment know I had the ability to alter my body shape may have opened something of a Pandora’s box in terms of fashion design. She was way too enthusiastic about the idea, and I was suddenly very grateful she would be getting an outside outlet for her work.

One last check confirmed that Aisha’s father had responded to confirm the time of the meeting, set roughly half an hour after Garment was predicted to take possession of the building. Providing no unexpected setbacks, that is.

On that note, I took a moment to review Survey’s preliminary analysis of the available data. The initial results were slightly concerning, a concern only mitigated by how vague they were. Survey had managed to dig into months of posts and media reports. The conclusion that something different was happening was not that pertinent given the kidnappings, hostage soldiers and active military on the streets.

Even attempting to account for that, something seemed off. I left Survey to keep processing the data and headed out.

My first stop was the gym, and for once it looked like a gym rather than a community center. My Pinto was still in the now uncrowded parking lot, but I decided to duck in before running Downtown. The interior had also returned to normal, though there was still the odd table set up from Garment’s debut and the banner still suspended over the ring. A few regulars were scattered around the gym, but I spotted some new faces, including a husky red-faced teenager frantically trying to keep up with Doug’s lesson.

I caught the big man’s eye and gave a slight wave. He returned it with considerably more enthusiasm before turning to his new student.

“I’ve gotta see to this. Take five and grab some water.” He barked. The boy was panting too hard to reply, so he merely nodded frantically before scrambling for his water bottle as soon as the coach turned away.

“Joe!” Doug’s friendly voice boomed around the room, causing the regulars to look up in greeting and the new arrivals to extend interested looks. “Good to see you!” It didn’t escape my notice that he had just enforced a pecking order on any of the new members Garment’s debut had attracted. Around the gym the people in Doug’s good book could be listed on a slip of paper the size of a fast food receipt with room to spare. An open friendly greeting meant a lot with that kind of dynamic in play.

“Hey Doug. Did the truck work out alright?” I asked innocently.

“Beautiful work.” He answered, dropping from his ‘actually talking to everyone in the gym’ voice to his usual conversation level, which was still loud enough to be heard in the locker rooms and halfway to the street. “Drew was beside himself. Said it’s running like a dream.”

“Glad I could help.” I replied, trying to downplay things as much as I could.

“For that man this was a lifesaver.” He shook his head. “Things are tough out there, steady work can mean the world in situations like that.” I nodded as he looked over at me. “How are you doing on that front?”

“I’ve… got some stuff lined up.” I saw his expression and quickly clarified. “New role, last one wasn’t working out so well.”

He gave a knowing nod and dropped his voice to the point where only those in the same half of the gym could hear us. “That’s probably a good move. Things are a mess out there.” Then his eyes glimmered conspiratorially. “Though I’ve got some big news. Laborn got out of the hospital yesterday.”

I smiled at that. “That’s great. I knew they couldn’t keep him down.”

“That’s not the news.” He cut me off and grinned wider. “You’re going to love this. Apparently his daughter is going to work for Garment.”

I blinked. “Aisha?” I asked, more surprised that it was being discussed like a done deal than anything else. Doug just nodded.

“Yeah, apparently ran into her near the gym and swept her up. Got her a whole new wardrobe as an advance or something. I’ve never heard the man so happy as when he told me the news.” Doug beamed.

“Better than what she used to wear?” I tried to sound sincere in my guess.

My statement got a laugh from Doug. “Couldn’t be worse. You saw what Garment makes, and that girl’s everyday wear made her gym stuff look modest. More than that, he said Aisha’s been different since she met Garment. Less attitude, more focused, even behaving better.” He saw my expression and quickly clarified things. “The girl’s still Aisha, but he thinks meeting a cape like that left her a bit starstruck. Lord knows the girl could use some decent female role models.” Doug seemed to suddenly realize he had muttered that last sentence out loud and quickly cleared his throat. “Laborn’s meeting later today to confirm the details, but honestly it was probably the best gift anyone could get him when he got out of the hospital.”

“Do they know where she’s setting up shop?” I politely ventured.

“Some place nearby. Don’t have the address, but I doubt it’ll be hard to find her once she settles in. Plus, only a few places in the area that I can see her using. Maybe the old studio on Grant street, or that little department store the Mayberrys used to own.” That seemed to bring him down slightly. “Life’s been draining out of the neighborhood over the years. Hope Garment will be good for this place.”

I remembered Vince’s words about what happened with developments at the Docks/Downtown border. I hoped Doug’s optimism would be well placed.

The Alchemy constellation missed a connection as I glanced at Doug’s new student. The blond boy looked 14 or 15 and was slowly shifting back to a healthier color with the help of half his water bottle and as much air as he could pull into his lungs.

“That one of the new signups?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s Theo.” I felt a wave of recognition from my passenger at the name that caused me to quirk an eyebrow. Doug dropped his voice to a level that actually was unlikely to be heard across the gym. “Kid looks like pudding, but he’s pushing through decently. Actually doing his training and showed up for a second lesson. Don’t know if he’ll make it, but he’s doing better than most of the sightseers.”

I nodded and turned back to Doug. “Mainly here to pick up my car. Wanted to ask, I know we don’t have assigned parking or anything, but is it still good for me to use the lot overnight?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure you have a space.” He grinned. “Now I should probably get back before the kid thinks I’m going soft.”

I smiled at that. “Hardly any chance of that.”

Doug returned the grin and headed back towards the blond boy. The emotions I was getting from my passenger around him were generally positive, but also cautious. There was something going on there, though nothing that was raising immediate red flags. I wasn’t getting the sense that he was a cape, but it was possible he was another case like Aisha. Potential trigger? Someone immediately important?

Okay, not immediately. Also, he was not THAT important. Nothing like the level of Taylor or Flechette. The main thing I was taking away was a lack of immediate concern. Given the day’s schedule and other concerns I was willing to take that on faith, and slipped out of the gym and into my car.

The real estate company was located south of Downtown in a small business complex. There was an ample parking lot for visitors, but obviously I wasn’t going to park there. There was also an inconsiderate lack of blind alleys and labyrinthine underground parking structures. I may have been a bit spoiled by the architecture of Brockton Bay.

Instead I found a strip mall a couple blocks away and consulted the mental blueprints of the city I had memorized thanks to my Engineer power allowing instant recall of plans. Combined with my computer throne and a somewhat generous interpretation of the digital access guidelines of the city archives I had the entire street layout and a good number of building floorplans in a mental database.

That was how I found a back-access door on a small restaurant currently closed for renovation. Well, actually closed for health code violations, but the first sounded better. The point was it wasn’t likely to be used and provided Garment a clear shot to the real estate office.

Opening the door and dropping the hologram revealed Garment in a newly made fitted blazer, blouse, and skirt. The two things that stood out were the addition of the Dust weave pattern across the jacket and skirt, once again terrifyingly excessive unless she was expecting the need to drop a barrage of rock spears large enough to pass as support pillars, and her new boots.

The boots were even more excessive than the Dust weaving, even if they were the most conservative pair. I knew the base level of what those things were capable of, and was suddenly a lot less concerned about Garment making her own way through the city.

She did take a few moments to present the full outfit with just a hint of apprehension. I realized it was the first two-piece outfit she had personally worn, with everything else being some variety of dress or gown.

“You look great.” I assured her. “I’ll be standing by in case you need anything, and you have your phone?” She held up the hyper advanced scanner and communications device masquerading as a mid-range smartphone. “Great. You’ll be fine, and I’ll keep an eye on things from here.”

Garment gave me a grateful touch on the arm before hurrying towards the company offices. I slipped back inside the Workshop, quickly checking on the status of my duplicates and their analysis.

They had packed away the duplicated tech and returned the original samples for comparative analysis before leaving for their 20% time. I took a moment to review the results while letting Survey monitor Garment’s progress.

The results of the analysis had been fruitful, but not immediately useful. Bakuda’s most advanced bombs would still be a challenge to replicate, and most of them were only worth considering against S-class threats. Frankly I would rather use Weaponsmith’s stasis grenades with their limited duration than risk locking someone in a time bubble that might as well last for eternity. Bakuda’s ‘non-lethal’ options were either torture devices or induced permanent disabilities and critical conditions. There was the possibility of incorporating the principles into other weaponry, but that was a design project I didn’t currently have the time for.

Leet’s work had been more encouraging. The items were intensely specialized, meaning they were incredibly difficult to deconstruct to their operational principles or even to the point where they could be recreated. That said, it was technology that actually had applications outside of a terrorist attack. The personal plasma shield had the potential to be a highly effective barrier against energy attacks, particularly once its critical defects were worked out. The ‘Dragon Sword’ was an incredible telekinetic engine built into what was frankly an idiotic application. Cracking that technology could allow for thrustless flight and incredibly precise maneuverability as well as any number of offensive applications.

It was actually Bakuda’s less advanced devices that proved to be the most useful in terms of adaptations. The insane twists of technology it took to build a time stop device out of civilian level components was a nearly insurmountable obstacle. The methods Bakuda used to improve ‘conventional’ explosives were much easier to grasp and apply to my own work. Already I had a half dozen improvements planned for the weapon systems of both my Veritech and motoroid.

I shifted my attention back to Survey’s link to Garment’s phone. Garment had been able to enter the building without attracting too much attention, at least by Garment’s standards, but her arrival in the lobby was causing something of a stir. The company was clearly trying to roll out the red carpet, so to speak, but with a guest who didn’t eat, drink, or have any physical body most offers naturally came across as a bit lame. Eventually the hubbub died down and Garment was led into a conference room where the revised lease was presented.

The scanner in Garment’s phone was powerful enough to instantly confirm all the required changes had been made, but obviously the company’s representative wanted to go through it to ensure Garment knew everything was in order. When it became clear Garment wasn’t able to convey enough detail for the discussion she brought out her phone and made a call.

And so, we progressed with Delphine Mertens’ public debut. Survey was both excited and incredibly concerned about this development. I maintained a link to her as the call came through and hurried to the throne for a more direct connection. With my assurance, Survey answered the call and spoke her first words to the outside world.

“Hello, this is Delphine Mertens. How may I help you?” I slid into the neural connection as Survey processed the emulated voice she had specifically designed for this purpose. Every lesson she had processed on human interaction, tone, diction, and social graces was being pushed to their limit. The voice was distinct from the one she used with her hologram, carrying the kind of slight accent that was difficult to place, calculated to create the impression of someone who grew up in a multilingual environment.

“Hello Ms. Mertens. This is Sidney Winston from Bayshore Land Holdings.” The representative from the company’s legal department said towards the phone as Garment set it on the table. “We corresponded earlier today. I’m here with Garment and our head of sales, Phillip Mathews. We’re going over the revisions to the lease and we just wanted to ensure all the changes were satisfactory before we finalized things for the studio.”

“That sounds excellent. I have your latest copy of the document. We can go through them together. Garment, if it is alright with you I will confirm the changes before you go forward with the deal?” Survey replied. One of the men in the meeting was about to say something before a keyboard appeared on the phone’s screen. After a moment of searching Garment typed the ‘y’ key and settled back into her seat. “Thank you Garment. Now where should we begin?’

The men exchanged a glance before picking up their own copies. “Well, first we should review the changes to the interior structure renovation policies…”

The conversation devolved into a dense exchange of legalese between Survey and the company’s representatives. Survey had a beyond extensive database of impeccably analyzed legal guidelines to draw from, but still struggled with the phrasing of some of the concepts. I worked with her through the process, even after sending another pair of duplicates to begin the final prep work for Aisha’s armor.

Fortunately, between her assumed name and accent most of her slip-ups were easily attributed to a language barrier issue and were met with good humor. Interestingly, it wasn’t just a one-sided affair in terms of the exchange of legal information. Apparently, there were nuances to real estate law, particularly the way it was conducted within a city like Brockton Bay, that didn’t relate perfectly to court precedent. With the rat’s nest that was land law in a major city, disputes were commonly handled through arbitration rather than a court case, and as such documents were often prepared with that assumption.

Basically, Survey had been approaching things at the state and national level instead of the civic level. It was an enlightening experience for her, and she took the clarifications with good grace and interest. In general, she seemed to make a good impression on both of the company officers.

Finally, all disputes and potential pitfalls were resolved and they were able to move on to the signing. Well, not so much signing in Garment’s case. Asking Garment to write her name involved an extended period of her shakily picking letters out on the page with a lack of grace completely alien to her character. Luckily, the Protectorate had worked with enough capes with similar difficulties to come up with another option while setting up her identity and finances.

Garment opened her beyond-designer purse and produced a bottle of ink and an incredibly fine piece of thread. Both of the officers leaned in to watch as the thread floated free of Garment’s grasp and snaked through the black liquid. Ever so carefully it arranged itself into a precise pattern, pressed onto the signature line of the page.

The process was more like pattern dying than making a signature, but it was a unique and identifiable marking. A version of her label, only with the hands closed except for the index finger and thumb pointing out on each hand, angled left and right.

It was someone's idea of a joke. The American Sign Language symbol for the letter G, repeated twice. Garment Gloves.

There was a sense of elation at the conclusion of the deal, way too much for a property of this scale. Then again, how many capes actually rented places in this city? If we’re talking in their own name, probably just Parian and members of New Wave. They extended their thanks to Garment and ‘Ms. Mertens’ before requesting a few pictures to commemorate the occasion.

Of course, once that started Garment was basically on fire. What I think was intended to be a few reference photos turned into a miniature fashion shoot. I let it go on for fifteen minutes before I sent a simple reminder text to her phone, causing her to finally depart the office.

Actual retrieval of Garment was a more challenging prospect. There was more attention and less cover. This part of ‘Downtown’ wasn’t really downtown in any meaningful sense of the word, more a hybrid of urban and suburb with in a better state of repair than the Docks. It would have been a real challenge for someone without a magical elven cloak and inherent sense of the environment, the placement of security cameras, and the location and temperament of every person in the immediate area.

From an outside perspective Garment walked behind a bus shelter near a park and never walked out again. In reality she was secreted away through a utility hatch that was connected to a transformer vault, or would have been if not for the use of my Workshop key.

“Yes, you did wonderfully.” I assured her. “You too.” I said to Survey’s hologram.

“I am pleased the endeavor was productive. Thank you for your assistance in the interaction.” She replied, with Garment mirroring her gratitude.

“It’s no problem, but I need to hurry back if we’re going to make our appointment with Aisha and Mr. Laborn.” I said quickly.

The hologram nodded. “Please make haste. We will await you here.”

I smiled and sealed the door again. Sneaking out I felt ridiculous relying on a draping of fabric to hide me from the handful of people who had come out to see the cape in their neighborhood. There was clearly no need for concern. Despite the fact that I was well over six feet tall and covered in gray cloth nobody gave me a second look. Nobody gave me a first look. As long as I stayed unobtrusive I was more than invisible, I was unnoticed. It was the kind of power that would be so fun to play around with and so easy to abuse.

At least it got me back to my car without attention, and thus on the road to my semi-official parking space at the gym. When I pulled into the lot I saw Theo getting into a rather nice car being driven by someone with no family resemblance. I was kind of impressed he had stayed, presumably to practice, after a session with Doug. Then again, considering it was a session with Doug he may have just elected to take advantage of the borderline illegal water pressure in the gym showers to try to massage away the inevitable muscle pain.

Given the value of the car and the clear lack of relation of the person driving it there was clearly something up with Theo’s home life. My passenger confirmed that there was definitely something up with Theo’s home life. Once again, it confirmed there was nothing immediately pressing, meaning this was one mystery that could wait until the state of emergency was rescinded.

I locked my car and started making my way to the location of Garment’s new shop/studio/boutique/lair when I felt the Forge make a connection to a larger mote from the Resources and Durability constellation. The power was called Mauler. It had nothing to do with mauling anything, but by its very nature it pissed me off on a fundamental level.

The reason for this was the overwhelming sense of ‘where was this power when I was starting out?’. This was yet another recovery and refurbishment power. Scrapper, Junkyard Skills, and now Mauler. Any one of them would have been a godsend when I was struggling for resources. Now they mostly gave marginal utility and ensured access to resources that I was already drowning in.

Alright, that wasn’t entirely fair. There was more to this power than just reusing scrap. The power did allow the restoration of the most damaged tech to full functionality. I already had a few powers with similar effects, but given that they compounded with each of the others, and this one could handle the refurbishment of equipment that had been damaged decades ago it was at least a potentially useful ability.

The second half of the power might actually still be able to see some real use. It was entirely focused on repurposing technology. That might not sound like much, but it’s not repurposed in the sense of turning a toaster into a space heater. More turning a toaster into a flamethrower, or a pneumatic screwdriver into a cannon, or building a complete set of power armor out of abandoned mining equipment. It took base technology and allowed drastic improvements through modification and jury rigging.

Between this power and Scrapyard Skills letting me use a washing machine drum as a jet turbine I could probably tear apart a broken down car and end up with a stealth fighter. An advanced stealth fighter.

It wasn’t impossible that opportunities to use this power would present themselves, but the ability to deploy my best technology with substandard materials didn’t really compare to producing my best technology with infinite amounts of legendary materials. In the obscure case I needed to field tinker while separated from my workshop these powers would let me work to an incredible level. They just weren’t that necessary when I already had all the parts and components I could want.

I set that aside as I approached the location Garment had just secured. I would have double-checked, but there was nothing else in the area that even looked remotely appropriate. It was about a block from the gym in the direction where the decay of the city was really starting to set in. A quick scan showed maybe three open businesses in the area, none of which looked particularly active. If Garment set up here she was going to be the premier location just based on lack of competition.

The building was located on the corner of the block and constituted a fair-sized building. I wasn’t exactly sure what it had been originally. The weight of age had scrubbed off any identifying markings. A glance through the windows didn’t provide any illumination on the matter. I could see an entry room of some sort with an open space behind it. My mind kept jumping towards the idea of a studio, though for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it would have been used for.

An evaluation showed there was some additional space behind the building, including an alley, at least allowing delivery access. There was a second story to the building, meaning there was possibly an apartment or additional office or storage space available. The space wasn’t labeled for any purpose on the floorplans provided by the real estate company and obviously hadn’t been occupied for some time.

The front of the building was its most distinguishing feature. There was a kind of art deco style to its design, with bold geometric lines evident and finer details where they had survived the years. Looking around there was a fair bit of that style present in the area. I wasn’t sure about the timeline of that kind of design, but I would guess it was a little outdated at the time these places were built. That did mean it had a more defined look than some of the stuff you got from that period, and frankly any kind of consistent architecture in the Docks was remarkable.

Taken as a whole rather than, you know, a hole, as the Docks were usually regarded, I could see the potential of this kind of neighborhood. Not sure the character would survive if things started to turn around, and then there were all of Vince’s concerns still floating around in the back of my mind. Once again, I could file those away as a concern for later. Right now I needed to get Garment settled in and start trying to get a handle on things before they went completely out of control.

The results of Survey’s further analysis weren’t any more encouraging. Expanding data sources to conventional media and any publicly accessible data sources, plus anything that could be passively discerned from non-intrusive system monitoring allowed a picture to start to come together. There was an uncomfortable suspicion that the previous night’s lack of offensive actions may have been due to another conscription push. I didn’t have enough data to confirm it yet, but the signs were there. The same kind of disruptions in behavior that could be seen leading up to the Saturday attacks were present, in a form. It was hard to draw clear conclusions with this kind of analysis and this level of data to work with.

That said, it wasn’t something I was willing to take chances on. I would probably need to look into any form of expanded surveillance that I could be secure with, or even just what I could live with the risk of deploying. More recruitments meant Bakuda was back in full form. It meant they were preparing for something big, and it meant even more people at the mercy of her bombs and dead man’s switch.

Normally I would be worried about improvements to the implanted bombs and their trigger mechanism, but my technical skills had expanded so much since my last round of surgeries that unless Bakuda accidentally became an avatar of some smith god or something like that I think I’d be able to handle it. The main problem was finding the victims and managing the work without Bakuda triggering the bomb to catch the patient and surgeon.

Once again back in the dilapidated comfort of the Docks there were blind alleys to spare and getting workshop access was trivially simple. Garment greeted me warmly when I dropped the illusion concealing the entrance, and Survey’s hologram was still waiting by the door. I returned the greeting.

“Left at the alley mouth and at the end of the block. You remember the way from yesterday?” Garment indicated that she did and quickly hurried out of the workshop, making a series of complicated gestures as she did. I was able to at least piece together the general meaning.

“I’ll circle round once you’re inside. The front is too obvious. Meet you at the back entrance?” I asked. She quickly confirmed before checking the set of keys she received in the package from the leasing company.

I let her get clear of the alley way before sealing the workshop again and fishing out my cloak. Another benefit of the magical nature of this kind of clothing was the fact that they felt completely normal when worn, but could fold up like a silk sheet. I was able to keep the entire thing in a jacket pocket and have it unfurl without a single crease.

Using divinely empowered concealment magic bound to enchanted cloth by a demigod was a little excessive when all I was doing was sneaking two alleys over to the back door of an unused studio. It may have been a bit much, but it wasn’t like I was making any serious expenditure by using it. I had amassed a lot of power to pull off something this trivial, and I was going to damn well enjoy it.

At the back door I could feel Garment through the Dragon’s Pulse, somewhere near the front entrance. I was fairly sure she had just gone inside and was moving through the front room. Checking I saw the back door was locked, bolted, and secured with a bar. I think this place may have been half an inch from being written off at one point, and the main concern of the owner seemed to have been discouraging squatters rather than any type of building maintenance.

It was an impressive amount of security. It was also completely meaningless to me. Pin and tumbler locks had been trivial to me for over a week, and the level or triviality had only grown since then. Back then I’d been at the ‘any two pieces of metal’ lockpick stage. Now I was wondering if I should try to pick them without tools, or if I could get the locks to open using only thermal manipulation from my pyrokinesis.

Apparently I had considered too long because Garment made her way to the back door and promptly opened it with her owner’s keys. I felt a little petulant about being cheated of the artificial challenge of breaking into Garment’s new business, but took her welcome with good grace and entered the ‘store’ as the Magic constellation passed by.

Well, there was some work to do. The best I could say was that it was mostly clear and somewhat clean. The power wasn’t connected, so that would need to be dealt with one way or the other. A quick overview confirmed Garment’s shop at least had water. The rough layout was the entry room, larger studio type space, then the mess of back rooms that seemed to be half storage and half offices, plus a pair of small bathrooms that needed some work.

Downstairs had a pitch-black cellar clearly intended for storage and one I wouldn’t want to try to navigate without thermal vision and the Dragon’s Pulse letting me cheat. From the scent lingering in the dark I was willing to bet some small amount of water damage had happened at some point and been inexpertly repaired.

The upper floor was more encouraging. The place was laid out as either an administrative area or possibly an apartment, depending on how you wanted to play it. It had a single bathroom that may have had a shower at one point, but that was stripped out. A kitchen area that was somewhere between a small apartment kitchen and the kind of break rooms you find in offices. No appliances of any sort were present in the building, and we were probably lucky there were still lightbulbs in some of the fixtures.

Garment was instantly and obviously in love with the place and was already drafting plans for renovations and redesigns. I was more concerned with how much tinker tech I’d be able to sneak into a place like this without inviting unpleasant questions, or whether I could spontaneously transmute the entire interior in one go before anyone knew what it really looked like. Actually, maybe I could expand that to the entire building? Entire block? Really, how much of the Docks would I be able to renovate with alchemical transmutations before you would say it was too far?

I shook off that admittedly appealing but ridiculous notion and chased down Garment in the studio. “Okay, the place is reasonably secure. No bugs or surveillance devices, even though that was a remote chance. I want to do some mundane security upgrades before you really settle in, just as a precaution. Anything I can help you with before that?”

Garment made an excited gesture and indicated towards one of her sketches. It showed an arrangement of clothing displayed through the studio space. It seemed like a nice idea for future projects, but when I didn’t respond she began specifically tapping particular items in the sketch. With that the penny finally dropped.

“Your first set of clothing? From the storage locker? You want them here?” She made an excited gesture. I checked the time and bit my lip.

“I’m not sure I can make it before Aisha and Mr. Laborn get here.” I watched as her stance drooped. “But I’ll try.” I promised.

Garment made an excited little hop and began sweeping around the studio. Cloth was summoned from nowhere. Well, specifically cloth was summoned from the giant pile of gold Garment had been gifted by multiple duplicates, transformed via her conversion power, but it looked like it was summoned from nowhere. The cloth was spun into window treatments, wall hangings, and other little touches that were quickly transforming the barren space into something positively elegant.

It just needed some merchandise, but that would be up to me. Garment could probably easily remake everything she had put into storage, but those were her first works. I fully understood the affection you could have for an early project, even if it had been completely eclipsed. That said, Garment’s early work was still at the pinnacle of human accomplishment where my own treasures of freshman crafting consisted of an ill-fitting steel bracer and an electrified metal baton.

So I slipped out through the back of the studio, found another blind alley, accessed my garage, converted my motoroid to civilian mode, and took off for the storage center I had visited less than a week and also a lifetime ago.

I had pulled out onto the street when I realized I was running down the last thirty minutes of my muscle-reducing potion. I had enough time to make it to the storage center and made a note to renew it there. Fortunately, it didn’t take nearly that long to reach my destination. Traffic was never that terrible in the Docks, so past any lunch rush the roads were mostly clear.

The trip also wasn’t entirely frivolous. Survey’s analysis of the ABB situation was progressing, but the limited data was proving to be an obstacle. Even passive observation of EM transmissions in the city wasn’t providing a full picture, particularly when limited to what I could pull from my miniaturized omni-tool watch. My motoroid had a much more powerful sensor suite than my personal equipment and Fleet was able to operate it as a mobile scanner and listening post to feed information to Survey upon our return.

The mundane nature of opening Garment’s business was a stark contrast with the possibility of a mounting ABB attack. That said, it was actually nice to help her with something this important. The second location was already a blessing in terms of access and operational range, and it provided a cover for meeting Aisha to finalize her armor. I just hoped I could make it back in time to get ahead of that particular project.

When I pulled into the yard I found the storage site just as I remembered it. There was a different guard watching the front, but he had the same bored and indifferent expression as the last one. Just the sight of a locker key was enough to get him to wave me in without any meaningful concern. I pulled my bike as close as I could before crossing the final distance to Garment’s storage locker. There, cuddled inside like a pile of sleeping kittens, was the assembly of her overprotected wardrobe. Wrapped in garment bags and then five more layers of protection it was an impressive array, and proved something of a trial to shift across the hall to a door I opened to my Workshop.

Luckily there were more than enough drones willing to take them off my hands as soon as they crossed the threshold. With their help it only took a few minutes to empty the locker. A drone helpfully handed me a fresh muscle-reducing potion before I sealed the workshop, closed the locker, and headed back to my motoroid.

At that point I was basically free to cancel the locker rental or just let the time run down. Neither would draw any meaningful attention in this city. The place had served its purpose of holding spillover storage while my workshop was still a, well, a workshop, rather than an extradimensional island nation.

I checked the time on my way back. Assuming Mr. Laborn wasn’t early I should be able to make it. Mr. Laborn was the type of person to be early, but he would also be with Aisha. Aisha was not the type of person to be early. She was more the ‘I’ll get there when I get there’ type. I was willing to bet they averaged out to roughly on-time.

I pulled into a nearby alley and, rather than waste the time opening my workshop, storing the bike, and sealing everything again I decided to try out a feature I built just for this purpose.

A thought brought a gray blur to my left hand that settled into the black metal band of my collapsed lantern shield. I reached out with my rough control of my magicka pool, channeling the energy into the magitek converter built into the shield. The energy fed the simulated cybertonium relay and resonated across transwarp space, connecting with my specific dimensional pocket.

My bike began to glow, first softly, then brighter. The glow began to fade, taking the body of the bike but, leaving white lines highlighting each edge of the vehicle, with a final push the framework vanished and my motoroid transferred fully into my subspace storage pocket.

I had done it. The process had taken nearly my entire magicka pool, but it was refilling quickly. It actually felt good to stress that energy source, like working out a stiff muscle. I wondered if there was any benefit to using it more? Something to investigate later.

Always later.

I slipped into the back entrance of Garment’s business and was quickly greeted by her with a series of excited gestures. Those quickly shifted to ecstatic gestures as I opened my Workshop in one of the back rooms and she was greeted by a fleet of drones, mostly controlled by Survey, holding her carefully wrapped early wardrobe.

All of it. Even the hats that had bedecked my cyber skulls. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.

Garment wasted no time as the entire collection floated out of the workshop and into the shop-shop. Some kind of exchange with Survey resulted in the drones fetching hangers and clothes racks from her workspace in the textile area.

I did what I could to help with the transfer, including bringing out some of the more basic furniture to help with the meeting. To avoid the intensity of design that followed all of my work I had to dig out items that were either assembled by the A.I.s or came with my workshop. It certainly added to the improvised feel of the setup, which was probably for the best. Garment would be able to make them work from a design context, and her suddenly having professional furniture within half an hour of moving in would raise unnecessary warning signs.

I watched her carefully arrange her creations until I felt a pair of life signs approaching the front door.

Right on time, averaged out just as I thought.

I signaled to Garment before slipping back into the back room and then further into the Workshop. A signal from my implant activated the defensive hologram, effectively sealing the Workshop. I retreated deeper into my pocket dimension while monitoring Garment through her phone’s sensors. It gave me a perfect view of Garment greeting Aisha and Mr. Laborn.

From what she had said during my earlier call, my guess was Aisha had hunted through the collection Garment had provided trying to find something that would annoy her father the way her previous wardrobe used to. It seemed the best she had been able to find was a moderately contoured pencil dress in dark red with a high neckline and a blue jacket over it. The glint of diamonds from her hair clip complemented the ensemble incredibly well, making it look slightly sophisticated.

Alltogether the combination didn’t have anything like the inappropriate feeling of her earlier outfit with the only parallel being that it was vaguely form-fitting. It actually made her look somewhat mature rather than like a little girl trying to dress above her age level. Given the way her father occasionally smiled at her and the expression it triggered each time I’m guessing the effort was unsuccessful.

Mr. Laborn looked more worn down than I had ever seen him. He was holding a cane that he seemed to resent with each step, and was still sporting a collection of hospital bandages. The phone's sensor was able to show me his physical makeup, giving me a guided tour of his injuries. They weren’t great, but at least they were healing. I could tell they would have been much worse with any additional aggravation, or if Aisha had been any slower getting him to the hospital.

The detailed physical makeup of the living human body being displayed brought up flashes of insight from my last iteration of Valuable Memories. The dark side of biology reared its head in forbidden knowledge. Dozens of small and not so small changes jumped out at me, all of which could be implemented with trivial ease. Harder bones, tougher skin, more efficient blood, lungs that could extract every bit of oxygen, leaving no waste in each breath.

But that wouldn’t be the end of it. The creation of chimeras was a process. Small upgrades provided the foundation for larger ones until the person was nothing but a construction frame for your latest monster. I bit down and pushed aside thoughts of biological transhumanism. I would never not know those things, but I could control how I used them. Skills: Physical Sciences opened the door to a world of chemical and biological weapons, but also the means to help millions of people. Creation of Chimeras wasn’t quite as generous, but I could still control how I used it. I could dig through that mess and find a way to help people without turning into a worse monster than the ones I could create.

Mr. Laborn shifted the cane to his left hand and greeted Garment with a meaty handshake. He was putting on a good front, but meeting her seemed to have sent him slightly off balance. I saw a bit of that at her debut. People used to eye contact have a bit of trouble adjusting to reading her simulated body language. Garment could probably have addressed that issue by designing an eye mask, but my guess was she was more committed to the coherency of her outfits than concerned with fully simulating human behavior. If she did decide to make a mask it would probably be some incredibly elaborate, historically accurate, immaculately designed Venetian carnival mask with an entire outfit to match.

I felt the Forge shift again as Garment led the pair into the studio and began showing off her early works. It was the Magitech constellation, a constellation composed almost entirely of giant motes on the same scale of Master Craftsman. I had so few connections to the constellation because I never managed to amass enough reach at the times when it arrived.

Until now. The mote I connected to was smaller than the giants, being roughly the same size as Master Builder. It was called Technosorcery and was everything I had been waiting for in terms of Magitech. Mechanist had given me basic principles of converting magical energy into a mechanical form. Setup Wizard had let me meld technology with magic, removing any incompatibility issues as well as letting my higher-level technology see the benefits of magical effects that would otherwise only apply to more basic items. Technosorcery completely tore down the barriers between the concepts of magic and technology.

The insight granted by this power was incredible. It all came down to one simple principle. Energy was energy, whether generated by science or sorcery. What had previously seemed like critical incompatibility issues were suddenly opportunities of incredible potential. Magic and technology could feed into each other, working like components of any machine. Conversion of power from one form to another was much easier than I had ever imagined, and provided the ability to create works of staggering power and efficiency.

Wherever one system failed or reached its limits the other could step in to take over. Using this knowledge spells could be broadcast over electronic communication, the very essences of creatures could be affected through medical techniques, and entire realms of creation were possible within digital environments.

The process was like what I had been scratching at with the Arcane Craft, only taken from an obscure artform to a fully reputable science. Arcane Craft still had the advantage of being able to work with any form of ‘mysterious forces’ while Technosorcery was limited to manipulation of magic, but in exchange for that specialization Technosorcery granted a depth of applications that was staggering.

I was pulled away from my contemplation by dual messages, one set from my duplicates acknowledging the power and clarifying that they would be doubling down to incorporate it into Aisha’s armor, and a second from Survey, bringing my attention to the conclusion of Garment’s brief tour and the beginning of the ‘negotiation’ part of the meeting. I elected to head to the computer throne to both assist with the last-minute armor redesign and better monitor the discussion in the outside world.

I would have been a lot more apprehensive if Doug hadn’t announced Mr. Laborn’s intentions with his usual level of discretion. Even with all my power, even with assurances that Garment could handle herself, even with everything I’d been through and everything I was preparing for, there was something about Mr. Laborn that was just innately intimidating. The man had presence, and his injured state did nothing to diminish it. I knew full well how protective he could get, and without confirmation that he was actually on board for this I would probably have been sweating bullets on Garment’s behalf.

Garment couldn’t have been more comfortable in the situation. The three of them had settled into a trio of chairs near one of the studio windows, given the current lack of powered lighting in the building.

I needed to check if there was some requirement about needing an electric utility connection for a business like this. I could easily hook Garment up with any of a thousand off-grid power options that would completely bypass her electrical issues. Given Survey’s recent foray into the Legal system I kicked the problem over to her and began working on Armor designs while keeping an open link to Garment’s phone.

“Before we start, I want to say how impressed I am by what you did on Saturday night.” Mr. Laborn began. “That was a madhouse and anyone willing to step up in a situation like that has my respect.” He glanced at Aisha and she turned away with a huff while trying to conceal a slight smile.

Garment made an appreciative gesture and Mr. Laborn took a moment to process it before continuing. “I also appreciate what you’re trying to do here. Setting up in the neighborhood will mean a lot to the people here. That said, I want to get a clear picture of what you’re doing before I make a decision regarding Aisha working here.”

Garment made a series of complicated gestures to the shop, the space around them, Aisha, and the assortment of clothes. Mr. Laborn’s expression grew more confused, but he seemed to be working to keep it from tipping into frustration. Aisha tried to jump in.

“Garment said, well, you know, that she needed some help, and maybe work with clothes?” The girl offered.

Mr. Laborn gave a slow nod. “I can understand that, but what kind of work? What hours? What is the environment going to be like?” He looked at Garment and seemed to realize how unlikely it would be to get a clear answer on any of those points. The constrained frustration seemed to be bubbling up again when Garment pulled out her phone and entered a few commands.

I hadn’t expected this, but it made perfect sense to fall back on what had already been established. I extended my support to Survey as she linked to Garment’s phone.

“Good afternoon, this is Delphine Mertens, Garment’s legal advisor.” Mr. Laborn blinked at the phone before replying.

“Hello, this is Marcus Laborn here with my daughter Aisha.” Aisha looked confused before glancing down at her watch. Her eyebrows rose and she looked back at the phone with a smile.

“It is nice to speak with you. Garment had mentioned you would be meeting today. I am sorry I cannot be there in person, but if it is alright with you, I can walk you through Garment’s proposal.”

Aisha’s smile widened a little at the ‘in person’ comment, but thankfully her father didn’t notice. “Yes, thank you. That would be fine.”

“In the interest of full disclosure, the scope and nature of Garment’s operation has not yet been finalized. The location was only recently secured and the development and registration of her business is still ongoing. Until that point Garment will at most be operating in the capacity of personal contract work on a client-by-client basis, likely with extremely low volume.” Survey explained through the phone.

“I can understand that, but can you clarify what Aisha will be doing, at least generally speaking?” Mr. Laborn asked.

“I am sure you are aware of Garment’s communication difficulties. As such, it is essentially necessary for some assistance to be present during most of her interactions. There is the possibility of more official help to be brought on at a later date, but until then Aisha would be responsible for some light customer service work and general assistance with the studio. Hours would of course be subject to New Hampshire regulations, and before the start of any form of employment we would need to completion of Employer's Request for Child Labor form to be approved by Aisha’s school or the district’s superintendent's office. That will allow the issuing of RSA 276-A:5 youth certificate permitting her employment.”

“I’m familiar with the regulations.” He replied and looked at his daughter. “Aisha is between schools at the moment, since she was planning to move in with her brother. I’ll check with her social worker regarding how to handle things.” Aisha looked absolutely mortified at that, an expression that clashed horribly with the professionalism of her clothing. Her father just smiled. “Honestly, with all the clothes Garment provided I thought she wanted Aisha as a model.”

If Aisha was mortified before she looked ready to crawl into herself at her father’s statement. Garment’s obvious excitement at the idea didn’t help, though it brought a smile to Mr. Laborn’s face as various outfits began lifting from the racks around the room.

“I cannot speak to that at this time. Modeling work of any sort would require additional oversight when involving someone Aisha’s age. The provided clothing should be considered as a staff uniform, and I will ensure it is categorized as such.” Survey clarified.

“That’s very generous.” He replied frankly. It was, and would probably be more so once Garment started work and her clothing had a clear monetary value attached to it. “As a final, and serious point, I want to talk about safety.” He looked at his daughter and a hand rose to one of the bandages on the back of his neck. “I appreciate what Garment did on Saturday, but I know what capes are like in this city. That’s not the kind of environment I want Aisha exposed to.”

The irony of the situation was heavy as Survey processed a response. “Garment has elected not to apply for Protectorate membership and will be remaining outside of the current conflicts. Beyond actions to ensure her own security and crisis situations there are no plans for wider involvement in the local parahuman conflicts.”

It wasn’t the perfect answer since those kinds of conflicts rarely cared about what anyone’s specific plans were. That said, nobody in the city was truly safe from the conflict, and a position near a dedicated neutral party with the capacity to protect themselves was probably safer than being one of the undefended masses. Mr. Laborn’s slow nod seemed to indicate his agreement with the concept.

The Time constellation passed by as Mr. Laborn gave his decision. “Well, I have no objections at the moment. Aisha, you’re still interested in this?”

The girl nodded. “I mean, Garment’s great, and I think this would be a good thing, like, in general?”

Mr. Laborn gave her a soft look, then nodded to Garment. “In that case, where do we go from here?”

“If you do not mind, I can handle the correspondence regarding Aisha’s paperwork and approvals. If you can provide me with a set of contact information I will forward you all necessary details and forms that will need to be completed.”

I smiled and shifted my focus back to the power armor designs being laid out through my neural link to a supercomputer as Mr. Laborn worked out the final details for the employment of a world-class stranger cape to an animated pair of gloves by negotiating with a developing A.I. through a quantum entanglement communicator. Just another day in the life of a cape.

Despite the end of the call the end of the meeting dragged out, with Mr. Laborn’s insistence that he didn’t need Garment to make him any clothing falling on deaf, and honestly completely non-existent, ears. His staunch refusal probably saved him from leaving with three suitcases of clothes, but he did eventually accept a sharp, fitted blazer matching the one she had made for Doug at the end of her debut.

With Survey no longer involved in the call she presented her analysis regarding ABB activity. It was enough to convince me there was something definitely in the works. Reluctantly I approved the use of the Undersiders’ watches as remote sensor nodes, limited to electronic communication only.

Yes, I could spy on them whenever I wanted, but that was the kind of advantage that was easy to ruin with careless abuse. Tattletale would certainly know, and it would take more than the technology in those watches to get some of the Undersiders to accept constant listening devices in their lives. The records were limited to their own devices until a situation dire enough to justify access emerged.

Just using them as a remote radio listening station was a lot less morally suspect, and could potentially give Survey the edge she needed to nail down the ABB’s plans. In the meantime, my latest duplicates were finishing their 20% time and Aisha had sent a message announcing that she had parted ways with her father. She was going ‘shopping’ while he caught up with the guys at the gym.

I disconnected from the computer core and rushed to complete the final prep work without infringing on my duplicates’ final gasp as personal time. I assembled the materials, canceled the strength drain potion, amassed my tools and, just before Aisha’s return, renewed the duplication potion.

I also downed a frantically prepared meal, as I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The power of near-divine food was evident in the fact that it hadn’t bothered me and I was only eating out of habit, but with food that was that good and empowering it was worth squeezing in a divine sandwich when I got the chance.

I polished off the turkey club of the gods as Survey directed Aisha to the back entrance of Garment’s studio. Just having access to something like that was already a blessing beyond words. Garment was waiting to greet her as she arrived and escorted the girl to an empty utility closet. It flickered as the hologram was dispelled, revealing the Workshop’s entrance way.

“Jozef?” The girl asked, staring at me. I awkwardly tried to shift my stance to something less obvious, but given the lack of an off switch the combination of posing and muscles would probably always be overly pronounced.

“Hi Aisha.” I offered. “Welcome back. You ready for that armor?”

“Hell yeah.” She beamed, then glanced back. “Garment going to be alright?”

I stepped to the side to allow the latest delivery of clothing, equipment, and materials to be carried up from Garment’s workspace.

“I’ve already gone through the designs with her. She’ll be fine up here.” Garment signaled agreement with my statement as she sorted the latest arrivals. My attempts to keep the exchange minimal was probably the only thing keeping heavy machinery from being installed in the basement. There would be questions about how she pulled this off, but she was Garment. People could wonder as much as they wanted and she would probably enjoy the speculation.

“Come on.” I turned and signaled for Aisha to follow me. When we moved into the larger workshop Aisha whistled and looked up at the throne.

“Damn this place is impressive. You forget being away from it, but hot damn.” She remarked. I shrugged in response.

“I’ve kind of been too busy to really appreciate it. I think my duplicates have gotten more downtime in here than I have.” I confessed.

“Damn shame.” She looked around again. “You should try to live it up a bit, I mean once things calm down.”

“Increasingly distant prospect, that.” Aisha’s face dropped. “But I promise. As soon as I’m done out there I’ll take a full weekend of lava surfing and volcano sports.”

The girl quirked the corners of her mouth at that, then took another look around. “Where are we headed, anyway?”

“Main wing of the workshop is basically a six-layer cake of every kind of equipment you could need. Not all top tier…”

“Yeah, I don’t know how you manage with this junk.” She quipped, looking around at the gleaming chrome and cyberpunk-level equipment.

“…top tier by my standards, but there’s a bit of everything here, including a site dedicated to hard suit production.” I continued my explanation.

“Hey,” She asked. “How come you never did the power armor thing? I mean, outside of the Transformer motorcycle?”

I frowned as she continued poking at that ridiculous connection, but moved to offer an explanation. “So, you know how my powers are kind of all over the place, right?”

“Yeah, demigod wizard elf cyberneticist mech pilot. Standard tinker stuff.” She replied with a grin.

“Right. So, the very first power I got, after the workshop? It had nothing to do with tinkering. Was actually called Fashion.”

“That how you met Garment?” She raised an eyebrow as she asked.

“No, that came later.” I explained as we walked. “What it does it takes the defensive properties of the best equipment I’m wearing, as long as it’s at least the size of a knee pad of something, and applies them to my body and clothing.”

“Wait, so if you have a piece of steel on you, you're suddenly bulletproof?” Her eyes were wide as she spoke.

“That’s about the size of it. Of course, I’m using much better stuff than steel now. Enchanted adamantium mithril alloys infused with additional effects.” I smiled. “And layered for better coverage.”

“Jesus.” She gasped. “So, you got brute day one, only without the strength?” I nodded. “So how tough are you now?”

I shrugged. “Tough enough that I only really need to worry about the weird stuff out there. Your armor was actually a bit of a challenge because I really haven’t needed to build protective suits before this point.”

“You can still do it, right?”

“Of course.” I replied, almost offended. “I have an entire damn facility for this stuff, and we’ve been prepping and upgrading for days. And I’m sorry about that. If I had the gear ready to go I could have gotten you something same-day.”

Aisha tried to look upset, but couldn’t hold back a smile. “It’s okay. I know you’re only human, give or take fifty percent.”

I gave her a sour look as we entered the hard suit bay. My duplicates were already floating around making final adjustments and securing the crafting components.

“Nice.” She said, looking at the assembled technology. “So, is this like a fitting, or what?”

“Hey, you think we came this far without knowing your measurements?” The first duplicate called.

“Right, try to sound creepier to the thirteen-year-old girl we lured into our basement.” The second called back.

“Hey, knock it off you two.” I called out in moderately good humor. “And it was scans and Garment’s help for the fitting. One of her powers is knowing people’s sizes.”

“Makes sense. So, if not fitting, what is this for?” She inquired.

“I need to get your input on the final details for the subsystems and customizations, movement boosters, integrated equipment and weaponry, and also a secondary focusing mechanic we’re working into it.” She looked at me blankly. “What? What did you think this armor was going to be?”

“Uh, power armor? You know, stop bullets and make you stronger? What’s all that other stuff?” She sounded both excited and unsure of herself as she responded.

I took a breath and led her to one of the displays. “Okay, you know how I said you were getting the good power armor?”

“Yes?” She ventured.

“That means good by my standards.” I watched as the implications sank in. Her eyes jumped across the work area, then back to the rest of the workshop, then up towards the volcano.

“Um, how good?” She asked in a wavery voice.

I grinned. I really didn’t get a lot of opportunities to show off, at least outside of combat, and that was mostly completely unintentional. My duplicates leaned in as they continued to work, clearly enjoying Aisha’s reactions as well.

“So, first off, the armor part of the power armor.” I began, pulling up an image of a piece of plating. “This is the main armor plating of the suit. It’s enhanced mithril infused with the thermal resistance of high grade ceramite and precipitated with wind Dust, meaning it basically weighs less than cloth while being a near perfect heat shield and almost indestructible.” The screen shifted. “Framework is mithril infused with adamantium and gravity dust. Incredibly sturdy, and protective against anything that would wrench at the plating. Additional materials are composites to take advantage of flexibility, but the entire suit is contained and protective.”

“Right.” Aisha said, nodding vacantly. “So, in normal person talk, how tough is it?”

I considered, then smiled. “Stay out of Behemoth’s kill aura and you’ll be fine.”

The girl gaped at me. “Endbringer? This can take Endbringers?”

“It can stand up to Endbringers. Like me you still have to worry about weird cape attacks. Also, there’s the whole inertia thing where if you’re sent flying your brain can mush against your skull on impact no matter how tough the suit is.”

“Got it, it’s not invinci…”

“Which is why I added this.” I shifted the screen to a familiar device, a smaller version of the one my motoroid was built around. “Mass effect core. Manipulates effects related to weight, gravity and inertia. The inertial dampeners built into the suit should be able to keep you safe through most of the accelerations you’re likely to see, including sudden impacts.”

Aisha blinked and nodded. “Uh, how much stuff is in this suit? I mean, I appreciate it, but you said it’s going to take a while to learn, and if you’ve really gone all out…”

“Accounted for.” She gave me a confused look as the Toolkits constellation passed by. “One of the powers I got is this kind of mental database of weapons and armor. Like, thousands of years of it.” She nodded and I continued. “One of the types of armor is this thing called a hunting rig, basically it’s designed to let you operate for months without resupply. The big thing is the systems adapt to the wearer.” I pulled up some of the designs entered in the computer core by my duplicate. “They start out basic and unlock features as the user’s skill with the suit expands. Basically, it’ll let you work up to the more advanced features of the armor.”

“Right…” Aisha stared blankly at the suits on the screen. “Uh, they don’t look like that, do they?”

I glanced up and quickly understood her reaction. The suits in their default designs were overbuilt and edgy on a level that even my lantern shield would be pained to match. “No, I just used the technology. The main design of your suit is based on this lab’s hard suit designs.”

“Oh, good, I just…” Aisha trailed off again as I brought up the full model of her hard suit. She was staring again, but with a very different expression on her face. “Uh, I have some questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“So…” she darted her eyes across the design, seeming to try to figure out where to start. “Okay, I was worried you were going to do something bulky or kiddy, but obviously not that case.”

“Hard suits are designed for mobility. Given the durability and low weight of the plating it was the best option.” I assured her.

“Mobility.” She looked at the bottom of the image. “About that mobility, I kind of need to ask, what’s with the heels?”

I blinked, then looked at elevated heels built into the hard suit’s legs. “They hold the stabilization arrays, as well as control thrusters and balance systems for jump boost and flight arrays.”

“And you seriously need… Wait, flight?” I nodded and her eyes widened. “Um, you seriously need heels for that?”

I gestured at the screen again, causing the main suit to explode into a thousand diagrams. “This is a composite project. We’ve been pulling from every knowledge base and tech repository in our power. You get all kinds of little touches like that that just happened to be the best option for the design.”

Aisha nodded slowly. “Yeah, but how did YOU end up…” She paused, then turned towards the entrance. “Did Garment work on this?”

“We ran the designs past her while we were developing them.” One of the duplicates called out. “She greenlit this system in particular.”

“Look, if it bothers you I can take it out, design a new casing.” I pulled up the plans and started sorting out the affected subsystems. “I really didn’t think it would be that big a deal. I mean, I know it’s a bit out there, but with the rest of the tech, and Garment’s designs…”

“No, it’s fine.” She looked over the plans again. “And it does look nice, it was just surprising.” She bit her lip slightly. “You’re sure those won’t be unstable? I’m actually not that good in heels.”

“Aisha, with those gyroscope systems it’s practically impossible for you to misstep.” I assured her. “It is as stable as it gets.”

“Right.” She looked over the design again, then nodded. “So, what else did you cram in there?”

I bit down and saw both of my duplicates work to suppress the plethora of responses my Inexplicable Innuendo provided to that particular phrase, and instead dove into the technical descriptions.

“Defense. Hardened plating and framework also uses an energetic armor, which means waste energy is used to reinforce its strength even further.”

“It needs that?” Aisha asked skeptically.

“Not particularly.” I admitted. “But it’s better than a heat sink and lets the armor control its surface temperature, meaning it can match it to your surroundings and hide you from thermal cameras. Power source is a refined enhanced ragnite engine, which usually needs significant radiators to function, but this bypasses the problem.”

“Nice. Do you use that in your bike armor?”

I shook my head. “That system still uses a magitek core for direct system power. It has its own benefits, but will probably be due for a full overhaul soon.”

Aisha looked a little awkward at that admission. “Uh, thanks for focusing on this suit. I really appreciate you making it a priority.”

The sincerity of her statement threw me off slightly, so I shifted to focus on the plans. “No problem. So, besides armor you also have the power field, kinetic barrier, and charged EM array, so three types of forcefields. Suit has full life support, and is self-sealing in the unlikely event anything can damage it. Materials provide extensive radiation resistance and the EM barrier will address the rest.”

“So, Behemoth-grade?” She asked.

I nodded. “Outside the kill aura, at least.” I pulled up another screen. “Full sensor system, best I can make. Internal processors are optical augmented by some new designs from that armor database, which will let you run the assist program.”

“Will that be Survey? Like the watch?”

I shook my head. “Truncated version of Fleet. He was originally designed to help me learn to control vehicles, so he was able to produce an armor assistance program. It can also interface with the copy of Survey on your omni-watch.”

“Which we’ll need back from you.” One of the duplicates called from his work.

“What? Why?” Aisha spun and looked at them with concern.

“Upgrades.” I explained. “Need to install some recent technology. Will give you a personal forcefield even without the armor.” And a better one than the Undersiders had.

Aisha seemed to relax until the second duplicate spoke up. “Plus need to add the Heretical Adaptation.”

Aisha blink, looked at me and asked directly. “The. What?”

I sighed. “Okay, I was getting to this. Recent power, based on this complex matter/energy theory. Basically, I can alter materials to give them adaptive properties, meaning things made from them can improve themselves over time.”

Aisha took a moment to process things. “So, your technology, which already lasts, like, forever, also gets better over time?” I nodded. “Holy shit that has to be your most ridiculous power.”

“Careful, that’s a really high bar.” The first duplicate quipped. “I mean, two powers before it we got the ability to summon Satan.”

Aisha stared at the duplicate, then slowly rotated to face me. I found myself wondering why I decided to do this project with people who didn’t need to live with the consequences of their actions. “There was an alchemy power that was mostly charms, potions, and enhanced weapons. It did also come with certain rituals that can have effects that are in line with conceptions of dark magic. That said, none of them actually summon Satan.”

“Really?” Asked the second duplicate. “What about Walpurgisnacht?”

I gave him a dirty look. “SOME of them can bring into existence powerful creatures, some of which are of significant levels of threat, but there is no theological basis…” I saw the look my duplicates were giving me and decided to just give up. “Fine. Yes, demon summoning is a thing now.”

Aisha looked at a loss for words and like she wasn’t sure if she should be apprehensive or sympathetic. Finally, a smile crept back on her face and she looked up at me.

“Man, you really are a seriously hardcore Blake Thorburn fan.”

I looked at her expression and snorted, causing her to laugh in return. “Hey, at least nobody stole my name from a sheet of homework.”

“Watch it, that was the best plot line in the series.” She scolded before smiling again. “So, any other crazy powers I should know about?”

I sighed and accepted that my duplicates would happily blurt out anything I missed. “Okay, more powerful as a demigod, and have pyrokinesis because of it. Can work a lot faster than before and with less materials, but that’s more of an advancement than anything new. Bunch of new design powers that make stuff look even better. My power gave me a transforming space-capable fighter jet a while back. Oh, and I was taken by the fey and taught how to make beyond perfect divine items as long as I use my own hands to do it.”

Aisha’s eyes had started to gloss over with the mention of the pyrokinesis and she seemed at a total loss for how to reply to that. I decided to head her off. “Survey can probably fill you in on the specifics. She’s been working overtime to keep things straight.”

“Yeah,” Aisha nodded, “I can imagine.” She turned towards the screen. “Any of that rolled into the armor?”

“As much as I can, meaning it should improve on its own, even beyond the hunting rig’s capacity for improvement.” I shifted the plans again. “The armor uses synthetic muscles and micro-servos for strength and agility boosts, but those are going to be mostly locked out to start until you get used to them.” I advanced the screen. “Now, this type of tech would normally require some pretty invasive cybernetics to make it possible to operate.”

Aisha gulped as she looked at the examples shown on the screen. “I’m really hoping you said ‘normally’ because you found another way, because you’re great and all, but I’m not signing up for spinal surgery.”

“I figured.” And also wasn’t too keen on the idea myself. Even with the understanding from my chimera creation memories I still wasn’t that confident in my surgical skills. “That’s what this is for.”

Aisha looked at the image with a questioning expression. “What, contoured workout clothes?”

“It’s a soft suit.” I explained. “A complement to the hard suit. Acts specifically like a neural interface medium without needing any invasive connections, as long as it’s personalized properly.” Which I could do in my sleep. Using this kind of power armor was somewhere between wearing a combat android and being fused with a tank. The soft suit was the shortcut that would let Aisha have a chance functioning in the field without months of training and conditioning or incredibly invasive surgeries.

“It will also allow direct interface with the weapon systems.” Aisha perked up as I explained. “Now, most of these are locked out or at reduced effectiveness until the suit adapts to you, but I was able to start you with a modest armament.”

“Modest.” Aisha muttered as she read through the list of systems.

“It’s mostly nonlethal, containment systems, tasers, and tranquilizers. These are the exceptions.” I pulled up plans of the truly dangerous weapons systems the suit had to offer.

Aisha looked over the small collection of deadly melee and ranged weapons incorporated into the design. “Uh, you’re really alright with me having these?” She asked nervously.

“Remember that celestial bronze you helped me make?” She nodded. “Super durable and magical material, but has this unique feature. Weapons made from it can’t hurt normal people.”

Aisha blanked. “Seriously? How the hell does that work?”

I shrugged. “Something about it being a noble metal and mortals not being worthy to be hurt by it. Or possibly some complex passenger interactions. Point is the lethal stuff, shotgun gauntlets, flechette launchers, and the monosword, they can’t hurt normal people. I’m not saying to go deadly on every cape, but it’s there if you need it.”

Which was the unfortunate part of this situation. With the city in its current state there were times when Aisha might need to go lethal. All I could do was give her the option and make sure that bystanders couldn’t be caught in the crossfire.

“That’s seriously a lot of responsibility.” Aisha muttered. “But thanks, for trusting me with it.”

“You’re welcome.” I replied somewhat lamely.

“Uh, on that note, how is this suit actually going to work?” She asked, looking over the complexity. “This is like, on the level of one of those hoop gowns Garment keeps trying to get me into. How am I supposed to wear this?”

I smiled brightly at that. “Okay, this is great.” I called up the full model of the hard suit. “One of my powers lets me build things that turn into other configurations, or collapse down to a smaller size. Another helps with miniaturization of technology. Combine the two any you get…”

I activated the sequence and watched Aisha’s face. There was a moment of silence following the demonstration before she finally spoke.

“No fucking way.”

I pulled up the designs again. “I assure you, it’ll work.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You can’t collapse all of that, everything you just explained, into something the size of.. what is that, a soda can?”

“Might be smaller.” I admitted as the Knowledge constellation passed by. “It’s my first time working at this level, so I was conservative on the estimates.”

“You can seriously just fold up the armor? And I, what just summon it when I need it?” It sounded more like she was trying to convince herself of the reality of the situation than actually questioning me about it.

“Pretty much.” Aisha collapsed back in her seat as the duplicates grinned at her reaction. “And if you’re alright with all the tech we can talk color, then get started.”

“Color?” She asked weakly.

“Garment prepped a bunch of designs. We weren’t sure what you wanted for your cape name, so she basically put together everything that she thought worked with the design.” I paused. “Though I guess I should have asked…”

“Lethe.” She replied with sudden confidence.

“Lethe?”

“Like the river, and memory water. I want Lethe for my cape name.” She was adamant in her response.

“Uh,” I considered things, “Thematically it’s good, but it tells a lot about your powers, and there’s an implication for capes with names referencing mythology.”

“I know and I don’t care. I’m going to be Lethe.” She firmly stated.

I looked at her, then nodded. “Alright, so water-themed colors?” I reduced the range of combinations Garment had prepared.

“I like that one.” She indicated towards a combination of purple and turquoise that looked rather striking. And rather familiar.

“That one?” I pulled up the design.

“Yep.” She responded, clearly knowing what I saw and not caring in the least.

“Right…” I drawled. “And do you want it to collapse into a crescent shaped amulet? Maybe have a trigger phrase for deployment. Something like ‘By the magic of the moon stone’?”

She gave me a sideways look. “Well, if you don’t have any better ideas…”

“Nope.” I stood up. “Not entertaining this. This is serious armor construction and we are dedicated professionals.”

“If you’re going to lie, try to keep it more believable than that.” Offered the second duplicate as he shifted the last piece of equipment. “And we’re ready to start if you are.”

“Uh, do you need me to clear out?” Aisha asked, glancing to the exit. I shook my head.

“Actually, we need you here for this.” I assured her. “It’ll help with the calibration.”

And for the possible Technosorcery focus, but that wasn’t something I wanted to suggest until I knew it would work. I had planned to incorporate an additional focus into the suit, but Technosorcery greatly expanded what could be accomplished. That said, until I knew it would work I didn’t want to make any promises.

“Sensor bay by the console, just chill there until we’re finished.” The first directed her.

“Right.” She shuffled over. “So, how long will this take?” She looked at the array of partially-completed parts waiting to be assembled. “I know you said you work fast, but there was a lot of complex stuff in there.”

I smiled at that. “Well, I have one power that lets me work like ten people. It combines with another power to boost to a hundred as long as it’s mechanical work. Another power lets me use my hands like high-speed tools, which helps with other skill powers. After that there’s one that doubles speed and quality as long as I’m focused, another that doubles speed and halves material requirements, another that speeds up technical work to four times normal speed, and an early power that’s about ten times stronger than that one. Piled together it's over five hundred times faster than what I could normally handle, which since you know, demigod, is pretty fast to begin with.”

Aisha was staring at me with her mouth open, then turned towards the duplicates. “Okay, suddenly you guys building theaters in the last few minutes before you vanish makes sense.”

“If you think that’s impressive you should see the hockey rink.” One of them quipped.

“Hockey rink?” Aisha's voice was skeptical. A quick signal from one duplicate brought up a live feed from the rink. Moving across the ice were a half dozen tiny Zambonis. One of the duplicates had provided Fleet with ice maintenance equipment on the same scale as his miniature race cars, and the A.I. was clearly taking the responsibility seriously. It was kind of adorable, but wasn’t what Aisha was focusing on.

“Is that lava?” She pointed at the glowing veins in the volcanic rock ceiling above the ice. One of the duplicates answered before I could.

“Yep. Built into the volcano. Tons of space there. You should see what the other guys have built.” He said with a grin on his face.

Aisha returned it with equal intensity. “Like what?”

“You can tour after the armor.” I said in a bid to get everybody back on track. The duplicates reluctantly agreed, but left the feed up with the hypnotizing progress of tiny Zambonis at work on the ice.

Once we actually approached the manufacturing bay all the levity drained away. This was serious work. It was a pinnacle project, something beyond the cycle of upgrades and frantic busywork that occupied so much of my time in the workshop.

This was something that Aisha would be relying on for safety through her entire career. Something that wouldn’t be casually replaced or revamped. Something that would have to protect her from every threat in the city, every threat on the horizon, and possibly every threat in the world.

I couldn’t mess this up.

As much modularity had been applied to the design as possible. Components, all handmade with extreme care, stood ready to be integrated. All that was left were the final systems. The process that would craft the frame and bind the entire work into a single, perfect object.

That pursuit, the quest to be able to forge divine armor had introduced compromises. I wasn’t using my most powerful processors or the most efficient designs for strength boosts. There were included inefficiencies in the joining process, a consequence of needing hand work rather than instant formations of materials. Those and a hundred other small changes to designs, all to bring about the effects of my strongest power. To make something truly beyond human.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I could work with machine precision, further helped by enhanced micromanipulators and demigod skill. Weaponsmith and Armourer were designed to allow work in limited conditions, often by hand. Finally, I was able to enter into the work with the knowledge that the benefits of this art heavily outweighed the compromises.

I was practically disconnected from the process as my hands wove a level of grace into the construction that I could barely follow, much less comprehend. Aisha had stopped making sly comments or grinning at the hockey rink shortly after the work started, instead following every movement of the process with an almost reverent expression on her face. Honestly, if my attention wasn’t demanded on such an intense level I would have been right there with her.

I can’t even describe the process in mechanical terms. It was like the armor was being formed out of some primordial state, drawn by an unfathomable will and cast into a new form. Components and materials disappeared, but seemed almost unrelated to the structure that manifested as the work on the armor progressed. Forces beyond description were woven into materials the world had never seen to the shape of technologies man had never dared approach.

This was art. More than anything I had built in the workshop, this was truly art. It was performance, sculpture, recital, and impression, all fused together into a new craft. I was the one building the armor, but I felt like a patron of a grand display, something I was lucky to be able to witness.

And like all performances, the conclusion came too soon. Piece by piece the armor came together, beyond any workmanship I had ever dreamed possible. With a final flourish the final parts vanished from the work benches and were incorporated into the hard suit. A golden light surged, tracing fey letters across the one of the plates, confirming my success. The creation of a divine object.

Now I had to name it.

With a great effort of will I dug deep within myself. This wasn’t like pouring energy into my normal crafts. This was something deep, personal, and costly. It was true enchantment, using the resources that made me who I was to define what the universe should be.

I felt my duplicates around me, but this was something they couldn’t help with. We were all drawing from the same well, so to speak. They could help carry the water, but they couldn’t pay the cost. Not for this.

I felt the energy bubble forth, a power beyond description channeled through an art I had only attempted once before. With a deep breath I spoke the word, the name, that would bind the power in place.

“Beria.”

Beria. The word of protection. That’s what this was. That was what this was for. It would keep Aisha safe. It would protect her and defend her from harm. It would ensure that my crusade didn’t result in the end of the life of a girl who had barely started living. Who had so much to live for. To that end, to that protection, I Named the armor.

And then I slumped onto the floor.

Aisha was beside me in a flash. There was no doubt the work was complete, not with that finish. I smiled weakly as she helped me to my feet.

“What the hell did you do?” She asked in concern.

I shook her off and straightened myself out. “I enchanted it.” She gave me a worried look. “It wasn’t that bad.” I swung my arms in a display that I was still alive and healthy. “The drain surprised me, but I could handle it.”

“See, I hear a word like ‘drain’ and I’m going to get naturally concerned.” She looked at the armor, making an attempt to glare at it, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to direct hostility towards that work. Instead, she turned to me, someone she apparently had no problem directing hostility at.

“That was the second level of enchanting, the same type that went into Ren. It’s Named. That strengthens its power. It’s going to be able to protect you.” I reached out and triggered the folding system. The armor collapsed into itself, seemingly solid plates folding into each other until all that was left was a small piece of turquoise metal, about three inches wide.

And it was crescent shaped.

Master Craftsman enhances every part of an item, including how effectively it can miniaturize itself. All the armor’s mass was technically still there, but between the materials and the divine effects it might as well have been weightless.

I lifted it and offered it to Aisha. She reached for it without thinking, then stopped herself.

“It’s so small. What if I lose it?” She asked.

I smiled. “You’re not going to lose it. There are more effects here than I can really explain, but the chances of you getting separated from it against your will are basically zero. If something does happen I can always find it for you. One of my powers lets me do that.”

She paused, then nodded and took the item from me. She carefully ran a finger across its surface. “There aren’t any seams. How does it work?”

I smiled. This was the tricky part of the process, the one I didn’t want to make any early promises about. It turns out I was being overly cautious. “It works with your power.” Her head snapped up. “Like Ren. It’s a focus, a better one. There are magitech principles at play. You should be able to manipulate it directly through your power alone.”

The Quality constellation passed as she nodded slowly. “I don’t have the best control with that. I mean, it’s getting easier thanks to Ren, but I don’t know. Maybe if I…”

She stopped talking as the slip of metal flashed with an otherworldly light. There was blinding radiance in the shape of a woman and the sound of sliding metal, then nearly six feet of magical power armor was standing in my workshop.

With a body language the looked awkward, nervous, and slightly embarrassed. There was a muffled sound from the helmet that vaguely resembled speech.

“Activate your external speakers, or open your helmet if you want to speak. Fleet can help you if…” There was a scraping sound as the lower portion of the helmet split and folded open, revealing Aisha’s nose and mouth.

“Holy shit that was awesome.” She shifted slightly from one side to the other. “And you really can’t fall in these things, can you?”

“Nope.” I replied with a smile, watching her take progressively more aggressive stances that would have sent even someone well accustomed to heels into a brutal faceplant. Another sliding sound caused the entire helmet to peel back, fully revealing her smiling face.

“This is incredible. God damn, if half the features work like Fleet’s saying…”

“They will.” I promised her. “But it will take some time to get used to.”

She shifted slightly and looked apprehensive. “We have time for that? I mean, I want to, but I did promise my dad I’d get home after ‘shopping’. I can use my power…” She raised a hand to the clip. “…but it's kind of nice, him paying attention to me. I really don’t like messing with that.”

I nodded. “Let me deal with your other equipment, then you can head back. Take the armor with you and you’ll be ready if there’s an emergency. Otherwise we can work out a training program.”

The girl smiled brightly in a way that eased the expenditure from the level of enchanting I had just performed. Naming an object on this scale was serious, much more than the hairclip had been. That said I was stronger than I had been during my last attempt. Whatever this power source was, it had some odd rules governing its use and recovery.

“Hey?” She asked. “When you said Beria…” She paused, seeming to notice something from her armor. “That was this thing’s name, right? And that was part of the enchanting?”

I nodded, and watched to see her put it together.

“It’s connected to my power, and that made the connection stronger?” She asked, but didn’t wait for a response. “There’s something else? Something about my power?”

I decided to fill her in. “The hairclip was a focus. It works to help you build control. I can do that, make things that affect how a power works. Normally minor stuff, but more energy means greater effect. That’s what the armor does as well.”

Aisha nodded, but still looked confused. “I can tell, but it didn’t add anything, but something’s there, something that was barely there before?”

I smiled as I was reminded just how little most parahumans understood their powers. “Electronics.”

Aisha's head jerked up. “What?”

“Your power affects electronic records of your existence the same way it affects memories, it’s just incredibly slow. Maybe after a couple of years some personal data would be corrupted or a photo would fade, but nothing practical.”

“But not anymore?” She guessed. I nodded to her.

“The armor has stealth systems. Match background thermals, absorb active scans, and move silently. Most of all, it acts as a focus, lets your power affect technology as well as it can affect humans.” I grinned. “No more vulnerability to tinkers.”

“Except you.” She grinned back. “Tell me, did you just do this because Dragon was trying to catch you?” Her smile died when she saw my expression. “What? I didn’t think it was that bad, what with how she acted in the press…”

“Dragon is being mastered.” There was no reason to dance around this. Aisha would be working with me, she needed to know the details.

“What?” Aisha asked in shock.

“Found her online, worked with her for a bit, then something happened that triggered some weird behavior. I took some steps to confirm it, then as soon as I was sure she attacked me.” I paused. “Well, in computer terms. Really, she aggressively tried to track my connection. I was lucky to get out of that one.”

“But, mastered? Dragon’s the most powerful tinker in the world. Who could have done that?” Her face was ashen as she spoke.

I shook my head, and also decided not to correct her on that ‘most powerful tinker’ thing. “I don’t know. I’m investigating it, but I have to be careful. I don’t know what will happen if I set her off any worse than this.” I sighed. “Best I’ve been able to get from my thinker power is that the Dragonslayers are involved somehow. Not as the ones who did it, but they know something.”

“Right. So, are you flying to Canada?”

I grinned at that. “Maybe once this mess calms down. It’s looking bad and there might be something starting soon.”

She shifted slightly. “If you need help I can…”

“No, go home, spend time with your dad. I’ll contact you if I know anything.”

She nodded and looked down at the armor. After a few different expressions shifted across her face there was a flash and the sound of sliding metal as the armor collapsed back into its token form.

Announcements about the subversion of the world’s favorite tinker, because I was nowhere near her on that metric, had sucked most of the excitement out of the meeting. I could still see her excitement about the armor, but it was muted by the responsibility it represented.

My duplicates were able to handle her equipment upgrades while I caved and agreed to show her the hockey rink. And caved and agreed to fabricate her some skates. And managed to keep a straight face at her fumbling attempts to remain upright on them. Aisha may have a kind of natural grace, but ice skating apparently wasn’t a natural extension of that.

It probably didn’t help that Fleet decided to deal with her impact on the ice by piloting a tiny Zamboni directly behind her as she made a wobbly circuit of the rink, largely assisted by the support of the walls.

“Don’t say anything.” She accused, pulling off her skates. “I’m going to get this down, you’ll see.”

“Sure. It’ll be waiting for you. In the meantime, your gear is ready and apparently Garment has a care package waiting for you.”

Aisha rolled her eyes as we walked. “Of course she does.” She paused, and rubbed a thumb over the armor token. “Uh, also, thank you for this. I know this stuff is the norm for you or whatever, but I could tell you went the extra mile for me. Thanks for that.”

“Don’t mention it.” I assured her. As long as it kept her safe. It was a short trip back to the entrance where Garment was waiting with the mock results of her ‘shopping trip’, complete with fabricated bags. She had put way too much effort into it, including the production of sale tags and fake receipts that would pass any inspection her father could offer, all while presenting an expenditure within the budget of a middle schooler.

“Take care of yourself.” I said as she slipped out the back exit of Garment’s studio. Garment extended the same sentiment, and Aisha returned the feelings.

“I will. And thank you again.” She held up the bag. “Both of you. And let me know if I can help.”

“I will.” I promised her. It was a promise that might come to a head sooner than I would have preferred.

Because Survey had found something.

Nothing certain, but enough warning signs to identify an area of high risk. I worked to review it through my duplicates’ 20% time. They were as on edge as me, given they spent the entire term upgrading my equipment. By the end I had enough information to make a call.

Something was happening. I could either wait for it to manifest, or I could try to get ahead of it. For the first time in nearly two weeks, I needed to go on patrol.

I was ready for this. In fact, I was over-prepared for this. There were only a handful of threats in the city I couldn’t handle. The only reason I hadn’t smacked them down sooner was delay in my response time. I needed to put that aside and get into the field.

Which meant a full loadout, and the staggering understanding of just how excessive a full loadout actually was. Life fibers as a base, then my renewed costume and divine stomping boots. Add in micromanipulators and newly rebuilt equipment, including ragnite power sources and divine crafting. Technosorcery empowered omni-tool on my wrist. Pistol at my side, and numerous other pieces of equipment in my subspace pocket. Finally, Garment’s gloves flowing over my hand and her new dress unfurling into a glorious white cape with my symbol on the back, crafted in Masterful dust weaving.

I felt ready to take on the world.

That wasn’t much of an exaggeration. I could feel the location of people. I could sense cameras. I could, at least in short bursts, move faster than the eye could see. I was an absolute terror in the dying light of the late afternoon, darting from rooftop to rooftop using only the slightest bursts of strength.

This wasn’t just a romp across the city. I was scanning as I went. Upgraded sensors and equipment slipped in and out of subspace gave me a deeper picture of activities in the docks than should have been possible. And it wasn’t a pretty picture.

Bakuda’s reach had grown like an infection. Scans were picking up her work, and it wasn’t good. More concerning, it was putting on an air of normality. Normal people, going about their day with the only hint to their subverted purpose the grim expression on their face and the bomb hiding in their head.

The concealment of the bombs had been greatly improved from Saturday night. Power sources were shielded, communications were dampened, and there were active effects blocking most methods of detection. Bakuda had stepped up her game. Luckily I had stepped mine up ever further.

I wanted to jump down and immediately start digging the accursed things out of people’s heads, but that would be a fleeting pleasure taken at the expense of everyone cursed with a similar fate. Instead, I prowled. I watched movements. I trailed from rooftops and blind spots. And I closed in.

There aren’t many things that could have distracted me at that moment. I was on the hunt for the source of the greatest threat to the city, and a potential threat to the entire world. So, therefore please understand how significant it was when the Celestial Forge connected to a mid-sized mote named Tailor, and suddenly I was seriously considering abandoning the search and immediately rushing back to my Workshop.

Tailor doesn’t sound like that special a power, especially considering the wide array of clothing-based powers I had. The thing was, it absolutely was. It was an incredibly significant power, and one I had been waiting ages to acquire. The mote was the second of a clustered pair, the first of which I had gotten almost exactly seven days ago.

Tailor wasn’t about how to work with clothing. It was about how to work with life fibers. Everything I had researched, all my work, development, and effort to understand Tetra, I hadn’t even been scratching the surface. The potential of that material, of that lifeform, it was absolutely incredible. So incredible I desperately wanted to dive into it without delay.

But I was close. Patterns were emerging, and Survey was piecing them together. The ABB had a conscripted army and were moving them like chess pieces. I was close enough to figuring things out that I didn’t dare back away. Not until I was able to flip the board.

So, I pushed on. My search took me on a route that stitched into the docks, into the reaches of ABB territory. I pieced together more and more information as I went. Layers of command, conscripts on the bottom with a shaky structure of authority above them. A structure that was the organization's weak point. Too many soldiers, not enough officers. A teenager who might have been making drops for the gang now had an entire squad of conscripts under his command. Untrained, undisciplined conscripts that he needed to direct.

That meant reaching out for help. Him and dozens of others, abusing the discreet system of burner phones and code words to try to stay on track. The entire mess forming a network leading me deeper into the organization.

As I pulled more information a picture began to form. An attack was coming. A major push by the gang, using everything they had amassed so far. Led by their expendable troops, it would leave a brutal wound on the city. What’s more, it was dispersed and coordinated. Enough forces in any area to meet responses that could be mounted, but also enough fronts to overwhelm anyone who tried to counter the move.

I dug deeper into their network, getting beyond text messages and into dedicated systems, systems I could subvert with contemptuous ease. Even with their secrets revealed to me it was only adding to the image of how bad the attack would be. Records of arms distribution. Plans regarding patrol routes for heroes. Specific instructions for countering National Guard forces. I pushed harder into their systems, moving from one communication node to another as I hunted for their base of operations.

Then I found it. Something too good to be true. A direct communication link. A dedicated video protocol tagged with the highest priority within their system. I didn’t care about the context of the find, or if it was actually too good to be true. I latched on and began to trace.

That was when the line lit up. A naïve person would have assumed they had suddenly had the chance to intercept a priority call between the ABB elite. That they were lucky twice and could find everything they needed all at once. I didn’t believe in that kind of luck. I knew who I was up against. I connected to the call knowing exactly what I was going to find.

I wasn’t disappointed. The image on the other end was framed with utmost care, centering the subject in a manner designed to make them look powerful and in control. The oversized chair, low angle, and precise lighting was all out of Film Imagery 101. And specifically, framed in a way that drew attention to the arms and legs. The apparently intact arms and legs.

“Hello Apeiron.”

Bakdua’s electronic voice was once more processed by her gas mask, now with a line drawn over one of the lenses. She perched on her pseudo-throne glaring down at the camera. A much more professional camera than you would find in video conferencing. I wasn’t doing anything more than tracking the call, but I needed it open longer for that to work. Which meant I had to play this game.

I quickly took in my surroundings, made a single, life fiber-enhanced leap to the roof of the tallest building in the area, and fabricated a camera drone. With the red sky of sunset behind me and light glinting off my costume while my cape billowed behind me I engaged the video and entered the call with Bakuda, all while continuing my trace.

“Hello Bakuda. You’re looking… intact.”

I saw her tense, first at my appearance and then at my words. My only goal was to stretch this to the point where I could find her location, and hope I had outstripped whatever countermeasures they had planned. That I could cut the head off this snake and stop this from turning into a night of blood.

Once more, posturing would come before battle, but at least this time I was ready for what was coming.

*******

Addendum Kenta

Kenta breathed in, and out, letting frustration flow through him. They said breathing calmed a man down, that it gave him the clarity to evaluate his situation, and let him find peace.

Maybe that worked for those who sought situations that were peaceful, but that wasn’t Kenta’s way. Clarity of his situation rarely brought peace, only more efficiently directed anger. Breaths didn’t provide a calming breeze, they stoked the furnace of his rage, preparing for the moment when it would be unleashed.

He took another breath in the ostentatious office and remembered the time before the chaos. Before the city’s heroes overreached and their delicate and treasured balance crumbled around them. It had been an act of vengeance that started it. No one crossed Lung. Lung did not lose. Lung did not accept defeat. The children who thought they could disrespect him, disrespect his territory needed to be dealt with.

It should have been a simple matter. He might not even have killed them. The living could instill fear in a way the dead could not quite manage. Instead, the city had decided to collapse around him.

New capes. It was always the young, the freshly triggered who didn’t know better. Worse, a run of lucky nights, petty victories, and their egos would swell. They would feel invincible, ready to take on the world. They would forget their fear.

The girl had edged out a victory, rescued by the Undersiders and then the Leader of the Protectorate. Kenta had been left poisoned, his body rotting and falling to pieces around him until they brought in the New Wave girl. A humiliation, one of many to be repaid.

Lung had waited. He knew how to do that. The Protectorate may have thought themselves a force to be reckoned with, but their confinement had nothing on the C.U.I. or in the pit Tōng Líng Tǎ had kept him trapped in when nothing else would work. He waited and trusted his lieutenants. And his patience had been rewarded with freedom. Lung emerged back into the world, but not the same world he had left.

The city was broken. The balance destroyed, a gang war all but officially declared. The ABB transformed from his kingdom to a terrorist group, an empire of slaves, or a mad blaze that consumed everything in its way.

If the gang’s position had been stronger Lung might have killed Bakuda for the liberties she had taken. The girl had listened to his lessons on fear and tried to ape them like a child copying a parent’s actions without the skill or power to accomplish anything meaningful. The fear she cultivated with her bombs and kill switches was the fear that left men numb, uncaring. Lung had seen it before, in the aftermath of Kyushu. It was the fear that made men turn on each other, not the fear that made them obey.

That was obvious enough in the aftermath of her grand attempt. Rescued by clowns, broken and maimed while those who obeyed her lined up to pay reverence to her enemy. What that boy accomplished against her would have almost been impressive, if he were not so infuriating.

He drummed his fingers on the table, considering the rabbit and her plan for the boy. That slip of a girl from New York, clearly broken in a way Bakuda had overlooked and Lee would never notice. Lost in dreams of the springtime of her youth and obsessions of bloody romance. When he questioned the cape, she presented her objectives openly and with deference.

The rabbit did everything with deference. It was the only reason she was still alive. Kenta wasn’t stupid. He knew it was an act. She played everyone around her, it was the nature of thinkers. But where other thinkers would be slaved to the ticks and defects of their powers, March was able to contain and direct hers. Perhaps it was a consequence of whatever had broken the girl that she now lacked the typical obsessions that characterized her type of cape.

So, Lung let her play, and she played court official for the new ABB empire. An empire of slaves rather than fear, but Kenta found himself without the luxury of choice. The city was boiling over. The E88 was massing, the Merchants were expanding their ranks with the detritus of Lung’s battles, and the Canadian tinker who thought herself a dragon was moving to the city.

Kenta frowned and drew up the video of the woman’s announcement again. He knew it would infuriate him, but that was good. This wasn’t the time for calm, and fury was Lung’s strength.

The video started with the Guild’s symbol, fading into an emulated green face the tinker hid behind. The face put on a smile that would look more at home in a shoujo manga than an internationally regarded cape.

“Hello, I would like to take this opportunity to speak to the previous night’s events. And has been extensively reported, I engaged in an electronic confrontation with the tinker known as Apeiron. During the incident there was extensive damage to systems belonging to myself, the Guild, Protectorate assets, and many uninvolved parties. On behalf of myself and the Guild I would like personally apologize for the damage inflicted during this scuffle, and assure you that remuneration will be forthcoming for those affected by our engagement.”

“Based on information I obtained in the course of our encounter I believe Apeiron is of the utmost importance. As such I am announcing my transfer of operations to Brockton Bay, where I will provide assistance with the mounting local situation and the pursuit of Apeiron. I have committed to devote my full resources towards the resolution of local conflicts and Aperion’s capture.”

The smile widened, as if she was enjoying some private joke.

“I look forward to working with the local Protectorate and PRT forces, and will be conducting operations with the full support of Director Emily Piggot in this critical mission. I would like to personally thank the Director and local authorities for making this endeavor a reality. In addition…”

Lung cut it off before any more could play. The woman spoke as if she should be grateful for the opportunity to pursue the boy, as if this was the greatest moment of her life. It was pathetic, confusing, and worst of all, a complication.

Another breath. Another moment of mounting rage. Stoke the bellows. Prepare.

The gang was not as he left it. Twisted on Saturday and broken on Monday, it was hardly a gang anymore. Their resources were more abundant than ever, as the Rabbit had plucked the darkened city of its treasures. Lung was sitting on more liquid assets than any other time in his career, but he felt less of a leader because of it.

March had suggested her manipulations of the stock markets. She had the same disregard for the impact of her actions that was shared by Bakuda, though at least she was able to properly direct her brutality. Pulling the bound civilians with useful skills and putting them to work was a novel idea, and what appeared to be a profitable one.

Early proofs of the concept had convinced Lung to commit, and a decision that had cost them both everything, and almost nothing. Everything that bound the gang to the city was gone, every business, investment, and front had been torn away. The actual financial cost had been moderate, at worst. Their accounts had been defended against the attack, and the rabbit’s scheme had secured enough profit before its failure to bloat them even more. Were the disaster to happen any other way Lung might have taken it as a sign. Rewarded with treasure and free of bounds, he could leave the nest of vipers and move to more profitable territory.

But that would not happen. Lung did not lose, Lung repaid insults, and nothing short of a brutal death would repay the indignity of Apeiron’s madness.

Lung had called the meeting personally, and there was none who would refuse him. Every official beholden to the ABB was there to pay deference and acknowledge his power. With the rabbit’s plans securing funding and the gang’s expanded assets it was a turning point, a moment for the ABB to emerge stronger and more prominent.

Then they heard the crash. The building shook beneath their feet. Lung was on his feet instantly. He did not know who would have dared to attack them, but hero or villain, he would meet them as a dragon should.

Then the wall exploded, torn through with contemptuous ease, and Lung saw him. The tinker that broke Bakuda, glowing red with a billowing white mantle cast about him like the shroud of death. But Lung didn’t hesitate. Lung was the dragon, and he would break the upstart upon his own trinkets.

His fist had been intercepted by the whipping cape and felt as if he had struck the hull of an armored vehicle. Then, before he could move, speak, or even growl a challenge to the boy he was pulled beyond his own power.

It was an insult. He did not strike. He did not attack like a man, test metal against metal. The boy flowed, sank smoothly, broke Lung’s footing, and moved him like a leaf caught in a stream. All with a gentle grace that stood at odds with the forces in play.

Tai chi. Lung remembered his grandmother practicing in the mornings, back when he was very young. The smooth motions carried out like therapy. An art of restoration and healing. The complete antithesis of everything Lung represented.

And the boy used it. He flowed through gentle steps with the speed of a maelstrom and flung Lung from his grasp. He remembered the first impact, and the second. The third was vague and buried in fog, and he had no recollection of the fourth until he awoke buried in a collection of office furniture.

Apeiron had left him. The boy had bloodied Lung and walked on to burn down his organization. Tear down what he had built with the blood and tears of his rivals.

Perhaps he would have come back to ensure his victory. Or perhaps he arrogantly believed Lung had been beaten for good. He couldn’t say. March’s jesters were able to lure the tinker from the building and hold the attention of the heroes long enough for the damage to be mitigated. The building was evacuated, records destroyed, and Lung himself secreted out.

If the rabbit had drawn attention to it she would have died. If the jesters had mentioned the slightest understanding of the situation they would have died. If any hero had happened upon the scene they would have died. Instead, March had coordinated events. No one knew of Lung’s defeat. The events were too fast for the officers to follow, and the tinker had blinded and deafened them immediately after. They believed Lung had abandoned them to their fate, but that was preferable to the insult the tinker had wrought.

No, only the tinker would need to die, and he would die brutally. To that end Lung would endure this pageantry. The expansion of the ranks of captured, the ambitious operation against the forces of the city. Even the theatrics that March insisted were necessary for the plan to be timed properly. That was acceptable. Let Bakuda display her petty victory in reversing the damage of her debut. Let March play shogi with his forces until she could capture the piece she was hunting for.

They could play their games, and Lung would wait. Lung did not lose. Lung did not bear insult. Lung was not ignored.

The boy had power, and was drunk on it. He thought himself invincible. He would soon learn otherwise. There were only three creatures on this planet who could not be defeated. Three who Lung would not fight. Three from whom Lung would bear derision and disregard.

Everyone else would learn. Lung had seen the depth of power this world had to offer, tested his strength against it. He knew the meaning of strength more than any pretender possibly could.

The phone rang and Lung tensed as he lifted the receiver.

“Speak.”

The rabbit’s voice greeted him. “Lung, contact has been made. It is time to begin.”

Lung smiled. He could feel the transformation waiting to emerge, the scales held beneath his skin. The eagerness to meet this challenge. The boy had power, and Lung’s strength, his fury, was eager to meet it. Challenge it. Show it the place it actually held in the world. He thought he was invincible, but Lung’s forces would be happy to show him otherwise.

Lung knew the meaning of strength, and it was a lesson he was happy to teach.

The ABB wasn’t a gang anymore. They stood apart from this city, drawing what they needed with no ties binding them. Lung sat atop a pile of wealth and power and looked to the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Valuable Memories -the creation of chimeras (Big O) 300:  
> You have knowledge related to any particular concept-the construction of Megadei, the nature of memories, Bigs, or the creation of chimeras. Paradigm will have a vested interest in you, and will protect you and provide you with funds if you work for them.
> 
> Mauler (Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars) 400:  
> You have the skills of a junkyard hound, able to make even the most heavily damaged tech work again. Even machines too battle-damaged for recovery 20 years ago can be effective under your wrench. Repurposing tech and equipment is your forte; you can turn a pneumatic screwdriver into a reasonable cannon, and heaven help your enemies if you get anywhere near mining equipment, as a powerarmored mutant is quickly appearing in their future. There was even one time where you made a toaster into a reasonable facsimile of a flamethrower…..
> 
> Technosorcery (Gargoyles) 400:  
> Combining magic and technology is a no brainer for you. You can handily blend the two to create amazing effects like broadcasting spells over telephone lines or melding creatures together through sorcerous surgery. Very little in the field of technomagic is beyond your reach with this skill.
> 
> Tailor (Kill la Kill) 300:  
> You have the knowledge of how to safely work with life fibers, and how to make them into clothing that empowers (or inhibits) the wearer. In addition, because you know how Life Fiber uniforms work, you know their weak spots better than anyone.


	47. 40 Knock Down - Preamble Gully - Addendum Emergency Alert

Preamble Gully

Gully braced herself and stepped out of the lobby of her modest hotel and into the world of Brockton Bay, ducking under the doorframe as she moved. As she straightened as far as her spine would allow she took in the ripple of reactions to her presence. As always she pretended not to notice them and shouldered her shovel before starting down the sidewalk.

The shovel’s presence was calculated. Normally a person carrying a large tool would be threatening, at least in potential. Gully didn’t need help to be threatening. The shovel was her cover. It made people look again when they saw her. That was the real secret. Without the shovel, without something odd but also normal for them to focus on, the reaction was always the same. Strained, wary, and at best cautiously polite.

But with a shovel? A shovel wasn’t a sword, or a gun or spear. It wasn’t glowing tinker tech or some pulsing manifestation of power. It was always as plain a shovel as she could manage to find. It was normal. People could look at the shovel without looking at her. They could ask about the shovel without mentioning anything about her… condition.

It was a distraction. An imperfect distraction, but she would take any she could get. Any distraction from the life she lived.

She took a breath and brushed at the hair covering her face with coarse, sausage-like fingers. Hands the size of microwaves, the tangled mass of scar tissue that served as her skin, obvious deformities in bone structure, proportions and symmetry. And those were just the surface-level differences.

Beneath her skin it was worse. Whatever nerves she had were buried beneath the coating of rough collagen that covered her body. Everything felt distant and detached, lacking any fine detail. The way she moved, breathed, and the very composition of her body was wrong. She didn’t know how she knew it, but by some vestige of lost memory still knew what a human body was supposed to be. It was just enough connection to humanity to know how far she was from it.

That was the thing about Case 53s. Even those ‘lucky’ enough to have a vaguely human shape were miles away from normal biology. She remembered trading stories with Sanguine. Case 53s meeting and exchanging medical data the same way other people would talk about their favorite movies. The mess of a circulatory system within what appeared to be nothing more than a red-skinned boy was telling. As was her own layered biology, a nightmare that no surgeon would touch and that required specialized medical treatment for any injury more than skin deep.

Gully supposed she was lucky that in most cases ‘skin deep’ meant at least two inches.

She tried to put those thoughts out of her mind as she followed the already familiar route. This was always her starting point in her searches. In truth she had no idea what she was doing with her time in this city. Jumped across the country and into a war zone for the faintest chance of a better life.

But it was a chance. A real chance, the first she had. Weld’s call had required all of her control, all the lessons in comportment and public perception that until then had mostly been a formality. She had drawn on all of them to keep herself from giving things away.

Restaurants. It was practically a joke. It was a joke. Weld knew she was a foodie. It was a small pleasure, something she could indulge in that was unconnected from every aspect of the body she was trapped in. In fact, for once it was an asset. Gully didn’t actually need the amount of food her body size would suggest. Her actual caloric needs were fairly low, even by normal standards. Whatever effect had swollen her body to monstrous proportions was at least partially self-sustaining, a fact that was insufferable in every aspect save her Wards food budget.

For Weld food was a formality. Most of his budget went to his record collection. Despite her complete lack of an ear for music she would tolerate his enthusiastic extolment of the importance of high audio fidelity and the advantages of vinyl over various digital formats, just as he would listen to her rant about new foods, favorite combinations, and the San Diego restaurant scene.

She had assumed he was listening politely without registering anything, the way she did when he got deep into the history of Norwegian death metal. She certainly hadn’t expected him to remember specific details from her rants. She never expected him to express an interest in visiting.

She could put the rest together. Big doesn’t mean stupid, no matter what people might think of her. Weld’s transfer had been a mess. He vanished from public appearances and any contact attempts immediately after the Cape Blackout. She’d seen the grainy video from the rig. She was afraid for Weld after what it appeared to show, and relieved when she saw him back at the conference. But he was different. Unlike most of the Protectorate she knew how far he could push his shapeshifting. The effort it took to clear surface impurities. The fact that he had never been able to control his finish. Something had happened. She had her theories as to what. Then he called.

It was obvious he was being watched, and obvious why. The sudden interest in restaurants was the first clue. She didn’t miss the fact that he was particularly interested in places with food so spicy that they joked about making customers sign a medical waiver before being seated. Whatever had restored some of his lost sense hadn’t taken it all the way. It hadn’t been enough to fix everything, but it had fixed something.

Then that little trick at the end of the video call. The light toss of an obviously metal pen. A fraction of a second of contact, and obviously past the notice of whoever was watching him, but a detail as significant as his taste. He could control his metal absorption. Maybe it wasn’t perfect. It had only been an instant of contact, but he had done it. Going from no control to minor control… Well, there were Case 53s who would do anything to have that.

She hadn’t wasted any time. Calls were made to other Case 53s to confirm what she suspected. Weld hadn’t called every one of them, but he had made an effort. More than a few of his hints had been missed, but it was enough confirmation. Something or someone in Brockton Bay could heal Case 53s. Maybe not entirely, and maybe not permanently, but they could do it. They could make a difference.

There was really no question as to who it was. Everyone had seen that broadcast. Healing technology like that was more than the most likely cause, it was a near certainty. The villain Grue had looked like something out of one of David Cronenberg or Junji Ito’s horror movies. Then he was fixed. Whether the darkness cape was actually a Case 53 under that smoke was irrelevant. Apeiron had healed him. If he could handle that, then what else was he capable of?

Gully turned a corner and came face to face with exactly what Apeiron was capable of. She always started here. It must have been her dozenth visit in the past two days. She wasn’t the only one. Once the Protectorate had given up on isolating the scene it had turned into one of the most popular sites in the city.

The frozen bubble of time dominated the center of Batchelder Square. It was clear the pedestrian routes hadn’t been designed with the expectation of losing the ability to cut across the space, resulting in pedestrian congestion as they circled around the site. Despite the detour none of them seemed to mind. It was understandable. Not with a display like that.

Apeiron’s workmanship. His robots fighting a local duplicator villain, trapped in time. The Protectorate wasn’t drawing attention to the significance of that composition, but the public had clued into it, or at least the posters of PHO had.

Robots and villains. No civilians. As far as she was aware there had been no official announcement regarding it, but there was certainly no shortage of commentary about how convenient it was that Apeiron’s robot had attacked in such a way that every person in the blast radius was thrown out of the time bubble. Most of it was centered on how terrifying it was to have that powerful an attack with that level of control, but there was also commentary on what it could say about Apeiron’s character and nature.

That was what gave Gully hope. A single trapped person would have turned the square into a memorial. Instead, it stood as a testament to the tinker’s power. And possibly the tinker’s charity.

Weld, despite the purported value of his record collection, did not have extensive resources to call upon. Yet somehow he had made a deal with Apeiron for specific treatment. The number of people seeking the same thing was terrifying, but apparently Weld had managed it. She didn’t know the details, but whatever he had given up wasn’t enough to compromise his position in the Wards. He was even still listed as team leader. At worst there seemed to be a period of isolation, reasonable for the subject of any unknown medical procedure.

As Gully looked at the dazzling display frozen in time she felt even more self-conscious than usual. What place did she have next to something like this? Apeiron obviously valued beauty. His works had started stunning and progressed to a level of artistry that one could barely put into words. Weld may have had as many problems with his condition as any Case 53, but there was a good reason he was effectively their spokesman. Nobody would argue with the suggestion that, despite any mitigating factors, he was the best looking of all of them.

Was that why Apeiron had helped him? She thought about Khepri. Rumors were unconfirmed, but there was so denying that the girl was thin, model height, and had amazing hair. Was that the kind of standard Apeiron used? Did she have any hope? Was she wasting her time? The grim clouds of dark thoughts began circling through her mind, threatening to swallow her up.

“Excuse me?”

Gully blinked and looked down to the voice. She always had to look down to speak to people, but this was an exceptional amount of down. The speaker was a child, maybe four or five with a gleam of wonder in his eyes.

“Are you a hero?” The boy asked in a reverent voice.

Gully smiled. A genuine smile, not the one she practiced for public appearances. She quickly remembered that genuine smiles tended to do horrible things to the placement of the skin on the left side of her face and immediately shifted to the more subdued expression she had developed with the help of a California PRT publicist.

God but she hated that woman. That was when she started wearing her hair over her face. Every piece of advice had involved minimizing her… everything. Her height, her presence, her atypical features, her implied threat. She hated it all, but most of all, she hated how it worked. Children would either react to her with wide-eyed cape wonder or with cringing terror. Following the vile woman’s advice had helped with shift reactions so the former was becoming much more common than the later. It had also served to dramatically increase her standing in popularity polls. She was actually doing fairly well, with the caveat of ‘for a Case 53’ going unsaid.

She put those thoughts out of her mind and gave the boy a professional smile. “Yes I am. My name is Gully and I’m visiting from California.” She spoke as softly as she could to minimize the gravely effect of her voice. Luckily the boy didn’t react with anything but even more enthusiasm.

He smiled widely as he looked up at her. “My aunt is from California, but we don’t visit because my mom…”

“Henry!” Called a woman with a close family resemblance, most likely demonstrating the near thinker-like ability of mothers to know when their children are about to embarrass them. “I hope you’re not bothering this… lady.”

The woman at least didn’t finish her sentence like a question, but all of the brash enthusiasm her son had shown was absent. There was the concern, the contained wariness that Gully was used to. That she’d needed to become used to.

“It’s no problem as all.” She replied in her most professional voice. “I’m not on duty at the moment, and I’m always happy to meet someone this enthusiastic.”

“I’m sorry…” The woman trailed off into awkwardness and absently noted the boy tugging at Gully’s hand.

“Can I have an auto graph?” He asked, pronouncing it like two words. Gully smiled again and reached into a pocket of her costume. Her hands couldn’t manage a normal pen, and writing was a chore. As such she’d taken to carrying pre-signed papers for people who asked. Not that many did, but there was always someone.

“Of course.” She handed the boy a slip of paper with her name signed over a stylized shovel. Obviously she wasn’t going to walk around with a stack of headshots. This was another of the compromises she’d arrived at.

“What do we say?” The mother prodded the boy.

“Thank you.” He called out musically while grinning at the paper.

“Thank you very much.” The mother offered, and the concern dropped away. In its place was something worse.

Pity.

She held firm under the overly sympathetic gaze of the woman as she wrangled her excitable child down the sidewalk. She managed that until the woman was gone, then immediately sank back to the edge of the square. The thoughts were coming back, those dark clouds threatening to swallow her up.

“Sorry about that.” A voice said. She struggled to find the energy to face it. “Normally they don’t push for that kind of thing outside of the tourist stops, but this place has kind of been adopted as one.”

She looked towards the voice, and for once didn’t need to completely drop her head to face the person. She was still at least a foot taller, but compared to most people it was a world of difference. It reminded her of talking to Everett when he went out in his power armor. Sometimes, when he used his heavier suits, she could practically feel normal when she walked next to him….

She banished those thoughts and focused on the current situation. The height difference was enough that she could still see the top of the man’s head, but it was at least minor enough that she felt like she was talking to an adult.

Although this perspective did make it clear that he used a ridiculous amount of hair gel.

Past that the seven-foot-tall man was wearing a white and yellow costume with a professional cut. New Wave, she remembered from her quick review of the local cape scene. Manpower. Public cape, real name was something Pelham. Ned or Neil.

“It’s alright. I’m used to it. They don’t really respect privacy in California. PR duty never ends.” She assured the man. “You’re Manpower? From New Wave?”

There was a little awkwardness, though she at least got the sense it was unrelated to her condition. “Manpower. New Wave is… adjusting to the current situation.” He explained while trying to conceal a pained expression. “You Californian? LA?”

“San Diego.” She explained. “I’m with the Wards team.”

He nodded. “Well, thank you for coming down. The city’s in a rough time, and we can use all the help we can get.”

Looking closer she could see serious signs of stress. She was guessing the man's powers covered for him physically to some extent, but mentally was another story. His eyes were tired, her stance was slightly slumped, and he seemed incredibly genuine in his gratitude for her presence. Gully just nodded and decided not to elaborate on the details of her trip.

Instead, she gave him a light grin and made an attempt at lifting the mood. “So, is this some giant cape solidarity thing?”

That got a brief laugh. “Not really, but I know it’s not an easy thing.”

She appreciated him not going further or adding any qualifiers about her having it worse. The man was excessively tall, but somehow still had normal proportions. He would look normal in promotional shots and only out of place compared to the rest of his team. She suddenly realized that next to him she probably just looked slightly oversized. Not the hulking monster, but only out of scale.

She smiled her genuine smile on the inside as she noted the way the attitudes of the pedestrians had shifted. Between the illusion of scale and the presence of a local hero there was nothing to be concerned about. She could enjoy a moment of peace before she dove into her next, most likely futile search for any lead on Apeiron.

She turned to Manpower and considered a question. She hated answering stuff like this, but he had approached her, and probably had to field it often enough himself.

“Uh, if you don’t mind, can I ask…”

“The height?” He responded. She nodded. He lifted a hand and tiny sparks danced across his skin. “My power gives me this electromagnetic field. It’s really short range, but pretty strong. One of the effects is a force field. Gives me strength and durability.” For some reason he looked regretful at that, but continued his story. “Triggered as a teenager. The field reinforces me, kind of stresses my body, so I don’t need to work out much, but it also made my growth spurts kind of nuts.” He shrugged. “Body grows in response to stress, and my power stressed my body. Ended up taller than my parents and my kids.”

She nodded. “Just straight up power mutation for me.”

“Case 53?” He asked. She nodded again and was grateful he didn’t go any further.

It did, however, bring her mind back to the purpose of her visit. Her desperate hope. Her fear of having that hope snatched away.

“That rough time for the city?” She asked. “How much of that is due to him?”

She gestured at the center of the square and watched the man’s reaction. It was a more complicated response than she expected, with shades of what looked like anger, guilt, shame, frustration, and despair flickering by in a matter of seconds. Finally, he took a breath and spoke.

“It’s not him.” He said and shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong, Apeiron is a wrecking ball of a cape. You’re not going to find anyone less discriminate in their impact on a situation, but all he’s done is show what a mess we were already in.” He sighed and looked off into the distance. “He hasn’t knocked down anything that wasn’t about to fall apart anyway.”

His voice was pained and regretful. Gully marveled at the unusual experience of making someone else uncomfortable for reasons that had nothing to do with her appearance.

She didn’t like it.

To her relief Manpower pushed on from whatever grim thoughts were upon him. “Anyway, the main focus is the gangs. ABB has gone beyond the pale, that’s where our attention needs to be. It’s going to be a mess, and that’s not getting into what will happen with the Merchants and Empire.”

Gully nodded grimly. It was a serious reminder of the situation she had thrown herself in. Even so, she didn’t regret it. She had a chance. That was all that mattered.

There was a tone from her pocket that caused her to tense and quickly reach to dig out the mobile device. It was a custom job from Facetime, meticulous in how normal it was. Gully couldn’t use anything smaller than a tablet and most touch screens didn’t register her fingers. The communications tinker had embraced the challenge and built a smartphone designed to be remarkably unremarkable. In her hands it looked normal, and that was the point. A standard phone, scaled up and accessible, nothing else.

To her surprise there was a hum from Manpower’s pockets that caused him to fish out his own device. His was one of the oversized note-phones, though with his scale he held it like a typical smartphone. A quick glance confirmed they were both looking at the same alert.

“Okay, you’re from out of town.” He explained. “So, you probably don’t get how weird it is for Uber and Leet to be a serious source of cape news.”

She shook her head. “I’ve seen some of their work.” Really just the fail compilations on YouTube. “I get how nobody saw this coming.”

She checked the alert. It was a possible lead on Apeiron, one of the few that had potential to pan out. She was guessing half the city was tuned into their announcements.

There had been one earlier in the day, touting an upcoming video of one of their operations, not a live or delayed feed but fully edited. People had scrambled to figure out what it was referring to, with the only consensus being that it must have been something from outside the city. Gully expected either an update or maybe a full video to drop.

Instead, it was something completely different. “New stream announcement. Delayed broadcast, to begin soon.” She read. “Not from Uber and Leet. March?”

She turned to Manpower and saw the worried expression on his face. “ABB.” He muttered, then turned to her. “I’m sorry to say this, but I’m really glad to have you in the city. This is probably going to get bad.”

She nodded and kept an eye on her phone. As bad as it could get, there was a chance Apeiron could be involved. For that she could bend her promise to the director. It wouldn’t hurt to make this a working vacation.

40 Knock Down

Once again I found myself staring down the notorious bomb tinker of the ABB. For some reason it seemed everything involving Bakuda had to involve as much posturing, excess, and pageantry as possible. Whatever reputation I had amassed for showmanship had its genesis in my attempts to upstage her opening performance. Now I was right back where I’d been on Saturday night, only this time the posturing was conducted through a video call rather than a direct standoff.

It was obvious how much effort Bakuda had put into this particular display. She had ‘spontaneously’ begun the call while perfectly arranged on an overbuilt throne-like chair, perched just so that she gave the impression of irreverence and authority. Throughout the scene it was painfully clear how carefully every detail had been managed to allow the impression she was trying to convey.

She was in her full costume, a costume that had been seriously upgraded from her previous appearance. There was a new gasmask, this one more streamlined and of dubious usefulness in actually protecting from inhaled toxins, but much more striking in appearance. I was reminded that, unlike with my own work, most people needed to make tradeoffs between style and function. What Bakuda was currently using was probably a slight step above a Halloween gasmask, maybe on the level of a painter’s mask, but not the practical item she had been in her previous appearance.

In exchange she had gone whole-hog on the design. Shaped lenses with nearly luminescent red tint gave the impression that she was glaring down at the camera. The material was carefully arranged, coded to match the rest of her outfit and provide an impression of symmetry, and was framed by her uncovered and obviously styled hair. The one deviation from the ordered appearance being a line that had been painted vertically across one lens, the same place where her previous mask had been split by Taylor’s knife.

It was the kind of detail that would obscure her vision, if there was any vision from that eye to obscure. I was guessing whatever trick had managed to restore her limbs wasn’t as effective on something as complicated as a human eye.

The restored limbs were specifically framed in the shot, with her gloved right hand delicately gesturing and her formerly severed leg crossed on top of the one that had been merely damaged. She bounced it slightly so that the dangling movement drew attention to its restored state. It further served to draw the eye to her new costume, conveying the fact that she had traded out her vaguely military look for an extremely military look.

Previously she had the appearance of someone who had hunted through an Army Surplus with the intention of finding clothes for a night of clubbing. So essentially a mess of basic military clothing framed in a way to attempt to be attention-grabbing. Her new outfit was a world apart from the earlier improvised feel. It was obviously fitted and meticulously tailored. The look was in line with what you would find in an officer dress uniform, but with enough flourishes to clearly set it apart from any specific armed force.

Dark navy cloth made up the base of the costume with gold braiding and buttons peppered across it. She still had the pouches and equipment bandoleers, but they had been dressed up and incorporated into the new theme. Green and red was used for accent coloring at the seams and cuffs and the costume was finished by a pair of high boots and leather gloves.

It was clear that a lot of work had gone into the outfit, as well as the specific framing of the shot, the lighting, the camera angle, and the general feel of the presentation. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I found myself wondering exactly how she pulled this together. Did she kidnap a tailor? A cinematographer? Was there a division of conscripted civilians put on ABB costuming and image management duty instead of being sent into the streets? How much work had gone towards this? Was it my fault? Had I accidentally started a cape fashion war over who could be the best dressed parahuman in Brockton Bay? A potentially endless conflict, and one where, no matter the resolution, Garment would no doubt consider it an event worthy of celebration.

It’s likely that the only reason I was so aware of Bakuda’s efforts to control her image was the sheer number of powers I had that granted skills and insights in that particular area. I was wearing the product of more aesthetic powers than I could casually quantify and, despite my mere seconds of preparation time, I had managed the framing of my own shot to a level that matched or exceeded the results of Bakuda’s careful work. A specific angle capturing the sky behind me, careful management of light and shadows to highlight the armored plates spread across my costume, a particular positioning of my body, the result of a power I couldn’t disable if I wanted to, and, of course, Garment’s dramatic control of my cape as it flared behind me.

That item in particular added a dynamic flair to my shot that made Bakuda look static and sedentary. Combined with the naturally, or possibly supernaturally, intimidating design of my costume and it seemed I had put the other tinker on the back foot, something I would need to maintain if I was going to stretch out this call long enough to trace her location.

Bakuda leaned forward and made an attempt to regain the initiative. “I was wondering how long it would take you to find this line. Perhaps we overestimated your abilities. Maybe I should have made things simpler for you?”

I shifted my posture in preparation for my response. Full face mask talking to full face mask didn’t allow the best conveyance of nuance, though I noticed that Bakuda had slightly dialed down her voice modulation so a hint of her tone could now come through. Someone probably explained to her the importance of inflection in communication and how an emotionless robotic voice, while intimidating, isn’t the best for conveying information.

The toolkits constellation passed by as I made my reply. “So sorry to hold you in suspense. Had I known you were sitting by the phone desperately waiting for my call I would NEVER have kept you waiting.”

Bakuda froze upon hearing my words, and I could practically see the error messages playing in her head. It’s possible a little bit of Inexplicable Innuendo had slipped through in that response, but the result seemed to buy me a few seconds of flabbergasted exasperation, and that was time I could seriously use.

Bakuda hadn’t set this call up as a casual chat. She clearly knew I would be attempting to trace her and had done everything possible to obscure her final location. With the sheer mess of proxies and remote connections she had set up I was surprised we weren’t speaking to each other with a three second delay. There was evidence of her own work in the obscurement of the trace as well as new technologies that I’m guessing came from Leet, and also a third design. More consistent in design than Leet’s work, it was a kind of extremely advanced software compression that made everything more difficult to pick through. Additionally, there was probably some contribution from March, and the thinker was no doubt counting on her timing ability to cut things off before I found her.

But I wasn’t the person I had been on Saturday night. That was regrettably true in my mindset as well as my abilities, though this time the second detail was more relevant than the first. My fight with Dragon had become public, and I knew it had been picked over in both professional and amateur analysis. Exactly what we had been doing to most of the systems was beyond layman understanding, but for someone like March it could probably provide estimations of how long it would take me to bypass certain digital obstacles. Combined with an understanding of the scope of Bakuda’s countermeasures, there was a good chance that the bait of this conversation, Bakuda’s location, could be snatched away at the last minute.

It was lucky for me that any assessment of my confrontation with Dragon wasn’t relevant anymore. The insight from the power I’d gotten towards the end of that fight specifically facilitated adaptation to new problems, and the upgrade to my divine nature took my inherent connection to machines up to eleven. Also, while I lacked the support of my computer core, I had upgraded my omni-tool, which was currently running a more developed copy of Survey. To take things even further, the nanobots in my system were able to assemble themselves into support and computational structures, allowing massively increased processing power and data access, with a portion of that running on truly divine machinery.

As a consequence, not only was I able to bypass Bakuda’s obstructions, but I was able to do so subtly. Using the light touch I had developed to conceal my electronic presence from Dragon’s recent attentions I was able to push forward with the trace while also creating the impression that I was slowly chipping away at defenses that I had long since bypassed.

I just needed to keep the conversation going long enough for that approach to pay off. Fortunately, Bakuda wasn’t willing to be upstaged again, and was scrambling to take back control of the exchange.

“You wish…” There was a slight pause where she seemed to realize that didn’t exactly line up with my statement and worked to find something else. The slight shifts in my posture in response didn’t seem to be helping with her lapse in focus. “Um, you… You have no idea what you’ve blundered into.” She tried to make a dramatic sweep of her hand to accentuate the statement, but the shot wasn’t really framed right for it to be conveyed properly.

I, however, was completely unencumbered and therefore could move in a way to emphasize all of my statements, somewhat to my own regret. Classy Contortionist was constantly running in the background. I could sort of direct it, but not while splitting my focus like this, and it seemed to mesh with my other style and fashion powers to do its own thing. I was going to end up going half mad if I tried to manage it on top of the dialogue and hacking, so I decided to just let it run and hope for the best. Honestly, as much as I dreaded the outcome, I would rather take a hit to my reputation than miss the opportunity to end this insanity.

“I’ve got a decent picture of what you’re planning.” I said with derision. I really didn’t, but it wouldn’t help to admit that. Still, I could safely stick to general terms. “More hiding behind the helpless while deploying a force that is unskilled, untrained, and unwilling all in the hope of somehow carrying out your schemes. And, of course, leaning on your new thinker to make up for the deficiencies in your own abilities.” My face wasn’t visible through my mask and cowl, but I leaned forward in a way that made my visor gleam in the light. “How is March? Tell me, did she coordinate this as closely as everything else? How much did she have to script for you to prevent a repeat of our last encounter?”

I saw the frustration ripple through her as her carefully coordinated positioning began to falter. She quickly tried to settle herself, but I could see how much it bothered her. I just needed to keep that line without pushing her to the point where she disconnected or took some other drastic action. Given how dispersed the cells of conscripts were, I had a major concern about how badly this could go if I wasn’t able to take down their commander.

Though that may have been what they were counting on me to do. Working against powerful thinkers was an exercise in frustration, and I just hoped I could counter or overpower anything they had prepared.

“Like she matters in any of this. Logistics doesn’t mean anything without power to back it up.” She leaned forward and placed a hand on her knee. “Whatever you think you’ve seen out there, you have no idea what’s waiting for you.”

“Promises, promises.” I said despondently. “But it’s alright. I’ve seen what you can do, so I’ve come to expect a measure of disappointment.”

“Disappoint…” Bakuda bit down on the word before she could launch into another rant and started gripping her knee with her right hand. It took her a moment to put together a reply, which I used to navigate a particularly creative and frustrating set of server protocols that were obscuring the path of the signal.

“You are the one who’s disappointing.” She spat. I shifted my stance slightly and saw Bakuda force down another frustrated reaction. “You’re stumbling along, blind to the world around you. You think you are the only tinker who can develop, who can innovate and advance? You have no idea.” Her hand was massaging her knee as she spoke and she seemed to be struggling to avoid looking at it.

I sighed. “If you want me to ask about your limbs that badly, just go ahead and explain. I’ll listen.”

I swear I could see her reshuffling a script inside her head. It made me seriously wonder how much of this had been planned out, and to what level of detail.

“You think you’re special, don’t you?” I didn’t say anything in reply, but a slight change in posture seemed to convey things for her. “Figure you just flash some shiny toys and everyone will fall over themselves chasing what you can do?” She started pulling at her right glove. “Medical work? Bio-tinkering? Please, child’s play. Think your healing tech is special?” She whipped off the glove and lifted an intact hand. “Think again.”

The hand was there, fully restored. That said, I wouldn’t call it good as new. There was discoloration on the surface and some concerning texture to the skin, including the suggestion of some unhealthy growth.

“What did you do?” Once again Bakuda faltered in her response. Whatever reaction she was expecting it probably wasn’t a measure of sympathetic concern.

Still, she tried to rally. “I healed myself. You thought you were the only one who could come up with that kind of technology? I had this done in no time. Did you seriously think you accomplished anything? That the bug bitch could actually hurt me? You should know by now, anything you can do, anything any tinker can do, I can top. I can do anything.”

“Can you cure cancer?” I asked flatly.

“What?” She froze at the apparent non sequitur.

“I’m pretty sure that’s cancer.” I gestured at the hand. “Is that how you did it? Did you seriously make a cancer bomb to grow your limbs back?”

“No!” She barked. “Idiot, it’s healing. Better healing than you could ever do. It’s the instant triggering of massive restoration, beyond what anyone else could accomplish. The induction of rapid, unlimited cell growth…”

“That is practically the definition of cancer. And I’m pretty certain some of those growths are malignant.” She quickly moved to hide her right hand from the camera. “Tell me, how many poor conscripts did you fill with tumors during the test runs before you happened on something that looked like it worked?”

“Idiot! You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She barked, but her body language was closing in on herself.

“Did you at least build a chemotherapy grenade?” I asked. “Or maybe you have an oncologist among the civilians you’re hiding behind?”

“Shut up!” Somehow her petulant tone managed to punch through the distortion of her voice synthesizer. “I don’t need your dime store diagnosis.” She struggled to pull her right glove back on. “It doesn’t matter how you try to play this. You know how our work measures up. The cost from the last time you faced it.”

“What?” She seemed smug, but I really wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

“You think you can play dumb? Ha, not when your failure will stand like a monument until the end of time.” Bakuda folded her arms and glared down at the camera.

I blinked. “Are you talking about Monday?”

“Of course I am. Unlike you, I can control the fundamental forces of the universe. That robot is trapped for the rest of eternity, and no matter what you try, you’re never getting it back.”

“Why would I want it back?” I asked.

“What?” Bakuda started, then quickly recovered. “That’s what you’re playing at? You want to pretend it doesn’t matter? Acting like…”

“Bakuda, that’s three-day-old technology. Even if I could get it back, I don’t know what I would do with it at this point. I mean, maybe as a curiosity…”

Bakuda was once more at a loss for words, and honestly, between that and her probably rapidly advancing cancer, I would have felt bad for her if she wasn’t such a thoroughly detestable person. The more I could drag this out the more time I had to tackle the excessive paranoia that had turned what would otherwise be a simple trace into an electronic snake’s nest. I was actually grateful at the apparent fact that Bakuda couldn’t handle a social interaction more complicated than ranting to a field of hostage minions.

Bakuda looked to be about to say something when a voice came from somewhere out of frame, lighter than hers and without the electronic distortion.

“Three-day-old technology? My, isn’t that precious.”

I tensed as a short woman in a rabbit mask and military uniform slipped into frame. Well, I made to tense, but I felt my pose power shift the motion into something more confident and natural. It seemed even when shocked and with disaster-level alarm bells ringing in my head, that power would regulate my body language to keep me looking good. At most I probably seemed slightly surprised by the intrusion when I would otherwise be reacting with the same frantic energy I was now desperately directing towards my tracing attempts.

Bakuda glared at the thinker as she sidled next to her and perched on the arm of the armchair/throne. The girl responded to her with a glance, rabbit face meeting gasmask. “You heard him, he doesn’t want it back. That means it's just waiting there for anyone who cares to take it. Isn’t that wonderful?” She turned towards the camera with that and tilted her head playfully.

The implications of having my technology looted were concerning, as were the implications that either March or Bakuda could bring down the time stop fields. I actually may not have been giving Bakuda enough credit if she was seriously able to reverse the effects of her chaos tinker creations.

As an additional benefit, between my mask and posing power I was able to keep from revealing the slightest hint of what would actually happen if the field went down. That duplicate was already disappearing. If the field dropped he would vanish, and all his equipment along with him. Just as well that they should focus on a dry well in place of any potentially vulnerable target.

I looked at the irreverent posture of the rabbit cape as the Magic constellation passed by without making a connection. This was it. My first encounter with a world-ending threat. The person on the other side of this call was a threat on the level of the worst the world could offer. Given that I couldn’t throttle her through a video call I was left with no option but to play along and drag this out until I could find them.

“March.” I called out, causing both capes to look at the camera, though March approached the low-angle lenses with an inquisitive posture and a slight tilt of her head in sharp contrast to Bakuda trying to resume an imperialistic pose. “So, the rabbit’s finally poking her head out of her warren. I had been wondering when Bakuda would finally need to pull you out of her hat. The rest of her little magic show certainly wasn’t serving to impress.”

“My, how flattering.” She cooed. If my posture wasn’t being managed by an independent power I probably would have shuddered at that. “And such a charmer. You didn’t mention that. Ah, such a shame.”

Now my skin really was crawling. It’s a particular feeling to desperately want to fold into the smallest profile possible only to have a power make slight alterations that served to convey a sense of presence and confidence that couldn’t be more alien in the situation.

“I can’t say I was overly impressed by what I saw of your work on Monday.” I baited. “Or your meager attempts to counter me in the aftermath. Impressive timing, but inexpertly applied. I’m guessing you’re new to playing at this level.”

“Oh? Wouldn’t people say the same about you?” She rotated her head to the point where the rabbit ears were almost sitting parallel to the ground. It was a disquieting image to say the least. “Of course, I think we both know better. So many things that only we know.”

Well, that was concerning, and made only more concerning by the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about. Bakuda was glancing between March and the camera, generally looking uncomfortable with the intrusion. I could understand why. One of the major rules of command was to never give an order you didn’t expect to be obeyed. Her shooing March off camera wouldn’t look good. Her trying and failing would destroy any shreds of authority she had left.

“Knowledge that will soon become markedly rarer.” The gas-masked tinker broke in, forcing another shift into her formal posture, a process that contrasted sharply with March’s behavior.

“You seem rather confident about that threat. For a self-professed genius, I expected at least basic pattern recognition skills.” I addressed her, causing March’s rabbit mask to swing towards her companion.

“He wants to know about patterns. Should we tell him? Time for the big reveal.” The real discomforting thing about March’s behavior was not just the lack of acknowledgement of the serious nature of any situations, but the way she approached them. March was short, and from what could be discerned was either in her teens or early twenties at most. That said, she conducted things with the feel of a schoolyard game. Worse, she didn’t give the impression that it was an act. There was something about this girl that really didn’t see the conflicts she was in as anything serious. I don’t know what banished any fear of death from the girl, but it made the prospect of facing her, and of the damage that she could do, all the more daunting.

Whatever March’s issues were, they didn’t stop Bakuda from picking up the thread. “Indeed.” She made another flourish as she settled back on her throne. “You want patterns? You think I can’t manage them? What do you think brought you here?”

“An overly wide and poorly executed communication base that was largely unsecured and imprecisely managed for the number of people it was intended to coordinate.” I quipped. “If the dumpster fire of logistics that led me to this call was intentionally implemented for my benefit then I’m impressed by your commitment, if nothing else.” My response was clearly not what Bakuda wanted to hear, and March’s ongoing enjoyment at our exchange wasn’t helping. I probably needed to dial things back just to avoid a rage quit before I had their location.

“More dismissive bravado. You’ve seen what we have, what’s in place.” She glared down through her lenses. “Ten times the forces we had a week ago. Positioned, armed, and ready to strike. And there’s nothing you can do about it.” She scoffed and watched my reaction.

“And this is a threat to me how?” I asked. “Will your collection of schoolchildren, office workers, and grandmothers be expected to succeed where your parahumans have failed? Or is it desperation because you’re running out of capes that I haven’t personally defeated.” Really it was just Lung and March that I had to face. The rest of my confrontations hadn’t been decisive victories with lasting consequences, but generally the cape who runs is universally regarded as the loser of the conflict.

For some reason that hit a nerve more strongly than I expected from the brittle tinker. “Posturing! I should have expected it. Claim indifference all you want, we both know you’ll be rushing in. You can’t help yourself, can you, ‘mercenary’?”

I didn’t really think my cover story would hold up perfectly, but I wasn’t going to abandon it. I made a dismissive gesture to the camera and shifted my posture to match. “Imply whatever you want. I am perfectly entitled to find your actions stupid and distasteful, though I suppose I should have come to expect that from you.” I saw how much that annoyed her. “So, is that it? Another spree of attacks meant to accomplish what exactly? Smash and grab robberies? A fight over power structures that are barely holding together? Or are you just trying to make the city completely unlivable? Chasing the honor of ruling a pile of rubble?”

“Big talk, but you know what we can do. We’re poised, we’re ready, and we outgun every other group in the city combined.” Bakuda sat taller while she made her proud declaration.

“Any GROUP, maybe. And are you that eager for a repeat of Saturday night? You do remember how that resolved, or have you elected to pretend it didn’t happen, perhaps put it out of your mind in the face of your upcoming battle with what is probably a rapidly progressing form of…”

“My medical technology is perfect!” She cut me off. I could hear her panting through the gasmask’s filter and see her hands shaking in anger. “And you said it yourself, everything is personal. Your attempts at denial are pathetic.”

“But they’re so cute!” Echoed March, once more leaning in towards the camera. “So stern and collected, and we haven’t even explained the best part.” She laughed and it was like a melody played painfully off key. Still musical, but fundamentally wrong.

I steeled myself as I made my reply. “So, you have schemes, precisely timed and loaded for destruction. Theoretically devastating but ultimately meaningless. If you could strike at me you wouldn’t have needed this farce to get my attention. You have made a commendable effort to secure my attention, but forgive me if I fail to see what you were intending to accomplish.”

Bakuda seemed to latch on to that. “I suppose small minds must be forgiven. I’ll try to make things simpler, to help you keep up.” She posed again, and it was starting to become obvious and unnatural. Was I leading this on? Was Bakuda trying to keep up with the effects of an inhumanly perfect posing power through a series of actions that looked to be particularly uncomfortable for her spine? Despite what it probably said about how I was presenting myself I took some mild pleasure in her discomfort.

“You see, it’s all in place.” March gestured with her hands as she spoke. “Little dominos ready to fall wherever we want them. One strike, one reaction, one reaction to a reaction, and it all falls down. Even if you see it there’s nothing to be done. The collapse will happen.”

I felt a chill go up my spine. The ABB conscripts had been spread wide. They were pretty much as dispersed as possible without making their actions completely obvious. Actions could be set that would draw responses from the Empire, Merchants, Protectorate, and PRT. Normally I would say that kind of thing would be impossible to arrange, but that was assuming you had some precise goal, some grand objective.

That wasn’t what March or the ABB were going for. This wasn’t the arrangement of a Rube Goldberg machine meant to display masterful control of a situation, to make capes dance like puppets, and secure success against all odds. That would have been too easy to disrupt. A single piece out of place, an unexpected show of force, and it would fail. No, this was someone who had the power to set events in motion on that level, and instead was using the weight of her abilities to sow chaos. March was throwing a Molotov grenade in the form of expendable assets at the city and arranging the impact to cause as much chaos as she could.

This was a cliché. One that didn’t actually happen, not in the real cape community. The villain calls up the hero, makes grand threats and claims, and sends the hero scrambling to stop them. I didn’t know exactly how March would play it from this point. In the movies sometimes it would just be an announcement of the scheme, and them leaving the hero to desperately try to stop it. Sometimes there would be demands: unless you do this, go here, or complete this task then the city will be whatever-ed. Sometimes it would go deeper. There would be a trade, an act of extortion, a heel-face turn, or any number of other improbable things.

In the real world the villain’s threats would go to a PRT assessment team. They would make calls based on department and national policies and most likely take the decision out of the hands of any official hero. There would need to be a proven threat on the level of the Slaughterhouse Nine for any conditions to be entertained, and even then there would be a constant effort to find another way out of the situation.

Was it my reputation for overdramatic spectacle that brought this on? March was disturbingly theatrical, and I could see her trying something like this. She had the skill to cause horrendous damage with the ABB forces, and would no doubt have a trap hidden in any terms she gave. She was expecting me to play the hero, meaning she assumed my mercenary persona was either false or that I was invested enough in the city that I would do whatever I could to save it.

And she was right. It wasn’t surprising that the thinker had gotten a read on me and set up a trap. If it was just a matter of me against the ABB then I would probably do just what she was leading me to, take the course of action with the least damage, and accept the fact that I would be going into a situation where my best hope would be a neutral outcome, and extension of the status quo. Risk my life and risk victory for the ABB to get the reward of being right back where I started.

The Knowledge constellation passed by as I reflected on the grim reality of the situation. The fact was that this wasn’t just about a conflict with one gang. The stakes were higher, and March didn’t know what she was betting against. I couldn’t afford to fold given what was in play. The fate of the world twice over, the unspecified apocalypse and March’s own ‘worse than Endbringers’ potential were out there. It was enough that I could, I would, have to accept the damage the ABB could do if it meant stopping them.

“So it seems.” I answered, to the clear delight of both capes sharing the call.

“Exactly.” Bakuda shouted in triumph. “Power and direction.” She spared a glance at the rabbit mask, apparently willing to forgive the intrusion in her moment of triumph. “Already in motion, and if you want to have any chance of stopping it…”

“You.” I cut her off.

“What?” She gasped.

“Stopping you.” I explained. “Whatever you were thinking, did you really expect me to play along? Follow directions from a bomb tinker and a timing thinker?”

March was giving me the most serious look she could through her cartoonish mask. “You’re serious?” She sounded halfway between amazed and intrigued.

“I’m not going to chase you down this rabbit hole. Whatever Wonderland you’ve prepared, it can get by on its own.” Bakuda was rapidly shifting from confusion to fuming anger, but whatever frustration March was feeling was apparently mitigated by my indulgence in fantasy metaphor.

“The city will burn.” Bakuda threatened.

“As will you.” I replied. “Or have you forgotten that as well? That consequence of your last overreach? You can play with scale and position, but what convinced you that this would end any better than Saturday night?”

I could see her anger building and desperately hoped she wouldn’t drop the connection. I was close, so close I could feel it. That’s not an expression. My technology sense was informing me of the proximity, of the presence of just a few more links until I drove the trace home.

Too late I realized I might have been able to stretch this out by playing along, by listening to their schemes, and pretending to take their trap seriously. Still, there was no way to know if that would work. They could just as easily have sent some instructions and dropped the call while laughing. I could only hope Bakuda’s ego would keep her on the line and that March’s timing was working from the wrong information.

“Saturday night, again with Saturday night. Like it was some great victory.” Bakuda ranted as March looked on with curiosity. “What did you accomplish? Injury? Healed. Defeat? Restored stronger. Or maybe your precious little surgery session. You’ve heard how that turned out?”

“Despite theories to the contrary I don’t actually control other people’s actions. The Protectorate decisions towards the survivors is their own affair.” I responded more calmly that I felt, and with a wave of unease. There was no way she would be bringing this up without the intention to take it somewhere horrible.

“Yes.” Bakuda leaned back. “The Protectorate picked up some of them. And some went on their own. And some left town. But the rest…”

“Little dominos.” March added. “All that work, and for what?”

It was a pure psychological attack, and an effective one. Pictures leapt to mind, of the youngest of the hostages I had freed, of the families reunited, and of the people who had put others before themselves. It was easy to accept the risk, the fact that people would die, when they were just ‘people’. Just a vague crowd of potential humanity, not individuals with faces and emotions and tears in their eyes when they hugged their children.

In reality, the fact that some of these people would have gone under Bakuda’s knife twice was meaningless. There was no reason to hold them above any of the other people who had been dragged from their lives and forces into a situation that would probably see many of them die. That was a factually correct point of view, but also one nearly impossible for someone to hold on to.

And I couldn’t. That is to say, the me that was a fresh trigger with barely three weeks of cape experience mostly spent in a workshop couldn’t. The me that was an experienced soldier? The me that came from a mindset both alien and robotic? The me that saw the world from a divine perspective beyond normal humanity? The me that had been balancing the fate of the world, the threat of the Simurgh, and the implications of powers more horrible than the human mind could fully comprehend?

That me, that was the me who could make this decision.

“So…” I stated coldly. My stance shifted again and I saw a ripple of apprehension pass through both capes. “You lashed out at those who slipped your grasp. Breaking toys that would be taken from you. And you thought this childish ploy would stay my hand against you?”

Survey took the slightest of breaks from supporting my tracking attempt to present a minute summary from her earlier analysis. Specifically, on the people I had saved on Saturday night. The numbers in PRT custody, the numbers confirmed or suspected to have left the city. The numbers who were definitely not involved in the ABB attacks. Things weren’t as bad as Bakuda was presenting them. She had, at most, gotten 20%. Probably significantly less. She was relying on me not knowing that. It didn’t change the hard decision I’d made, but it did soften it slightly.

“You… You say that, but can you back it up?” Bakuda quickly schooled her stammer, but the edge of unease was still in her voice. “Maybe I should introduce you to what you’re dealing with.”

With no obvious command from Bakuda a second video stream was added to the call. What it showed wasn’t a pretty sight. Tied to a chair was a middle-aged man with thinning hair and familiar janitor’s coveralls. That was about all I could tell because his face was a swollen mess. The flesh was an unhealthy color and blood had dripped onto his chest. One arm seemed to be broken, and he was breathing shallowly. I was barely able to recognize him in that state, and had to work to conceal my reaction.

Bakuda made no such effort. “Your little helper from that mop up attempt. Everyone was talking about what he did. How BRAVE he was. Well, I’ve made something special for him, and if you want to see him alive…”

“No.” The simple word took more effort that I expected, and I hated myself for saying it. Without my posing power I would never have been able to deliver it with confidence. Confidence I definitely wasn’t feeling.

That simple word had a drastic impact. Bakuda looked like someone had knocked the air out of her with a sledge hammer. Even March broke from her dreamy irreverence for a moment and focused intently on me. I endured the reaction and focused on tracing the last of the signal’s path.

“Excuse me?” Bakuda half screeched through her voice modulator. “If you don’t…”

“What if I DON’T?” I snapped. “He’ll suffer? He’ll die? And will no one else? Will it end? No. You don’t get to stand in a river of blood and make deals for people’s lives. Don’t insult me with false offers to discount your barbarism. I keep my contracts, and if you think for a moment I would entertain this farce of an agreement then you are talking to the wrong person.”

Chen was a good man. Probably one of the best I had met since I started as a cape. He had made a difference in the aftermath of the storage locker battle, from the moment he shot Bakuda’s lieutenant to his organization of the conscripts. Most of all, his insistence that everyone else be treated before him. That he be the last to have his bomb removed.

Chen wanted to put other lives ahead of his own. He specifically thanked me for that. I hated the idea of leaving him at Bakuda’s mercy, but I refused to let someone else die for a man who made his position on that clear.

Once again, it was a hard choice. This was the kind of situation that sets a trap for your mind and emotions. Without what I had gone through, the changes to my mind, the powers reinforcing it, and the weight of the responsibilities I was dealing with, I don’t know if I could have done this.

If I was just leaving him to die then that would be a grim chapter in my life as a cape. A dark note on the early days of my power. Instead, there was a ray of hope. A moment of victory buried behind all the plans for murder and destruction, and one I was careful to conceal as I fully went to work.

“Well, hasn’t this been enlightening.” March quipped smugly. She glanced at Bakuda who was bringing a hand to the side of her gasmask. “Not that it matters. The dominos will fall with or without you. Do have fun watching the collapse, and we’ll see how you manage. Such a shame you couldn’t draw things out long enough to finish your little trace, but…”

“He’s in.” Bakuda’s voice was exceptionally robotic as she spoke, one hand to the side of her mask while staring off into space.

March whipped around to face the gas-masked tinker. “What?”

“He finished the trace. All of this, we were just watching a diversion. He has the location.” I could see tension build in her body and smiled behind my mask. Out of curiosity I found the little strand of code that had alerted her to my infiltration.

“I assume that digital tripwire was your work? Rather clever, actually. I suppose you can produce the odd interesting trinket while working within your specialty.” Bakuda bristled at the barb, but clear panic was starting to take the place of any personal grievance. Her attitude was echoed by March, and it was heartening to see her shift from childlike irreverence to desperate scrambling.

“No. We need… We need to cut the link. Start the operation. I need a line to the assets, and we have to move.”

She looked back at the camera and saw me make one last wave. “Go ahead. We’ll see how the dominos fall. Please enjoy watching the collapse. I’ll see you soon.”

The call closed at their end, and was quickly followed by frantic attempts to cut lines of access to the building. Not that it would do them any good at this point. At best they might protect some of their networked systems, but there was nothing they could do to hide anymore.

I lifted my left wrist and channeled magicka into the magitech converted in my lantern shield. Simulated cybertonium acted beyond the reach of conventional space and drew matter from my subspace pocket. A glowing framework formed around me, then shone brightly as the full suit of motoroid armor materialized. I kicked off into the air while continuing to force magicka into the band.

The contents of the pocket weren’t duplicated by my potions, only what I had on my body. That meant pulling as much of the equipment I had prepared beforehand, all to facilitate the heaviest loadout possible. And I wanted the heaviest possible loadout, because I was going to come down on the ABB like the hammer of God.

I drained my reserves to their limit, pulling weapons, potions, and equipment from my storage pocket. Finally, I had done all I could. Magicka reserves were spent and I was armed to the teeth. I triggered the armor’s potion reservoir and downed the duplicate potion.

One after another my duplicates slid out of my body, armors taking position next to me as we launched into the sky. It had taken seconds to put together a force with the firepower of an Endbringer response, and it was all headed for the ABB.

Or so I thought, until I received a notice from my duplicates.

“You need to hang back.”

My shock at the statement would have sent me into a tailspin if not for Fleet’s management of the armor’s flight systems. “Why?” I desperately transmitted to both duplicates.

“You want to hurt Bakuda, but that’s not the best course.” A map was displayed by the first duplicate through the connections between our implants. “The difference in firepower between one of us hitting a target and all three is academic. The ABB has two main locations. We need to be the ones to take point. They will have traps and countermeasures. Let us take the hit. You can always make more duplicates and come in later, but we can’t make more of you.”

There was a pause as the three of us felt the Celestial Forge connect to a rather awesome giant robot power in the Vehicles constellation, but as a group decided to put any comment aside until a better time.

“I’ll take the second location, he’ll hit Bakuda’s lab.” The second explained. “If we’re lucky we can get all their capes at once. If not you can make the second strike, or close off escape routes.”

“I don’t like it.” I replied lamely. It was petty, but I wanted to be on the front lines. With Tetra and decent control of my Aura I was the heaviest hitter among us. I did not like my duplicates sacrificing themselves, and frankly it was disturbing how comfortable they were with the concept.

“You don’t have to, but remember, the second mouse gets the cheese. Besides, Chen is at the second location.” He relayed the data pulled from his data stream. It had actually been a live feed rather than a recording, suggesting that there was some grisly scene planned involving the man until I had cut their plans out from under them.

I barely needed to reply. We all wanted to save Chen. We wanted to save everyone, but he was a face, a personality, and a set of meaningful actions, not just one of the masses. I knew about what he did at the storage locker, about his wife and daughter smuggled out of the city ahead of Bakuda’s recruitment of them. I wanted to help him. I couldn’t do it myself, and might not be able to do it at all, but if I could help him while bringing down the ABB then I had to take whatever path allowed that.

Personal satisfaction could wait. It could always wait. “Go. Keep me updated. I’ll try to do what I can about the other attacks.”

They signaled their thanks and split off with all the speed their repulsors could manage. Meanwhile I started the grim task of trying to figure out the most effective way of countering multiple simultaneous attacks by groups of armed and coerced civilians that were being coordinated by a doomsday level timing tinker.

It was like the traveling salesman problem on nightmare difficulty. With my duplicates focused on the ABB headquarters and Bakuda’s lab it was up to me to cover as much of the city as possible. Which meant picking targets and spreading my limited reach as far as I could.

As I simultaneously plotted out my course, fabricated and deployed my upgraded drones to secondary sites, and began the route to my primary location, I remembered the advantage of good communications. Time to actually use what I put in place yesterday.

“Apeiron calling all Undersiders.”

The call went out to each of the quantum linked watches I had made. Unsurprisingly, they were all wearing their respective watch, though I refrained from digging any further as they sounded off.

Alec replied first in an easy voice. “Hey, what’s up?”

Then came Tattletale’s significantly more concerned response. “Oh God, what’s wrong?”

Brian was next, with an awkward-sounding reply. “Uh, I can’t really talk now, in the middle of some personal stuff.”

Taylor’s voice followed him. “Um, IS it something serious? I can talk, but is there something…”

She was cut off by Rachel, who shouted her answer over the sound of barking and screaming crowds. “Can’t talk now. Bad time.”

I smiled before I answered them. “Just wanted to let you know that the ABB is about to launch a mass series of coordinated attacks orchestrated by March and using newly conscripted civilians armed with a mix of conventional weapons and Bakuda’s explosives. I’ll be working to disrupt the coordination and attacking the two central locations for the gang that I was able to identify.”

There was silence on the call with the exception of a muttered expletive from Brian and the continued barking and shouting background noise from Rachel. Unsurprisingly it was Rachel who broke the silence first.

“Any of this happening in the South Docks near Mason Park, or southeast of Lord’s Port?” She asked.

“No.” I responded while moving to the first target location. Southeast of Lord’s Port would line up with the location I had tracked her knife to, probably her home outside the hideout. Mason Park was practically Empire territory, and it was slightly concerning why she would ask about it. Concerning for another time, given what I had on my plate.

I had picked up trigger signals going out to individual cells of conscripts signaling the beginning of the attacks. “The attack teams are mostly dispersed through ABB territory, with pushes near Merchant and Empire borders and semi-isolated groups set to extend into Downtown.”

“Good.” The girl replied. “Let me know if that changes. I need to go.” She ended the call, taking the shouting and barking with her.

“Shit.” Came Tattletale’s voice. “Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.”

“Lisa?” Brian asked.

“It’s going to be a madhouse. Attacks spread like that, the attitude of the other gangs, National Guard presence, Protectorate response, the Wards back in play…” She listed quickly. “Oh, fuck this is bad.”

“Should we do something?” Taylor asked. “Go somewhere? Is there anything we can…”

“No. Stay inside. Please Taylor, stay off the streets, and for God’s sake stay out of costume. It shouldn’t push into residential areas, but there could be some spillover, and there is probably another level to this whole mess, but I can’t… God.” She gasped.

“Got it.” Came Alec’s voice. “Stay in, play video games, and hope the power doesn’t go out again. If it does I’m claiming all the ice cream in the hideout.” His words were irreverent as ever, but his voice wasn’t as steady as you would expect from him.

“Is that going to work?” Brian replied quickly. I got the sense that he was ducking around someone, probably using the silent response feature of the forcefield.

“Well enough. I… I need to try to get on top of this. Joe, can you…” Tattletale asked in a pleading voice.

“I’ll update you if anything changes.” I got the sense that it was less than Tattletale wanted.

“Uh, good luck?” Taylor replied a bit lamely.

“Thanks.” I replied to the group and closed the chat. As I approached my first target Tattletale reached out on a private connection.

“You know this is a trap specifically for you.” It wasn’t a question. “You know and you’re still running into it.”

“They used themselves as bait. It made it worth the risk.” I answered plainly. “I’m taking precautions.”

“You don’t…” There was a pause before she continued. “Nothing I say is going to deter you, and I can’t help you, not against March. I’m going to do what I can from here. Please, try not to get yourself killed.”

“I’ll do my best.” I responded with dark humor. “Anything else?”

There was the sound of a keyboard. “Fuck. Okay, March is broadcasting this.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“On delay, but she just started putting out your talk.” There was the sound of her taking a breath and mumbled “Jesus Christ.”

I sighed. “Figures, though I hoped against it.” And would now be stressing slightly over the public reaction for the entirety of the coming conflict, which may have been March’s intention. “I’ll manage. Let me know if you figure out anything.”

“I promise.” She responded and the call closed. I shook my head and tried not to think about how the broadcast would play with the already frenetic media. Well, no helping it now. Anything else I needed to do?

Yes. A quick thought opened one final call.

“Aisha?”

There was a brief moment before the girl replied. “Yeah? Can’t talk for long. My brother’s over and I had to duck him. What is it?”

“The ABB made their move. It’s going to get messy.” I replied flatly.

There was a pause and some more shuffling before she spoke again. “How bad is it? Do you need me out there?”

I really didn’t want her dragged into this, especially not with her nonexistent level of training. “Not immediately. The situation is currently up in the air. March is planning something and I’m trying to scout it out. I’ll let you know if I need you, but I don’t want you where you could get caught in one of Bakuda’s exotic bombs. That armor won’t protect against everything.”

“Got it. Let me know if I can help.” She answered, and muttered something about ‘all the times to discuss living arrangements’.

“I promise.” I replied and cut the call, diving towards my first target.

The most frustrating part about fighting a thinker was the constant second-guessing of yourself. Were you disrupting their plans, or only playing into a higher level of the game? Personally, I’m willing to bet most thinkers were much less confident that they presented themselves and were willing to claim things went ‘just as planned’ in the event of any possible positive outcome. Tattletale was the best example of this, as seen in the slow deterioration of the girl’s mental state as she repeatedly had to admit to not knowing things and that her plans were not working out.

March was worse than Tattletale. That was true in every respect, even without getting into the fact that she scrambled powers when there didn’t seem to be any reasonable mechanism to explain the scrambling.

Seriously, if there was an easy way to block Tattletale I would be running it as a priority research project.

As strong and dangerous as March was, I still had the advantage of my passenger, and he had at least been able to confirm that the oldest and most reliable thinker countermeasure still applied. However March’s timing and planning power worked, it was still subject to a lack of information. According to my passenger March couldn’t perfectly prepare for factors she didn’t know about. His confidence in the threat she presented dropped when unknowns were introduced. Her threshold of necessary information seemed much lower than with most thinkers, but it was something I could use.

Whatever plan she had for the civilian conscripts probably assumed the level of technology I had displayed before, meaning deadly with a capital Dead.

That was not what I deployed as I dove towards a mobilizing group in one of the downtown plazas. They were all in civilian clothing and led by a single gang member. About fifteen in all, and sensors showed a spread of small firearms with three carrying Bakuda’s work.

I arrived just as they opened their attack. A trio of grenades from what looked like modified M79 launchers streaked across the plaza.

It was a disturbing preview of what was coming. They weren’t targeting anything of critical importance, just a moderately crowded open area. The strike would cause death, panic, and trigger a response. Probably a deliberate redirection of Protectorate assets away from the attack deeper in gang territory, given the proximity to the PRT headquarters.

That wouldn’t happen. My motoroid’s point defense was a pair of fold-out miniaturized laser turrets mounted on the shoulders of the suit. They took the location that had been previously held by the bulky wheel turbines before they were replaced by mass effect thrusters and then dedicated repulsor technology.

The weapons themselves were originally from the database provided by my Weaponsmith power. Before they were stripped down, upgraded, miniaturized, and streamlined to the point of being able to be easily mounted on my suit, the guns were a type of heavy weapon known as a multilaser. It served as an effective means of providing heavy concentrations of high strength but low penetration laser fire.

Once again, that was by the standards of Weaponsmith. By any reasonable metric it was an absolute beast, and that was before I applied my range of upgrades and shrank the entire assembly to the size of a handgun. The result was a weapon that would throw out a terrifying number of shots with pinpoint accuracy against anything that approached my motoroid. And anything fired within its range.

A trio of cracks echoed through the square as lasbolts ionized the air on their way to slagging the launched grenades. Two of the armaments were completely destroyed while the third managed to leak an asymmetric burst of flame in its final moments as the explosive’s payload was critically compromised. The shell spiraled off and buried itself in the pavement as the crowd scattered.

There was a ripple of panic from the conscripts, and frantic attempts to find what happened. Untrained and unbloodied they clustered together for safety. It was perfect.

This group wasn’t a serious opponent. They were a threat because of the ordinance they carried, but nothing else. They only had a few rounds for their launchers, just enough to demand a response. When it came they would act as a time sink for whatever March had planned for them to encounter, fighting under threat of execution. Maybe the authorities would be able to take them down nonlethally, or maybe it would be a bloodbath. The point was moot, because I was here.

Unlike my last fight with Uber and Leet I didn’t show up to this dance underdressed. To stretch the analogy, I went out adorned in the family diamonds, which in this case meant enough missiles to upstage the combined efforts of Leet, Bakuda, and that rocket tinker from the west coast.

I was obscenely proud of the projectile streaking towards the unsuspecting crowd. My miniaturization power let me reduce full-scale armaments to micro missiles. That would have allowed me to carry over fifty on my upgraded motoroid, but I didn’t stop there. Variable weapon technology allowed items to be further compressed. Not normally the kind of thing used on expendable munitions, but said munitions weren’t usually built at hundreds of times normal speed in batches of five while hybridized with secondary technology.

The end result was the size of a large bullet, which quickly expanded to the dimensions of a can of Red Bull upon launch, and then tracked unerringly towards the target, in this case the perfectly clustered group of frightened conscripts.

A few of them were observant enough to spot the incoming projectile, but those who saw it didn’t even have enough time to even shout a warning. A shout would be meaningless as the missile detonated in a stunning sonic pulse accompanied by a miniaturized webber warhead. In a fraction of a second the entire squad was battered, stunned, and entrapped in near-indestructible strands of tranquilizer-soaked webbing.

I barely slowed my pass to confirm the effect before banking towards my next target and leaving the attack force disabled and the people in the square thoroughly confused.

As I moved to review the progress of my drones and duplicates I felt another connection form, this time to the Quality constellation. In a demonstration of the complete madness that was the Celestial Forge this was another giant robot power.

The power was material-based, and functioned as an improved version of my Advanced Materials power. It was called Exotic Compatibility and helped integrate new, exotic materials into my work. It also improved my ability to research new materials, and that research could help improve production numbers. Beyond those useful but mundane aspects it also allowed me to treat any material as plain iron while working or forging it, right until I started building with it. Effectively it allowed me to take the strongest adamantium alloy and melt or mill it like an iron block.

Useful power, so why was it a ‘Giant Robot’ power? Because it came with a giant robot. Specifically, it came with an OZ-06MS Leo mobile suit, which was a fancy way of saying a 16-meter-tall fusion-powered death machine with head mounted 60mm ‘machine guns’, as if you could refer to something that caliber as anything less than a cannon, and what was essentially a lightsaber.

Why did a material science and management power come with a giant robot in an obviously military design? Who knows? The more serious question was, why did I get two of them in a row?

My previous power, placed on the back-burner due to the situation at hand, was from the Vehicle constellation. While it was surprising to get a giant robot from the Forge, it at least made sense for it to come from a vehicle-based power.

That power was called Anaheim Degree, and was a comprehensive degree in the science of building giant robots. I mean that literally. It came with an actual diploma. I have no idea who would accept the validity of something like that, but it was there all the same.

The crazy thing was it wasn’t just the science needed to keep a giant robot operating, it was a field of physics whose very existence necessitated giant robots. As in, it completely rewrote the rules of warfare to the point where fifty-foot-tall robots became practical, and in fact necessary, on the battlefield.

All because of the concentrated bullshit that was the Minovsky Particle.

The power, along with a full breakdown of giant robot or ‘mobile suit’ systems, covered all the principles behind a new fundamental particle. The particle was a byproduct of a device called the Minovsky-Ionesco reactor. If I hadn’t already been up to my neck in fusion systems the idea of easy helium-3 and hydrogen fusion with no neutron radiation would be incredible. Now, while I had better power options, the reactor was still incredible because it produced high density bullshit as a byproduct.

Helium-3 reacts with the inner walls of the reactor and suddenly everyone needs to get in a giant robot in order to fight. Minovsky particles were either positively or negatively charged with zero rest mass and the incredible and unbelievable property to arrange themselves in a cubic lattice, called an I-field, when released.

And they stayed like that. A giant invisible mesh of charged particles. Particles that blocked low frequency electro-magnetic communication. Particles that distorted light. Particles that obscured infra-red signals. Particles that shorted out all but the most heavily shielded electronics. Particles that would hang around, messing everything up, for at least 29 days.

Suddenly long-range targeting didn’t work. Tracking missiles would burn out on their way to a target. Laser weaponry would scatter and miss. Your only option was to get almost on top of your enemy and blow them away with short range or even melee weapons. The giant robot the power provided was a perfect example of this. It even had a complete Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactor constantly churning out the bullshit that justified its existence.

It was insane. It was a perversion of physics to make giant robots practical and I didn’t know if I should be thrilled or insulted. Just like the insanity of my last giant robot, with fold-carbon producing annihilation reactions outside the physical universe and then using them to run a jet turbine. It would seem any giant robot would need to do horrible things to physics in order to merely exist, except the second giant robot power I had gotten today, complete with a second giant robot, had none of that. It was a testament to conventional physics, or as far as conventional physics could be pushed with a fifty-foot-tall fusion-powered walking war machine.

That’s what probably got me most about these. They were war machines. Not tinker tech, but military. Definitely military. They were also both called ‘mobile suits’ despite the completely different technical bases. The first, the LM111E02 Gun-EZ, at least had the insane science behind it that would justify giant military robots, but the Leo had no reason to be a robot other than the fact that giant robots were awesome.

That was definitely the worst part of this. I had just gotten TWO giant robots, the first of which came with a hangar that had the insane power to deploy the mobile suit to me from within my sealed workshop, and I couldn’t do anything with them. I couldn’t geek out over now having three giant robots, or the fact that I was one robot conversion of my F-18 from being able to play 2 on 2 giant robot basketball. But no, I couldn’t even enjoy the prospect. I couldn’t waste time looking forward to it, or consider the incredible applications of a strike force of Endbringer-sized mechs, all because I was neck-deep in an ABB plot to either kill me or bring down the city trying.

To that end I reviewed the reports from my drones and duplicates. The drones I had deployed weren’t the ones that had mildly irritated Oni Lee during my last confrontation. Those had still been standard combat drones, the design that came with the omni-tool, the same model I had indistinct memories of using in another life of space combat. They were marvelously designed, functional, simple, effective, and rapidly deployable.

But I wasn’t the same person. Standard drones with mild upgrades in performance weren’t enough anymore, not with the mountains of knowledge I’d acquired. The already basic design had been simplified, improving performance at the same time. Miniaturization of features allowed more power and features. Hybridization to combine disparate advanced designs, improving armament, shielding, and speed. An experimental use of Arcane Craft to allow greater channeling of the forces of a mass effect field. And finally, integration into the Technosorcery enhancements of my omni-tool.

When I deployed the drones they formed in their standard shape, a glowing transparent carbide shell suspended in a mass field. The inherent design work and engravings that I couldn’t avoid were now supplemented by runic arrays. Runes of middling power compared to my personal work, but still enough to grant additional effects, particularly when combined with Elven Enchantment.

The drones were magic. They were constructs beyond pure technology, sitting somewhere between science and sorcery. Pushed further by the enhancement from Lack of Materials and the craftsmanship of a demigod, no matter how indirect, and they were capable of something extraordinary.

They started as carbide spheres, little orbs of potential. Then they followed the natural progression for an object of their shape. They opened. They hatched.

The drones that sped off after the advance teams of ABB conscripts weren’t the bobbing balls of crystal I had used to this point. The plates had opened, split, aligned, and taken on a new shape. Gleaming control surfaces and sharp protrusions all beautifully complimented the advanced design. What streaked out into the city while I devoted my attention to the attack on the plaza wasn’t an engineering drone. It was a crystal beast of magic and machine ready to strike down this madness.

My own flyby had been so fast I had barely been noticed before I was off to my next target. The drones, extraordinary as they were, did not have that level of efficiency in terms of their personal arsenal. But what weapons they did have were masterfully designed, supplemented by runes, enhanced by elven magic, and protected by kinetic barriers. Across the reach of Downtown hawk-like constructs of glowing crystal fell on teams of already frightened conscripts like a judgement from the sky.

Whatever sequence of events and precise timing March had used to coordinate her attacks obviously didn’t account for the arrival of a near-mythical beast on a suicidal trajectory into the heart of her attack squads. It would have been a tremendously deadly assault if not for the water runes.

The runes printed on the drones weren’t worth a damn, but they would manage some effects. Water was the least aggressive of the elements, and could be used to create a mitigating effect. Meaning weapons that would have shattered bones, cooked internal organs, or incinerated half a human body were… not lethal. It wasn’t the miracle work with a dedicated inscription tool that bedecked my own non-lethal ordinance, but the drones were leaving bruises and burns where there would otherwise be broken bodies.

The water runes also had a mild aesthetic effect that meshed with the electrical weaponry of the drones, creating a dark cloud effect within the glowing core and trailing behind them as they flew.

The drone strikes were brutal, but I had accepted that as regrettably necessary. Without some noteworthy injury I doubted that any refusals to fight would be entertained. In fact, most of the conscripts were taking their first scrape as an excuse to collapse on the ground in obvious and highly advertised agony. The few times the ABB minders attempted to rally the conscripts the drones turned on them and they were put down far less gently.

As I wheeled towards my next target the forge made another connection, this time to a small mote from the Clothing constellation called Talented: Tailoring. It did what you would expect it would do, granting talent for tailoring. Significant talent, and in all kinds of tailoring and all related fields. That was the real distinction of this power. In addition to being able to produce high-tier work from low-rate materials, more than I already could, it provided skill and insight to everything that could be considered part of the tailoring field.

That extended much further than expected. The core skills were covered, of course, but also the production and maintenance of the tools of the craft. Planning and organizing work, including time management and scheduling. Every aspect of running a tailoring business also fell under the umbrella of this power. Stock organization, management of employees, securing business permits, managing finances, taxes, and bookkeeping. If it was even remotely related to being a tailor it was covered by this power. If I had gotten it yesterday I could have set up Garment’s shop in my sleep. As it stood I would probably end up helping her manage a lot more details of that location than I had expected.

Maybe I could train Survey up to cover for me. There was remotest of chances that Garment would go for that.

I continued my flight as I checked on my duplicates. My trace of Bakuda had led to an old factory, one that was technically refurbished to justify the traffic it no doubt received, but with no official paperwork on file. Another gap in the local bureaucracy that served to make life so easy for the city’s supervillains.

My duplicate had barely begun his approach when the fireworks started. Given the near immediate departure and relatively low travel time it was probable that both Bakuda and March were still on site when he arrived. That would probably explain why he was greeted by a series of preemptive airburst detonations. Then came the missiles, picked out of the air like mosquitos into a bug zapper. Attempts to overwhelm the point defense weren’t showing success, so tactics shifted to area denial.

By that I meant that Bakuda, March, or whoever was in charge of the ordnance began purposely detonating some of the nastier bombs around the building. Two time stop bombs sprung up around likely avenues of attack, heavily corrosive and electrified gas was swirling around the ground, there were four persistent tornados on one side, and walls of crystal were quickly sealing other entrances.

Given the level of resistance I think the lab could be counted as a high value target, particularly when compared to the other location. The second duplicate was just arriving at the other confirmed ABB location, one of the city’s older housing blocks. It was deep in ABB territory, practically central to their zone of control. Deep enough that, at a guess, you could pick a random building in the neighborhood and it would probably have some connection to the ABB.

Whatever its affiliation it was clearly less well defended than Bakuda’s location. The sight of an approaching motoroid flanked by crystalline magitech constructs caused a pair of men in ABB colors to draw pistols. They then looked at their pistols, then at the weight of power bearing down on them. One fished out a cellphone, only to find no bars thanks to the basic jamming field, at which point they both seemed to freeze up in indecision.

The decision was taken out of their hands as my duplicate simply ploughed through the door at full thrust. Between his wake, the trailing drones, and their kinetic fields the guards were sent flying. The screech of a metal guitar riff that accompanied the act probably didn’t help either. While sensors confirmed they were without serious injury they seemed to decide to follow the precedent set by the conscripts and lay unmoving in the rubble rather than chase after the magical robot swarm with anything but a pair of 9mm pistols.

“Inside the second location. Beginning search and information gathering.” The communication was accompanied by images and scanner readings of the site.

The first duplicate responded to the second’s message. “Primary location still resisting. I think I can refer to this as ‘scorched earth defense’. Going to take a while to punch through.”

“Acknowledged.” I replied. “I’ve disabled the spearhead force that was pushing into Downtown, but attacks in the Docks have begun. I’m going to try to hit the ones pushing close to residential areas.” It would leave the strikes designed to provoke gang responses un-countered, but would minimize the initial civilian damage. It might technically be better to accept higher civilian casualties if it kept the other parahuman gangs from escalating, but I wasn’t playing politics. I was fine leaving that particular problem to the Protectorate.

The actual scale of the assault hit me as sensor readings and media analysis flooded in. I had broken the spearhead, but the groups I had hit didn’t make up ten percent of the forces deployed, and the rest of them had managed their coordinated attacks.

It was bad. Arson strikes setting more buildings ablaze. A series of fissures rendering key roads impassable. A building slowly being consumed and converted into crystal while people fled through exits that hadn’t been sealed off yet.

I decided to revise my plans. Residential areas would be the priority, but if March was going to make this a free-for-all then she was going to see how well I could answer. I had speed. I had numbers. And I had a motoroid full of weapons to unleash. And I had no reason to hold back. It was time to let people know what I could do.

This was going to be an event.

The ABB had deployed an army in support of their scheme. I had myself, two duplicates, three motoroids, Fleet, Survey, my still developing nanobot A.I., as many drones as could be produced, and Garment. This is normally where someone would make some glib comment about it being an even fight, or how they felt sorry for the other guys. I wasn’t going to do that, because despite all the advantages I had, this was hard.

No specific fight was a challenge. The very idea was laughable. Even getting away from the softer teams sent out to act as speedbumps and into forces designed for specific purposes didn’t make any meaningful difference. Frankly, whether the person in question was a hardened gang member or a conscript who had never held a weapon in their life made no difference to me.

It did make a difference to everyone else.

That was the core of March’s plan. The forces she deployed were dispersed and precisely placed. They had specific instructions, tasks and armaments. Some I was able to deal with decisively through a clean strike from the air and the deployment of my new non-lethal weaponry. Those were encounters I treasured. They were neat, clean, and, providing I could get to the site in time, mostly bloodless. They were also becoming increasingly rare.

The six teams I had taken out with my drones were on a simple mission to cause enough devastation that they would provoke and occupy a Protectorate response. There was probably a cynical edge to that concerning the safety of people in the city’s downtown would be prioritized over attacks in the Docks. Said attacks in the Docks and surrounding areas were a lot more complicated than that.

Complicated wasn’t nearly enough to stop me. I had most of the city’s plans memorized and was armed well beyond what the situation could warrant. I was in a suit of immensely advanced armor capable of high-speed flight and maneuverability.

I was also trying to fight half a city. Without the assistance of Survey and Fleet I would probably have gone insane just from the effort of planning the response.

The Vehicles constellation missed a connection as I moved like lightning, sparing as little time as possible on each encounter. I fell upon an exposed group of conscripts sneaking through an alley, a single web missile taking them out of the equation. Meanwhile a pair of my drones shredded the side of a van carrying a half squad as it sped from the site of a drive by bombing. The vehicle rolled in the combined gravity fields of the drones, finding itself upside down and pinned between two other cars.

I angled my motoroid and dove through the side of a building where a squad had set up gunning positions to strike at one of the major avenues into the docks. Specifically, one that would be a likely path for the National Guard forces that were standing by. The surprised faces of the conscripted force barely had time to register before I ploughed out through the other wall, leaving a knockout gas shell behind me.

I turned into a steep climb as my other drones split across the area in a desperate attempt to expand my scanning range. It was information I both desperately needed and didn’t want to see.

When March had mentioned dominos, I assumed it was some kind of metaphor, not a reference to the compounding nature of the attacks. Different bombs hitting different areas with interactions that made both of them worse, then compounded with the next wave of strikes. The idea that I could be in any way selective in how I managed this mess was hubris.

I quickly checked with my duplicates and found their missions weren’t much easier. Bakuda’s full arsenal combined with what I assumed to be March’s timing was turning the attack on her lab into an exercise in frustration. My first duplicate had needed to pull back from half a dozen spatial or temporal explosions and was using modified drones and long ranged weapons to basically overwhelm the defenders. Live hacking of Bakuda’s tracking rockets had caused a shift to timed mortars that were proving to be more dangerous, particularly once they shifted to explosives that would still trigger under laser fire.

My second duplicate was having his own issues. The housing block was both built like a labyrinth and essentially the tip of a criminal iceberg. I’m not sure if it had sat on top of an old fallout shelter or if the gang had illegally expanded it somehow, but there was easily three times as much space below ground as above, all clogged with traps, bombs, conscripts, and some kind of technology for blocking scanning. Currently the second duplicate was tearing apart one of the emitters while his own drones prowled through the complex.

That left me as the only one who could deal with the nightmare gripping the surface. It was a situation I could only hope to meet with overwhelming force. If this was just a matter of countering untrained gang members I could keep flying around and picking them off. With the chaos posed to spread across the city I couldn’t hope to do that. At my current rate by the time the last of the ABB forces was subdued a third the city would be uninhabitable with the rest spilling into calculated chaos.

I needed to go all out and bring the full force of my arsenal to bear. That didn’t mean my motoroid, my drones, or my terrifying array of missiles. It meant stepping out of the armor and fighting in person, because that was where the real power was.

I saw my first target as three pillars of flame burst up from a section of street. The men launching the bomb seemed terrified of their own weapons, but pressed forward nonetheless. It was one of dozens of destructive effects spreading across the Docks.

I sent my motoroid into a steep dive on a dead angle for the devastation. On the way down I confirmed my trajectory with Fleet and Survey while handing off primary control of my drones and motoroid to the A.I.s. I also signaled Garment and reached out to Tetra through the Dragon’s Pulse.

Rapid communication with four people and not a word spoken between them.

At the bottom of the dive, before the Motoroid began to pull up, the armor opened, releasing me towards the ground. Garment’s white cape wrapped around me like a cocoon, twirling and flaring as I launched towards the street. Just before impact Garment flared the cloak, allowing me to flip around and hit the street in a three-point stance.

The asphalt cratered around the force of my landing, spreading out in a perfect spider web of cracks. There was a moment where all the sounds of chaos faded, leaving only the crackle of incendiary bombs and the roar of repulsors as my motoroid and drones pulled away, off to attempt piecemeal attacks on individual groups while I was left to fight against the brewing disaster.

With a wordless exchange through the Dragon’s Pulse Tetra tightened her grip, hugging reactive threads close to my body. The red glow of active life fibers began to bleed through the fabric of my costume, casting a radiance that filled the stretching shadows of the late day with harsh crimson light.

I felt the power. The strength of the life fiber energy flowing through me. I could take it now. A drain that would have killed me at an earlier point had, through repeated exposure, allowed me to tolerate its strain without constant medical attention. Then I became a demigod with a nature that could both withstand and empower the fibers. Then I became a greater demigod, born for forge work of such strain and tedium that the life Tetra could absorb through my skin was trivial.

But not the power she granted. That coursed through me like the fires of a sun. It empowered me to new heights, levels where the petty concerns of what should be physically possible became academic.

Behind me one of the more experienced ABB soldiers lifted a grenade launcher in a shaking grip. I felt it through the Dragon Pulse as his body wavered and fear warred with pride and even more fear. I saw it through the fires of creation, the heat from his body as sweat dripped from his temples and his heart beat in his ears. I could even, just faintly, detect him through my Aura, that vague sense of danger, uneasiness like being in a dark room and feeling shivers on the back of your neck.

He raised the launcher and fired. An arm swept towards him. Blue lines of woven dust glowed more brightly than should have been possible. Energetic crystals of nature’s wrath manifest sewed into precise circuity with divine and fey taught workmanship, supplemented by runic magic and guided by a master of elemental weaponry. 

Light seemed to drain from the street as a type of cold that was anything but natural boiled forth to meet the shot. Rime spread across the street, painting it a deep blue and sending tendrils of ice up to meet anything in its path. The tinker tech grenade was frozen in midair, grasping crystals anchoring it to the icy street. The conscripts panicked as their body temperatures dropped and frost gripped their shoes.

The frigid air, a combination of the power of ice and wind dust, ran headlong into the pillars of fire wrought by Bakuda’s bombs. The intense heat barely slowed the advance as frost raced up the columns of fire, consuming them until three miniature mountains of delicate interlaced crystals stood where the seeds of an inferno had once burned.

I looked back at the shivering conscripts and the wide eyes of those who had been trying to flee from them. Then another detonation sounded. I received telemetry from my motoroid, drew upon the overwhelming, intoxicating power of the life fibers, and launched myself in a blur of crimson light.

My trajectory took me to an altercation near Empire territory. It looked like some of the Empire’s unpowered troops were getting into a shootout with one of the ABB’s strike teams. Evidence of tinker tech explosives were visible in the damage to what I assumed to be some kind of front business.

I landed like a comet, the impact of my boots sending waves of pavement towards the Empire thugs while a sweep of my cape and direction from my aura activated a gravity Dust circuit, sending a wave of purple energy towards the conscripts. The activated gravity Dust swept up the conscripts, their cover, and several nearby parked cars. And it kept moving, carrying them down the street, picking up refuse, loose items, and several more cars before depositing everyone and everything in a jumbled mess, all holding just enough suspension energy to ensure the prison of street items didn’t crush anyone trapped within it.

The pattern continued. I moved at ground level dashing in bursts too fast to see, or launching like a ballistic missile, taking on the disasters wrought by March and Bakuda’s combined effort as well as occasional targets of opportunity. My drones and motoroid flew overwatch, dropping non-lethal munitions on occasional strike teams or splitting off to cover fronts I couldn’t handle.

Meanwhile my duplicates struggled with their own personal challenges. The first had managed to push his way inside through extensive use of drone sacrifices empowered with a wide array of runic elemental patterns until the combination of exotic effects generated by Bakuda’s bombs had been defeated. That merely granted him the honor of picking his way through a trapped interior, with many traps detonated in advance to attempt to seal off the area. It was a situation frustrating enough that the first duplicate was preparing a set of alchemy arrays to disassemble the entire building.

The second duplicate was also picking his way through the tarpit of ABB defenses, but without the risk of the devastation to follow Bakuda’s death was able to take a much more aggressive stance. The interior was already being remodeled through a combination of transmutation, pyromancy, Dust weaponry, and the knowledge that a man with divine boots had the right to demand a door from any wall he chose. The second location was yielding a trove of information and documentation on the ABB’s works. Every physical holding that had slipped through the purge of the electronic assets was stored and referenced here.

That, regrettably, meant the worst aspects of the ABB’s operation. Brothels with unwilling workers, drug dealing, extortion rackets, and a plethora of less visceral but still vile enterprises. The duplicate was marching through it all, and was happy to share his plans for the place and the gang in general once we were done.

Working on the surface, I was largely in line with his thinking. Through a combination of Dust, alchemy, pyrokinesis, and just overwhelming power I was countering one deadly active effect after another, but that did nothing for the aftermath. The cost in human life and livelihood was on display. Brockton had recovered from the blackout, but that was the ABB being opportunistic, not deliberately destructive. This was a harsh lesson in how bad things could have been.

There was an additional concern boiling in the back of my brain. Through all of this I hadn’t seen a single cape. There was no sign of Lung building steam for a showdown with me or the other powers of the city. No sight of Oni Lee flickering through the chaos with a satchel of bombs. He could have managed half of this damage by himself, but there was no sign of him.

The conscripts were better at provoking a response, as I was beginning to see hints of from other gangs and the direction of the PRT headquarters, but they were nothing when compared to the ABB’s teleporting ninja. The assault teams even represented a loss of resources that was meaningless to Oni Lee. Assuming Bakuda and March were pinned down by my first duplicate and it was true that Uber and Leet were out of the city, where did that leave the original members of the ABB?

No answer to that question was likely to be good. It was possible they were staying hidden. I was certainly willing to snipe either cape if they showed their face and the ABB couldn’t afford to lose either of them. They could be busy somewhere else in the city, but I was running every sensor and monitoring program I could. If they were doing anything they were managing a masterful job of keeping it quiet. The third possibility was both the most likely and the most concerning. They were being held back in some March-directed trap.

As much as I tried to brush things off March had been right. I wanted to save the city. I might have been willing to split my forces to avoid sacrificing more important goals, but I couldn’t let her plan run rampant. Not when I was able to see the pieces come together.

A body of scientific, chemical, engineering, architectural, and biological knowledge combined with reverse engineering powers to rapidly inform me of the effects of Bakuda’s bombs and the regrettable consequences if they were allowed to persist and compound with each other. I knew the city’s layout and could see the defects in its design. The cascade of destruction wasn’t something I would be able to arrange, but it was something I could identify and attempt to stop.

And every time I acted, every use of a new technology or technique gave March another datapoint to play with. The powers I was throwing around were immense and bordered on unstoppable, but knowledge of them, of the effects they could bring to bear, might give that girl the pieces she needed to mount an attack.

I wasn’t using everything, I wasn’t even using a tenth of what I had, but every bit of information that slipped away weakened my position. Like how I used a combination of pyrokinesis, flame alchemy, and woven burn dust to flash fry a silicon-based bio-slime that had been trying to eat the street as the Forge failed to connect to the Toolkits constellation. There wasn’t much that could stand against something like that, but that knowledge I could do it was a point against me.

I was brought out of that concern by a surprising development. Comm Chatter had activated, but activated in a way I never really expected. Radio communication? Sure. Phone calls? Of course. Land lines? Ridiculous, but so were a lot of my powers.

Now text messages? That I didn’t see coming.

‘Fuck. Where r u guys. Getting owned here.’

‘Place North of BW. What’s going on.’

‘Ape Iron is owning us’

‘Ape Iron?’

‘Autocorrect. Can u get out here?’

‘On boss detail. Rabbit’s orders.’

‘Fuck. No 1 here can fight. How did I get stuck with this?’

“You pissed off the rabbit? That’ll get you stuck with the cannon fodder.’

‘Fuck. Is she dead? Saw blasts from the lab?’

‘Still getting orders. Timing. So probably not. How bad is it?’

‘Biblical.’

‘Shit.”

‘Tell me u r heading out?’

‘No idea. Nobody knows where this is going.’

‘Fuck’

‘Try to stay safe.’

‘…’

‘You there?’

‘…’

‘Man?”

‘…’

‘Shit.’

While the end of the exchange seemed obvious, it happened to coincide with the deployment of a concentrated burst of lighting Dust and micro-EMP weapons on one of the more technologically equipped teams, effectively reducing their exposed electronics to sparking wrecks. And, since these people were versed in Bakuda’s tech, resulted in them immediately throwing down all of their explosives and running for their lives.

I opened a link to my duplicates. “You get that?”

“It’s a lead on Lung’s location. You’re going, aren’t you?” The first replied.

“Best chance to hit them before they’re completely ready for us.” I responded, relaying commands to Fleet and Survey. “I’m going to hit hard and with every defense I can manage.”

“Almost closed into the main lab. Also got into the computer system. They’re trying to wipe it, and detonate failsafes in the facility. There’s a chance they slipped out somehow, maybe more stealth tech. I can’t leave this. There’s data on the dead man switch that hasn’t been deleted and I can still secure it.”

“I’m into their records. The ABB have a stake in a container yard near the north ferry stop. That’s probably what they were talking about. I’m rooting out the last of the information, but if I’m gone this place will be torched.” There was a pause from the second duplicate. “And I’ve found Chen. It’s going to take some work, even to get him moved.”

I frowned at that. Forces spread thin at a critical moment. I couldn’t call them back, but I couldn’t let this slip. “We can’t risk March putting a plan in place. I need to hit them before they’re ready. This is probably Lung and might be Oni Lee as well. You know what it means if we can take them out.” There was a grudging agreement through the link. “I’ll maintain distance and full sensors. Hit with drones and ranged attacks. No risks. You two use your discretion at those sites. Do what you can. I’ll do the same.”

Agreement echoed through the link and I turned towards the north side of the city, my motoroid and drones falling in behind me. I had a target, and for once I didn’t need to hold back. With the sun sinking in the sky I assembled the full force of my power and directed it towards the head of the ABB.

It was time to end this.

********

EMERGENCY NEWS ALERT

A major cape conflict has broken out in central Brockton Bay. All citizens advised to avoid areas of risk and remain indoors.

Primary instigators of the conflict are believed to be forces of the ABB, predominantly unpowered individuals armed with an expansive array of tinker tech explosives. While the majority of these forces appear to be coerced civilians it is advised that they be treated as extremely dangerous and avoided at all cost. There has as of yet been no confirmed sightings of ABB parahuman forces.

Additional major alterations have been observed around a facility located at 23 North Lye Street. Extensive uses of exotic munitions have been observed in the area. Due to the highly dangerous nature of these effects, it is recommended that all individuals vacate the region around the facility until the area is deemed safe to access.

(Pictured)

Alert Updates:

The main force engaged with the ABB consists of the parahuman tinker Apeiron, who appears to have deployed a fleet of constructs in opposition to ABB forces. It has not been confirmed if the ABB instigated the conflict or were acting in response to Apeiron, though a recording of a failed negotiation between the groups was streamed during the early stages of the conflict. Deployed constructs consist of a highly maneuverable airborne force, primarily glowing crystalline drones with an avian design.

(Pictured)

(Pictured)

Observed abilities include high speed flight, electrical discharges, personal shielding, possible gravity manipulation, and highly-damaging melee attacks. Reports suggest between six and twenty-seven of these drones have been deployed. The drones are accompanied by more heavily armed humanoid models, observed deploying support fire and sustained bombardments on ABB forces. It is believed at least seven of these constructs are active in the field.

(Pictured)

Apeiron has been observed moving through the conflict area. As expected, new capacities have been displayed on this appearance, primarily consisting of elemental and matter manipulation of an unknown mechanism. Additionally, Apeiron has deployed a revised costume with unknown technical capabilities. Analysis is ongoing.

(Pictured)

(Pictured)

(Pictured)

(Pictured)

(Pictured)

(Pictured)

(Pictured)

Responses have been observed from Empire 88 parahumans, who have begun confrontations with the southernmost forces of the ABB assault. Unconfirmed reports suggest the potential deployment of Parahuman forces from the Archer’s Bridge Merchants. Given the potential of a protracted conflict between parahuman elements authorities recommend all citizens seek to withdraw from areas of conflict or immediately seek shelter. A reminder that the state of emergency curfew had been extended from 9:00pm through 5:00am, and may be extended further following the current conflict.

Protectorate forces have been marshaled to move against elements of the expanding conflict. Ward forces remain on standby, and expanded deployment of PRT troops and National Guard forces is being prepared. A force of Protectorate and independent heroes have been assembled, but conditions within the conflict area are impeding deployment of conventional forces and support units. There is no confirmation of the status of any Protectorate heroes who may have been patrolling within the conflict zone upon the beginning of the confrontation.

The Guild hero Dragon has announced that she will be accelerating the deployment of her Cetus response suit, and is expected to deploy it upon arrival to the city, estimated at 40-65 minutes. It is unknown if Dragon will be acting as an independent Guild agent or in support of Protectorate forces.

Updates will continue to be provided as the situation develops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
> 
> Anaheim Degree (Gundam UC) 200:  
> You have the knowledge (and the paper to prove it to people and shove in their faces to establish superiority) of how to build MS. It’s trickier than it looks, honestly. Weight balances, servo designs, energy reserves-it’s all down to a science and you know how to build the basics. Who knows what you can learn from a bit of hands-on training...
> 
> Mass Production Mobile Suit: Gun-EZ (Gundam UC) Free:  
> The GM. The Jegan. The Zaku II. The Gun-EZ. The Den’an Zon. They are not powerful; they are not the best of the best, for they are designed for the common soldier. Everyone starts out piloting one of these, just gotta work your way up. (Or like the higher-up on the faction ladders, just buy a better one.)  
> 60mm Vulcans: These are usually head-mounted in pairs (and this comes in a pair), but don’t expect to win anything with these- they’re usually used against missiles, small vehicles and fragile equipment like sensors. They can’t even penetrate the armor of a Zaku II.  
> Beam Saber: The standard melee weapon even during the OYW, these laser swords can slice through MS armor pretty well- they are swords, though, and getting close to an MS may be the toughest thing you’ll do here. You may also choose instead a pair of Heat weaponry like knives or an axe or a Heat Saber.
> 
> Hangar (Gundam UC) Free:  
> This is an addition to the warehouse designed specifically for housing the MS and any vehicles you bought from this Jump, nothing more, nothing less. It does not have space effectively for anything else. You may summon a Mobile Suit remotely, but it will take a minute to launch, a few minutes to travel and you will still have to clamber inside once it lands. The land battleship and cruiser will take much longer, at least 3x as long, probably more, and you cannot call and dismiss them at will- it takes time to reset. 1 day (24 hours) for a Mobile Suit or small vehicle and 3 days (72 hours) for any form of ship
> 
> Exotic Compatibility (Gundam: After Colony) 400:  
> You have a way of working with quirky and strange materials-in your hands and machinery, it assumes the forging and abilities of plain Iron until you begin building with it. You also can integrate exotic materials into your constructions a lot easier, and if you don’t know what a material is or what it can do, you’re very good at researching applications and properties of said materials. This research could also go into things such as improving production numbers and similar.
> 
> Leo (Gundam: After Colony) Free:  
> This is an adorable, lovable little scrapper we call the Leo, and it’s actually fairly decent for a Mook- it’s got armor enough to survive a few shots from its own gun, it’s able to be modified with little trouble (adding a space-movement backpack or shoulder cannons) and it doesn’t have restricted hands. Still, it’s just a Mook, but can you resist the needy stare of this cutie?
> 
> Talented: Tailoring (Inukami) 100:  
> You are an expert at any non-combat related skill. Cooking? You can make a five star meal with low rate ingredients


	48. 41 Drag Out - Preamble Chen

Preamble Chen

Chen focused on breathing. It was a task that took most of his concentration. Each breath sent spikes of pain through his torso. Probably broken ribs, but with all his other injuries he couldn’t be sure how many were broken or how badly.

The ABB didn’t intend for him to live through this. He knew that. Living in Brockton Bay you got a sense of the temperament of gang members. It was necessary being in the ‘Asian’ community. The very idea of an Asian gang was ridiculous, something that could only happen with a man like Lung forcing it to happen.

That was the thing about the city. Everyone focused on the parahuman side of the equation. To them the ABB was just Lung and Oni Lee, now supplemented by March and Bakuda. The Merchants were three capes of middling threat level. The Empire was its lieutenants and officers.

That’s what made the news, that’s what the tourists came to see. It was the flash, not the substance. You never heard anything about the unpowered members beyond a statistic, the arrest of a cape and so many unpowered members. They were overlooked, trivialized, and ignored.

But Lung wasn’t the one who had snatched him off the street. Bakuda hadn’t been the one to tie him to this chair. Oni Lee hadn’t broken his ribs. March hadn’t beat him until he could barely see. Just like Skidmark didn’t sell drugs on street corners and Kaiser didn’t break shop windows for protection money. The gangs made everyone’s life worse, but people only looked at the people on top of the heap, not the pile of violence and selfishness holding them up.

Except the ABB, except Bakuda. She had thrown that into chaos. He could feel the bombs in his body. Her surgery had been even more careless than the previous butchery. At least three of the incisions felt infected. She hadn’t been concerned with that. He wasn’t expected to live long enough for that to become an issue, and if it did, would they care, once he had served his purpose?

That was the real horror of the situation. Not the bombs, but what the bombs represented. Brutal control, the stripping away of the last of the humanity, the personal dignity that a regular person in this city could have. Taking people and turning them into tools.

It brought his mind back. Twenty-two years ago. It felt like a different lifetime, and in a lot of ways it had been one. He had been a student. Almost finished with university and drowning in the dreams of youth, of the future. He remembered the protests. Hu Yaobang had died and it seemed like a turning point for the nation, a chance for a new future. And they were going to make it happen. A bunch of kids were going to change the world with sit-ins and hunger strikes.

Then the capes got involved. Progovernment, antigovernment, opportunists, independents, criminals, and heroes, and villains. Suddenly nobody knew what was happening, what anyone was fighting for.

Not until the aftermath. The C.U.I. rose with most of the officers and corruption of the old government folded into it. Then the Yàngbǎn. Then the crackdowns. It was almost nostalgic. This hadn’t been the first time he’d been beaten while tied to a chair.

But he had gotten out, left his old identity behind and found a new life in America, like so many others. It wasn’t the easiest life, but it was his, and his to share.

Or had been his to share. Mei and Jun were away from this mess. They were safe, even if that did mean leaving them with Mei’s sister. Another week in that house and his wife would probably be ready to charge back to Brockton Bay, despite the bombs and attacks.

He lost focus on his breathing and found himself in a coughing fit as he struggled to regain control. Each cough sent spikes of pain radiating from his broken ribs, bad enough to bring tears to his eyes. The guard on duty barely looked at him. Whatever the man’s orders he obviously hadn’t been told to put a priority on Chen’s wellbeing.

His mind drifted back through the years, to the chaos of the protests. Years later he had seen a report from the other Earth, or what had happened in a world with fewer capes. It had somehow been worse. Once again, the problem wasn’t capes, it was people. People who made their choices, and other people who had to live with their consequences.

He found himself coughing again, and this time the guard did look concerned. It wasn’t until he managed to get himself under control that he realized the reason for the man’s discomfort.

There were sounds of conflict in the distance. Yells, crashes, and the occasional gunshot. Something was happening. Someone was coming.

The knowledge of that fact didn’t give Chen any comfort. His eyes darted around the room, the various locations he remembered being trapped. The entire situation was designed by the ABB to draw out their enemy, and Chen was the bait.

Stupid idea. If there was any justice in the world Apeiron would have left him to his fate, but no. The man had tracked him down and was rushing right into a situation designed specifically to end him. When something had happened with the broadcast Chen had hoped that the new cape might have gone against the ABB’s plans, but it seemed he wasn’t that fortunate.

All he could do was watch the building tension of his guard as the sounds of conflict grew closer and closer. The man, well, the kid really. He couldn’t have been more than 16 and seemed to be a rushed recruit, probably someone who grew up romanticizing the gangster life and was now neck deep and utterly unprepared for it. It was evident by the way he edged up to the door of the room while holding his cheap pistol in a bad grip.

Whatever dreams of ambush the boy had been holding died when the wall on the opposite side of the room exploded. The young gang member clumsily spun around fumbling with his gun, only for a pair of metal arms to burst through the wall behind him and seize the boy by the neck. There was a slight electrical sound and the boy collapsed like a sack of hammers.

A tall, robotic shape was just visible through the concrete dust before looking to the other side of the room, nodding, then continuing down a corridor. Chen struggled to turn his head far enough to see the other side. There, just visible in the gloom was the unmistakable shape of Apeiron.

The cape had revised his costume again, now sporting a hood on his long coat and gleaming lenses on his visor. The costume now had a striking, almost military cut, with sharp angles and heavy, intimidating boots. The armor plates that peppered the outfit were also updated, showing more elaborate designs and technical workings.

It was a powerful appearance, but the sight filled Chen with anything but relief. He tried to speak, to warn him of the traps, but he fell into another coughing fit.

Instead of entering the room the man lifted a hand to his visor and shook his head before reaching for one of the pouches dotting his costume.

“Sorry about this.” He commented as he clenched the item in one hand before tossing a glowing mass into the air. Chen recognized the magic like effects he had used at the storage yard and tensed as the item flew towards him.

Then Apeiron was on the other side of the room reaching into another pouch.

“Again, sorry, this place is a mess. Need a bit more time.”

The glowing mass struck him again, and then the cape was standing with a mass of cabling that had been torn from the wall. A bird of floating crystal plates hovered beside him as he reached for another of those items.

“Last time, I promise. Bakuda really went to town on this one.”

And then the cape was leaning over him. The guard was gone and the room was a wreck. Thinking back, he remembered the end of the fight at the storage yard. The power that froze Khepri. Three times it had been used. Now the room was turned inside out and Apeiron was standing closer than anyone should have been able to without setting off a dozen triggers.

“Okay, I’ve dealt with everything out here, but you’re still a mess; but I’m guessing you know that.” Chen shifted, but the cape waved him down. “Don’t try to talk. I know what your ribs look like.” He sighed before continuing. “Okay, bad news? Bakuda really didn’t want me pulling a repeat of Saturday on you. There are at least five bombs implanted, and nasty ones. Some kind of really painful spatial thing. The way the triggers are set up it would take five surgeons who were also experts in micro-electronics and signal dynamics to have a hope of getting those out.”

Chen slumped in the chair to the extent his bonds would permit. It was what he had suspected, but hearing it gave the situation a sharp dose of reality. At least now Apeiron wouldn’t risk himself any further, and could go help people he had a chance to save.

He raised his head and somehow got the sense the masked cape was smiling at him. “So, basically I’m overqualified. Good thing. I was afraid this was going to be difficult.”

A blade spun in the man’s hand. Glowing red, he recognized the same type of scalpel that had been used to save the other victim at the storage yard, only miles more advanced. Three more tools appeared just as quickly, then the cape went to work.

The blades were so fine that Chen couldn’t feel the cuts. Trying to follow the work was beyond impossible. He seemed to be moving in three directions at once, somehow splitting his attention between the different surgical sites with no loss of focus or skill.

The work was fast, faster than Chen could have imagined. Even the device that had been implanted into his skull, beneath the bone, was removed with less effort than an ingrown hair. The cape set aside the collection of cruel, spindly devices that had held Chen’s life hostage, flicked the blades through his bindings, then laid a glove on his shoulder.

“Sorry to put this off, but one of the triggers in those things was looking for healing effects.”

The glowing lines spread from the glove to the rest of Chen’s body. It was better than last time. That might have been the severity of his injuries, but the healing felt faster, more directed, and somehow energizing. As the cape removed his hand Chen sucked in a breath, relishing the lack of protest from his ribs, the ability to move his face without pain. Even his teeth had been fixed.

He shook himself from his astonishment at the miracle and climbed to his feet, looking up at the taller cape. “You shouldn’t be here. It was a trap. Might still be a trap. You shouldn’t have risked it, have wasted time on me.”

For some reason that seemed to amuse the cape. “I can manage. The trap’s dealt with, and for the other stuff I’m good at multitasking.”

“You can’t be that good.” The tinker just shrugged.

“I have my drones searching the place, and we’re close enough to the servers that I can hack into them from here. I’m getting all the ABB’s little secrets. Is that good enough?”

“No.” Chen replied. “There are other places, other people who need your help more than I do, with what they’re planning.”

There was a crash in the distance, presumably one of the robots Apeiron had mentioned, then a cry of warning. Apeiron was attacking the staging area. Cape sighted. Support needed.

The call was in Mandarin, so the cape didn’t recognize it immediately. It seemed he had some kind of translation technology or other ability that let him put things together, because he started to look very uncomfortable.

Attacking. The present tense was used. And confirmed sightings, not an attack by robots or crystal drones. “What…” Chen asked.

“Very good at multitasking.” The person in front of Chen quipped.

He was attacking the staging area, and attacking the headquarters. But he had used powers and skills iconic to Apeiron. But they wouldn’t be calling for help if it wasn’t serious at the other site.

“Which…” He looked up at the man’s masked face. “Which one is real.”

The man rubbed the back of his neck, and somehow looked graceful in his nervousness. “Maybe I’m not quite as real as the other guy.”

Chen blinked. Of all the theories thrown around, was this that out of place? With every miracle accomplished, was being in two places at once a step too far?

“Hu.” Chen laughed. “Sun Wukong.” He muttered, remembering the story from his childhood.

The man seemed to be checking something in his head, then nodded. “Yeah, close enough. Probably closer in some areas.”

He looked up at the cape, or copy of a cape, with a questioning glance. “What are you?”

“Temporary.” The man saw Chen’s expression and quickly amended his statement. “But I’m okay with it, really. Honestly I just want to help, do what I can while I’m here.”

Chen gave the figure a long look, then nodded his head. “I understand.”

“I figured you might.” Then the cape let out a breath and poked at the horrific devices that had been plucked from Chen’s body. “You end up pissing off bad people that badly, then you must have an idea about how to handle these things.”

Chen gave the man a nod, he was surprised when he received a considerate look in return. “Okay, so, don’t want this to happen again, so I figure this might be a decent and somewhat poetic way of throwing a wrench into things.” The cape-copy’s hands started flying, breaking the bombs down to base components in a flash. “Sorry it’s not going to be my best work, but I’m splitting focus here.”

The comment about his best work seemed hollow as his hands flew and danced in elaborate patterns. He barely looked at his work, instead glancing around the room, occasionally grabbing a scrap of metal or plastic from the traps he had ripped apart. Parts glowed white under his fingers and were molded like clay before being instantly cooled in an act of instantaneous forging. In his hands the assembly flowed together into a collaboration of unbelievable beauty and grace, a masterpiece taking shape before Chen’s very eyes.

Less than a minute and a collection of bloody explosives had been transformed, reworked into a sword. A jian, straight bladed and beautifully adorned. The man placed the sword between them and it sank into the concrete floor like butter.

“What?” Chen started, but the man cut him off.

“Reworked the tech in the bombs into a new weapon. It was nasty stuff, spatial folds down to a two-dimensional plane, basically super compression and destruction, like being slowly drawn through a paper mill. Well, figured the effect would work for a blade, and I’m good at reworking tech, plus it’s kind of poetic, so there you go.”

Chen looked at the sword questioningly. “You’re giving me a tinker sword? That you made in a minute?”

“Oh, no.” The man said cheerfully.

Chen was both disappointed and a bit relieved. “Then…”

“It’s actually four weapons.” He continued. “Mechashifts to pistol, laser rifle, and spear. Also, it’s magic.”

“Magic?” Chen asked flatly.

There was a sigh that Chen recognized as a sign of long suffering. “Okay, the other guy is kind of in denial about this, trying to logic everything away, but that heavenly sage comment is actually closer to what we do than any dressed up thing about energy fields. I mean, I don’t have to live with the idea that I’m suddenly a divine wizard, so I can accept it a lot easier. I can also look at someone in the eye and say ‘yes, that is a magic sword, and I’m not going to pretend it’s anything else.”

Chen considered how he started this day, and his current situation. It seemed, whatever this man’s existence was like, he had a decent handle on things. “How does it work?”

He could sense the gratitude from the man. “It’s yours. Like, magically yours. You should be able to call to it.”

Chen considered what the man meant. What did it mean to call to the weapon? Just reach out with his thoughts…

The sword vanished in a cloud of gold sparks and appeared in Chen’s hand. He could feel the weapon in a way he never imagined. It was significant and personal. A marking on the blade in particular seemed to draw his eye.

What else did the man say? Rifle. The weapon shifted at a thought. Then a pistol. Another shift, this time to handgun. Then a third though brought a perfectly balanced spear to his hands, then back to the form of a sword.

It was breathtaking. A power like no other. He knew the quality, the strength. He would know it just from his connection to the weapon, even without the reputation of Apeiron’s works.

“Why did you do this for me?” He asked.

The cape merely shrugged. “I could give you philosophy, but really I just thought you could use it to do some good. It’s not really a big commitment. For me, I mean. We’ve been pretty conservative about handing out stuff since the bank attack. As long as you’re not going to pull an Aegislash with this I think we’re good.”

Chen’s lips quirked down at the mention of what happened to the leader of the Wards, but he nodded. He didn’t understand Apeiron’s motives, but he knew what it was to have trust placed in you.

The cape-copy seemed to be considering something. “One second, if we're going this far you probably need some armor as well.”

Chen nodded numbly. He was going to say something about how they could make armor with what was on hand, but that was before he had been given a folding space sword made from garbage and tinker bombs.

The man ignored the collection of metal and plastic scattered around the room, instead hunting until he found a scrap of fabric, the remains of some chair padding. Corse, uncomfortable, and pretty much falling apart.

Then the cape flicked the fabric in his hand, causing it to extend to a beautifully embroidered and tailored Tang suit. A complete suit, with trousers and shoes. It looked like it was made out of silk rather than the mess of fabric that had been put into it and nearly glowed in its perfection.

The cape saw Chen’s face and shrugged. “I can make clothing pretty fast.” He looked back at the garment in his hands. “Sorry, this didn’t come out right. It’s kind of random sometimes.”

Chen nearly cried as the object of perfection was sundered in front of his eyes. Then his heart soared as it was reformed, only this time with an extra feature, something Chen couldn’t place beyond the red sheen that was carried by some of the threads.

“There we go.” He said, handing the outfit to Chen. “It’s only a one star, but it should help. Also bulletproof, which is nice.”

The cape turned his back and Chen took the hint. He was in too far now. “One star?” He asked, stripping out of his sweat and blood-stained coveralls. Compared to them the clothing the tinker had conjured was like a dream.

“Physically enhancing clothing. Something I just figured out. Takes someone to peak human performance.” The explanation was unnecessary. As soon as Chen slipped into the suit he felt the surge of power and energy. It was like when the tinker healed him, but taken to an entire new magnitude. He turned to find the man handing him a white scarf.

“Concealment. Usually use capes, but this seemed more your style.” The white scarf felt like someone had woven a cloud into physical form, and complimented the golden silk of the suit beautifully. It wasn’t often Chen would admit to being overwhelmed, but he was cascading towards that state now.

“What do you want?” He asked. “For this?” It was power, handed out freely, and he feared what the price could be. Apeiron seemed like a good man, but he was also a complicated man. That could lead to complicated conditions.

“Okay, simple demand.” The cape stated while looking down at him. “Stay safe.”

Chen blinked. “That’s it?”

He was answered with a shrug. “We really don’t want you to die. You seem decent, this isn’t a huge expenditure, and it will probably keep you safe, so yeah, that’s the price.” The man paused. “Though it would be good to know you got to see your wife and daughter again, so I’ll add a trip out of the city to the conditions.”

Chen smiled at that. A visit to in-laws. Well, there were worse things that could be demanded in exchange for power like this. He would need to have a talk with Mei anyway.

“I think I can agree to…” Chen stopped talking as the man tensed and raised a hand.

“I have to go.” He said in a dead voice.

“What?” Chen asked over a crashing sound in the distance.

“Emergency. I need to go. Chen, I can’t secure this place, I’m leaving it to you. Please, do what you can for the people here.” The man flinched and looked to the side, muttering “Fuck.” Under his breath.

“I will. I promise.” He assured the distraught cape.

“Fuck, fuck. Okay, thank you Chen. Last thing. I have no idea if this will work. I barely understand it, and have literally just gotten the slightest insight that suggests it might, but here goes.”

Chen tensed as the man put a hand on his shoulder and looked down at him. “Chen, there’s this principle I’ve been trying to understand, this effect, but it’s kind of a personal expression. I think I was able to understand it because… reflection. It’s through reflection that we achieve clarity. Through that we can become a paragon of progress and determination, to rise above challenges. Infinite in perseverance and unbound by doubt.”

A gray light began surrounding the cape, flowing into Chen in a surge of energy beyond anything he had imagined. The crashing grew louder and he recognized it as the sound the robot had made when it burst through the wall at the start of this insanity.

“Chen,” The man spoke uncertainty. “I release your soul, and by my will commend thee.”

There was a flash of gray light, and the wall behind the man burst apart. The robot opened its armor compartment and practically flowed over the cape, encompassing him. Five crystal hawks swooped in and took formation around the armored man as he tensed, thrusters across his armor charging with the sound of capacitors.

“Good luck.” The man offered the words in a metallic voice before launching straight up, punching through the concrete ceiling, and by the sound of it several more after that. The crystal hawks trailed after him, leaving Chen standing in a cloud of concrete dust, staring up as a clear section of sky through the exit Apeiron’s copy had torn through the ABB headquarters.

He didn’t say anything. He felt the power that had been granted him, both from the items bestowed and the ritual that had been performed. He had power now. He had responsibility. Apeiron was dealing with other problems and had trusted this one to Chen.

He would make sure that trust was well placed.

41 Drag Out

When I set off towards my target I moved like I never had before. The energy from life fibers was not something that could be explained with any conventional set of physical laws. Over short distances I was basically teleporting. Not actually, but effectively for all purposes, including my ability to affect the world around me. When it came to attacking or other complex actions I was faster, but not the hypersonic blur I could be when focused on point-to-point movement.

When it came to covering large sections of ground it was a different matter. I could build up speed, but the bursts were once again focused on point-to-point movement. As such I dashed across rooftops at a speed Velocity would have been envious of, but couldn’t just appear at my destination in a flickering blur.

That was probably for the best considering my motoroid and drones were still limited by mostly conventional physics, or as conventional as could be expected from machines that were constantly altering the laws of mass, velocity, and general conservation of energy. I could easily outstrip even their top speed, but that was based on thrust to weight ratios and what Fleet could manage with the motoroid’s mass effect core. 

To be fair that was quite a bit, but still limited him to mostly Newtonian reactions.

As such I was roof running through an exploding warzone as my motoroid and drones trailed behind me at their best speed. The prospect of outrunning them wasn’t even entertained. I had a decent chance of catching the ABB leadership off guard, but I had also done that earlier, and the cavalcade of technicolor destruction around me was the result of that particular victory.

This section of the Docks was getting devastated. There was just no way to mince words about it. ABB territory was being locked down with persistent effects that would prevent any response that didn’t come from the air. Repeated strikes were being made against areas of Empire and Merchant control, and I could only guess how bad the response would be.

No, wait. Didn’t need to guess. Squealer’s party barge had been deployed from somewhere near Archer’s Bridge and was currently barreling towards the groups of ABB conscripts unfortunate enough to be deployed into Merchant turf. Meanwhile the Empire response was harder to place precisely, but the clear sight of Crusader going full ghost legion indicated they were taking this very seriously. When the Protectorate finally managed to deploy their capes, they were going to be greeted with a very target rich environment.

I could only hope they wouldn’t take the stance of letting the gangs fight it out while mounting a token mitigation effort. That may have covered them in the past, but March didn’t play by the old rules. Holding tactics weren’t viable anymore.

It was lucky that I had managed to contain most of the worst combinations of effects. Thanks to that there wouldn’t be seeds of crystal growths spread over half the city by whirlwinds, or waves of reactive material consuming entire streets. The layering of the explosions seemed designed to erode whatever limiters Bakuda had been working under and push them to a new level of terrible. That said, from an outside perspective I doubted my actions would have been apparent to anyone beyond March and Bakuda. To everyone else it probably looked like I was randomly running around starting random dustups with ABB troops.

It was another reminder of just how dangerous this particular combination was and how badly they had been underestimated. The collaboration of just three capes could have wiped out the entire city with minimal effort. And now it seemed that whatever restraint had stayed their hand was being cast to the wind for the opportunity to take me out.

That reminded me of my earlier exchange with the gang’s capes. I had needed to take a hard line, just because of the obvious trap contained in any other option. I was a little concerned that it looked like I was inviting this chaos, or at least indifferent to it. That was probably why they made the decision to release the video. I imagine that an all-out fight between Apeiron and the ABB would draw a very different response than an ABB bombing spree. I didn’t know exactly how the deployment would shift, but just a delay of a few minutes would make a world of difference for someone like March.

I could already see the impact. Thankfully, due to my initial strikes, there weren’t cells of ABB on the Protectorate’s doorstep tying up response forces, but it was still a nightmare to move through this part of the city. My rooftop runs were just barely possible, and I was mostly able to ignore mitigating factors like a certain building being on fire, melting, or torn into pieces that were now floating in a gravity field of some sort. More conventional hero forces would be hard pressed to find a way to navigate around this mess.

I had to remember that they also didn’t have my scanning tech and coordination systems. Some of the blasts had been Bakuda’s version of micro-emp bombs that would have knocked out all active electrical systems and communications. With March directing that effect, anyone who could give a clear picture of the fight was cut off, leaving those responding to the ABB working with limited information mostly consisting of what had been contained in our recent broadcast exchange.

It was something I could help with. There were so many things I could help with, but I was limited in how I could act. The mess of misconceptions and misinformation that had built up around my actions had gotten markedly worse with every exchange, at least as far as the local office was concerned. The mess of assumed abilities and influences was infuriating, particularly when I somehow ended up with the Forge giving me rough equivalents to what they initially assumed my powers were. At this point what was I supposed to say about my capacity for master influence, shaker powers, or the creation of memetic objects?

It was a situation where every bone in my body wanted nothing more but to hide away from the entire situation until it blew over or I found a way to separate myself from it. That was a bad idea when this mess started and it was a terrible idea now. March was relying on a disorganized response, or at least I hoped she was. You never knew with powerful thinkers, and it was one of the most frustrating parts of dealing with them. Still, that didn’t change the fact that not just the Protectorate and PRT but every civilian and even military relief force had no idea what they were diving into. That was a problem I could deal with.

Assembling the database was trivial. I found a hosting option and set about assembling the interface and data structures. Once that was done I sidestepped any policies that might limit PRT interactions with information I provided by simply making the information public.

A post to PHO. Links sent to every local media company. Comments on every news story about the current crisis. A direct message to Weld. And, just to show I wasn’t playing favorites, an email to the Protectorate tip line.

The odds of them getting to it before someone made them aware of the information from the other sites was minimal, but the point was it was still sent to them, letting me avoid any accusations of working around them in a crisis. The link provided a full map of the state of the conflict zone, clinical assessments of active bomb effects, the deployment of active conscripts, the locations of disabled conscripts, and currently safe routes of travel.

The information was drawn from my sensor sweeps of the area and cut down to key points and relevant data. How much people would trust it was yet to be seen, but enough images were provided that there was a decent chance of it being taken seriously. At the very least it might get some much-needed support for civilians trapped in high risks areas. And hopefully this would throw off March enough to let me avoid whatever she was planning for me.

The Vehicles constellation passed by as I considered that particular unpleasant fact. I was essentially invincible, and yet I had an enemy force planning to kill me. My durability was well documented from my previous encounters and had only improved from there. That was something I had to assume March was taking into account. She had timed her cut-off of the trace to a level that assumed improvement from my encounter with Dragon, and that was just two days ago. I had gotten stronger, but she had built her plans with the assumption that I had gotten stronger.

And, with all that, she still had a plan to kill me. Well, kill me, trap me, critically injure me, or remove me from the situation in some way. The most worrying thing was I still had no idea precisely what she was planning. The three most likely possibilities were her own striker power, a specialized bomb from Bakuda, or a new surprise from Leet.

I think I could probably dismiss the possibility of Leet’s involvement. I hadn’t seen any sign of his tech since this mess started. There was evidence of his influence, but even the stealth generators being used to obscure the ABB’s underground headquarters had the signs of Bakuda’s workmanship, not Leet’s. Thinking about it I really didn’t know what the details of that pair’s relationship with the ABB was. The initial night had the feel of mercenary work, probably with a little more personal investment based on Leet’s rantings. They responded quickly to my attack on the financial center, but still as their own unit. They were definitely close to the ABB, but not full members, and seemingly not involved in this plot.

Bakuda was by far the most likely source of whatever device they were relying on to take me out. I was significantly less vulnerable to her exotic offerings than I had been on Saturday, but there were still a few that could slip by my defenses. Time and space were hard to defend against, but fortunately also hard to deploy. Bakuda’s time bombs might effectively last forever, but they took a critical moment to set in, and there was more than enough time to escape. Spatial bombs were exceedingly powerful and destructive, but also difficult to make and highly limited in their range and effect. She basically needed me right on top of one for it to affect me, and I didn’t intend to give her that chance.

Oni Lee could be a terrifying delivery mechanism for bombs, but every automated system I had was operating on the principle of shooting him on sight. He also had to actually get me in a blast without being dusted himself, and also be using something that I couldn’t avoid or tank.

Finally, there was March. Her striker ability was probably the most dangerous thing the ABB could bring against me. When it came to even the worst of Bakuda’s bombs I could generally resist, evade, or counter them to some extent. March’s omni-dimensional explosion wasn’t something that could be blocked or countered. Getting caught in it would be devastating, and getting hit by her striker effect would be a death sentence.

It was a good thing I had no intention of ever allowing either situation to come to pass. March needed proximity, either to her attack or to an effect she had generated. Even basic levels of situational awareness would be enough to make sure I didn’t literally stumble on top of her, and she had the same lethal measures committed to any sighting of her that Oni Lee did.

That was a fact I had forced myself to accept. I was going into this with lethal intent. I didn’t know what the official response would be if my actions resulted in the deaths of ABB capes. Logically you could point to the destruction and death they had wrought and make a simple claim about necessity, but unfortunately the law didn’t work that way, not for capes. There was still no kill order. I could probably fight the issue, leverage public opinion, but I would be working against an entrenched power structure with extensive media connections. I was still willing to go through with this, for the necessity of the immediate situation and the world as a whole, but I felt like I was inviting some kind of nightmarish reprisal from the Protectorate for even daring to consider this action without their consent.

I shook my head as I closed towards my destination. I was heading towards the most likely location based on the intercepted text messages, a shipping yard north of the Boardwalk. Not an active one, but one of the few that stayed in limited operation.

The riot that created the Boat Graveyard hadn’t completely killed Brockton’s shipping industry, but it might as well have. The docks further north were industrial docks. They were one of those ports connected to the arteries of rail freight running across the country. Passenger trains may have died out but rail lines kept shipping goods. Unload a ship on the west coast, haul across the country and load on up the east coast, or vice versa. Lower cost than taking a ship the long way around, and basically an entire industry facilitating world trade that nobody bothered to notice.

Then you had Leviathan hitting port cities and sinking Kyushu. Warlords in Africa and South America. The C.U.I. locking down China, and every surrounding nation on guard against them. Trade dried up, and you didn’t need the same number of ports to deal with the flow. Some of them dropped off, and Brockton happened to be one of the hardest hit.

Before the recession this container yard would have been a novelty. Holding some minor overflow from the main docks and maybe seeing the occasional small container ship serving the city itself instead of its shipping industry. In the wake of the Lord’s Port closure, it was one of the few docks still active. And really, it wasn’t surprising to find the ABB had influence there, given what they brought into the city.

In the old days the dockworker’s union would probably have made that difficult, but with the state of the shipping industry I’m fairly certain they were satisfied to show up, manage the cargo, and leave without asking questions. If the gang was able to buy off any official inspections then a section of the city’s workforce that was on its last legs wasn’t about to start a moral crusade. Just another link in the chain of compromise that had allowed the gang situation to reach this level.

I opened my mind to my network as I approached. Plans and blueprints were of limited use in an area that was nothing but a mess of shipping containers. I could get a rough idea of the arrangement from overhead views, but it would be a mess for long range scanners to punch through, and I certainly wasn’t going to personally dive into a maze of the ABB’s own construction. Not when any container could hold a surprise from Bakuda shielded from my scanners.

Through the link I also received updates from my duplicates. Because of the neural connection and my enhanced processing speed I was able to get a more detailed perspective through compressed images and information.

“Made it through to the main lab.” The first duplicate reported, including a heavy sense of frustration accompanied by details of the absolute trial he had endured bypassing layers of boobytraps and Bakuda’s new penchant for defensive explosions. Eventually he had managed to push through the mess of defenses into the heart of the base. Unfortunately, not in time to secure either cape.

“There’s some kind of bolt hole, probably leading to the sewers. Sealed with a time stop field. I think it was set right before I got here. Most of the equipment in the lab was trashed, but one piece looks like Leet’s work.” I quickly reviewed the scans of the broken trapezoidal archway still faintly glowing with a green light. “From the components it might be a teleporter. Be careful out there. Either Bakuda, March, or both could be waiting for you.”

The duplicate’s report also included an absolute onslaught of security protocols being managed by the combined processing of his implant, omni-tool, armor, and drones. “Bakuda is trying to blow the lab. I’m holding her back, but this is her wheelhouse. I’m into the systems they tried to wipe, and I think I can pull data on the dead man’s switch before she can counter my influence.”

I shuddered at just a hint of the weight of code the duplicate was managing. The fact that he was fully willing to go to the wire on this and run to the end of his existence was once again concerning, but I couldn’t fault him. Not if it brought us any closer to countering that damned cypher.

“Good luck.” I transmitted.

“From me as well.” The second duplicate echoed, and followed it with a report covering his assault on the second ABB site and Chen’s status. The particular mess of explosives that had been set up may be possibly the worst trap Bakuda had managed so far. My duplicate had mercifully managed to save him, but it had been a harrowing experience involving more invasive surgery than I would have ever considered.

After my review of those details, I was at least feeling slightly better about the prospect of my duplicates operating on me in the future. Even actual brain surgery to switch out my implant wouldn’t be worse than that, and would happen in much better conditions.

“Bakuda’s also trying to pull a detonation trigger for this place. Was actually trying to pull it on Chen from the moment I found him. It’s easier to block here, but still not that easy. I’m scouring the place for information, but most of it is hardcopy. Whoever ran their books was old school. This is going to take a while.”

“Got it.” I acknowledged. “I’m heading in now. Screening force first. I’ll try to flush them out, or trigger any countermeasures early.”

Both Duplicates transmitted their encouragement and then shifted back to their own tasks. Ideally I would hold back on this assault until I could send one or both of my duplicates first, but I had no idea how long my nebulous element of surprise would remain an advantage. I was actually betting a lot on this move. The city was still burning behind me. Well, burning and doing other things involving exotic and destructive applications of high energy physics. The point was this endeavor was effectively trading my efforts of damage control for the chance at a decapitation strike.

My longer-range scanners were able to confirm activity within the container yard. That alone would be telling enough, given the level of business places like that saw basically never called for any shifts past the normal workday. From an elevated position it was even clearer. All the workers were Asian, and all obviously dedicated gang members. I don’t think there were more than a handful of people who looked like conscripts.

As I was considering my approach the Knowledge constellation made a connection to the final mote from the same cluster that had given me memory manipulation, giant robot construction, and horrific biological experiments. The final mote of that strange cluster gave me… more giant robots.

Bigs.

I could now make a specific class of giant robot that was referred to as a Big. Setting aside the name and the fact that this group of powers already covered the mechanics of hundred foot tall ‘Megadeus’ class robots, the fact that there was a second level to this construction was surprising.

It was also terrifying.

Bigs… well, they weren’t normal giant robots. Considering what I could currently build in terms of mecha it would have to be something really unusual to stand out against the extradimensional turbines, the molecular destruction lightsabers the size of a three-story building and the reactors that fundamentally altered all principles of warfare. Bigs were somehow up to the task.

A Big, it wasn’t just a robot. Not even ‘just’ a building sized robot armed with enough firepower to outshine a WW2 dreadnaught. It was something more. If it sounded like I was talking in circles that’s because I kind of was. My previous giant robot knowledge from this power had been referred to as Megadei. Bigs were the robots that lived up to that name.

The machine spirits of my Laboratorium had a philosophy regarding the theology of technology. The idea that programs and algorithms weren’t just code. They had a spiritual presence. Based on what I saw in their operation and the expanded understanding from my demigod powers there may have been some truth to that. An aspect of the nature of technology that extended slightly beyond pure physical principles.

With Bigs you basically took that idea and threw the word ‘slightly’ out the window, replacing it with ‘excessively’ or in extreme cases ‘entirely’. Bigs were god machines. They were primordial forces bound to icons of technology and driven towards tasks beyond the scope of mortal ability and understanding. It was a kind of technology I was terrified to even touch, something where even the idea of its existence could have massive implications.

This was power on a scale extending to the limits of the universe, something that a person would need profound character to wield, to have any hope of directing such a creation. A dominus or unrivaled focus and determination. And that was just what was needed to operate the machine.

I, I could build it. I could churn out god machines with the casualness and irreverence of any creation of the Forge. It felt almost sacrilegious to be able to handle these forces in such a blatant manner. Just the fact that this power was hitting me on a level that approached my reaction to the previous monster-maker power, it was telling how profound, dangerous, and humbling this was.

I shook my head and put the production of physical gods out of my mind. I had an attack to plan, and the first few seconds would make or break this operation. Fleet and Survey fed me data and suggestions and responded to my instructions perfectly. It was simple. Kick the anthill and see what came out, hopefully without getting swarmed.

The possible presence of Oni Lee turned that metaphor into a much more literal concern.

At the final approach my motoroid launched into a near vertical climb, hauling my drones behind it. They were linked by kinetic fields and the motoroid’s mass effect core could sustain them beyond the range of even my upgraded omni-tool. The robot’s ascent took them high above the yard, pushing the absolute limit of effective range of weapons and support systems.

At the same time leaving it well beyond the reach of anything short of surface to air missiles.

The vantage also gave me an excellent view of all activity in the yard. I instantly memorized the specific layout, directed specific analysis of key aspects, and moved in for my approach. This was the tricky part, and so much of the plan hinged on it. If I had a clear target, if Oni Lee or Lung were milling around in the open then this would be a simple matter of directing a surprise attack. If I knew what I was after, and if the place wasn’t crammed with Bakuda’s new jamming technology, I could have gone in quiet and taken out my target. If the place wasn’t such a complex labyrinth of probably trapped storage containers I could have just gassed the place and called it a day.

Well, that last option would actually have pushed me to something of a limit. I had an incredible arsenal of non-lethal munitions, but there were limits on my loadout, and I wasn’t quite prepared for mass deployment against a complex structure spread over multiple blocks of area. I might have been able to get everyone, but that would be in the hope that nothing would be triggered, deployed, or have some desperation measure tripped before the gas took effect.

No, I needed to get the capes. That meant I needed to draw attention and monitor response. Fortunately, I was very good at both drawing attention and monitoring responses.

The highest point in the area was a cargo crane that towered over the yard. My motoroid and drones had gotten into position without being noticed partially by using it to cover a portion of their ascent and partially because of a lack of lookouts monitoring the sky, or at least the sky directly above the facility. They had managed their entire climb without alerting any sentries, something I was sure of from both monitoring their behavior and electronic communication.

When I launched from a nearby rooftop in a pulse of life fiber energy and appeared atop the raised arm of the crane, a slam of echoing metal caused everyone in the container yard to look up.

What they saw, framed by the setting sun as it sank lower over the city, was my glowing form, perfectly balanced on the very end of the crane arm, cloak billowing in both the actual wind present at this height and Garment’s efforts to support me. In this case the divine boots assured my footing and stability, meaning Garment was free to instead go for the most dramatic movements she could manage from a cloak she personally created. Between her assistance and my new posture powers I stood as an imposing silhouette, gaped at by every member of the ABB currently in the yard.

There was what must have been a terrible moment for the men present. Some looked to their companions for assurance, some mouthed profanities, and uncertainty and panic spread through them like a ripple. A few reached for cell phones, sending desperate requests for instructions or placing calls that mostly went unanswered. It was a situation where I didn’t even need Comm Chatter. Between my omni-tool and motoroid everything was perfectly monitored and analyzed. A giant cloud of electronic communication flowed into my sensors as everyone attempted to figure out what you were supposed to do when the end boss decides to show up at your doorstep.

Sadly, it wasn’t enough to expose the location of the ABB’s powered members. The replies were either absent, automated, or from other gang officers. The general thrust of the instructions could be summed up with one word.

Fight.

Even with the most hardened veterans of the ABB present I could see their apprehension as their orders were processed. I wasn’t sure how much they knew about the master plan being set out for them, or what it would take to put me down. I wasn’t sure how widely my reputation had spread, or what the average unpowered thug thought about having to face me directly. What I did know is I was wearing supernaturally intimidating clothing posed perfectly and glaring down at them in derision and anticipation.

To say the effect was profound would be an understatement. Without the threat of death hanging over them I think half of the forces would have deserted on the spot. Seconds dragged out as more messages were exchanged. If they were hoping for some brilliant coordination strategy from March it didn’t come. She either didn’t care about this particular incident or was exercising extreme caution in terms of potential electronic exposure.

One of the braver gang members pulled out a steel tube with a firing assembly. I could recognize the signs of a jury-rigged rocket launcher. Similar equipment was common amongst the conscripts. Adaptation of existing materials, rather than total fabrication of the technology from scratch. Bakuda had obviously been working for volume rather than polish, but that didn’t make her creations any less dangerous. Especially not when she had been able to field such an excessive quantity of explosives.

I shifted my gaze directly at him. Over a hundred yards away and partially behind cover and his movements drew immediate response. I could see the hesitation gripping him. Really it was gripping everyone here. Nobody wanted to do this, but they had no more choice than the poor conscripts out in the city. He sighted down the shaking barrel and I could practically see the deliberation behind his eyes. Benefits of the new visor, I had amplified vision without cutting off any part of my field of view. Finally, the gang member steeled himself and pulled the trigger.

There was a burst of exhaust from the back of the launcher as a rocket shot towards me. It must have been three orders of magnitude more advanced than the device that fired it, and clearly intended to do some serious damage. The sight of the attack was enough to bring more weapons to bear and the flares from dozens of launches began lighting up my sensors.

Then it began to rain fire.

I had my motoroid on overwatch. Floating high above the yard and guided by Fleet it had watched the entire exchange. Then it acted. Decisively. Twin miniaturized multilaser turrets sprang to life and began sending forth a torrent of high power lasbolts. Blue-white streaks of light, more from the ionization of the air than the beam itself, rained down on the ABB force. The deafening cracks of what was basically the same effect that produced a thunderclap echoed around the container yard.

The results were devastating. Missiles were picked out of the air, some detonating in exotic effects and some just slagged under the power of the multilaser beams. Precision shots, made possible only with masterfully crafted weaponry and the precise targeting of an A.I., began closing on the gang members. Over extended weapons were shot out of hands, slagging or bursting apart and leaving their wielder cradling injuries. Whatever bravado had kept the forces in the open vanished as they found themselves under a perpetual barrage of heavy laser fire.

Panic spread through the assembled gang members like wildfire. Fleet was, thankfully, attempting to maintain reduced lethality against the unpowered members of the ABB. I was a little less merciful when it came to dealing with people who had signed on with the group rather than been kidnaped and held hostage as a slave soldier. I mean, I got the dynamics in this city were terrible and some of the rank and file probably didn’t have much hope of avoiding a life like this, but I had also seen my second duplicate’s report on what he had found in that ABB base. The businesses they were involved in, and specifically the nature of what had been smuggled in using containers and sites like this… well, it put me in a mindset where non-crippling injuries were acceptable.

ABB soldiers scrambled for cover as high power lasbolts sent plumes of vaporized cement into the air from every near miss. It wasn’t all show. Survey was monitoring everything, trying to piece together any hints of a larger plan or command structure. I reviewed her data as the Forge made a connection to the Magic constellation.

It was a mid-sized mote called That Undefinable Thing. The Undefinable Thing was a soul. It was a power centered around the use and manipulation of souls. Somehow it was actually creepier than the Belmont Alchemy power while also being more cavalier about its subject matter.

In addition to being able to ‘manipulate’ souls I could make physical tools and containers for their use. I could also use them as raw materials for the production of certain powerful items that would be incredibly useful with the only downside being the required ‘raw materials’ in question.

Exspheres were a type of crystal that acted as a universal power booster. It unlocked a person’s full potential, then multiplied that effect by the number of previous wielders the crystal had had. It was that ‘wielders’ part where the horrible stuff started. If a person using an exsphere lost control, the crystal would essentially eat their soul and turn them into a monster. That’s where that multiplier came from. You got a boost based on the number of people who had either used the crystal until their death or been eaten by it.

There was a solution to the whole ‘soul consuming monster transformation’ problem. The power also covered the production of an item called a key crest. It acted as a power regulator, not just for the exspheres but for any potentially harmful energy source. It automatically throttled the power to make sure only beneficial effects would be transferred. And it also used souls as raw materials.

So, for the full potential of this power you needed one soul to make an exsphere, one to make a key crest, and then however many you were willing to sacrifice in order to max out your power. Hell, if you were willing to go completely insane with shoving souls into an exsphere you could level the thing up to a Cruxis Crystal. At that point you would be evolving past any limit of humanity to a borderline celestial being, and probably severely damaging your mind in the process.

The entire thing was monstrous on a level that was mind boggling. Even setting aside the revelation that was full confirmation of the existence of souls, the potential for misuse of this power was staggering.

There was at least one aspect of the power that wasn’t innately horrifying. That Undefinable Thing also covered how to use souls as a power source. That meant running magic, machinery, or living bodies off of the energy of a soul. While that could be just as monstrous as it sounded, it didn’t need to be. The soul acting as the power source could be your own. Running something on the power of your soul extended your awareness to it in a way that was completely inherent. It basically became part of your body, fully understood and innately controlled.

The mechanics of soul power were complex. A soul was infinite, but it could be diminished or grown. No amount of draining could actually wipe out a soul, but its output, the light of the soul, would diminish. Or it could be cultivated. The entire thing was very close to what I’d been experiencing from my Aura, almost to the point of overlap. There was some potential there, but not enough to warrant any more distraction from this fight.

I put aside that power and the included weapon and armor that had arrived in my workshop and signaled my drones. At my direction they broke formation and dove towards the container yard. Five streamlined crystalline hawks trailing storm clouds plummeted towards the already panicked forces. The effect when they struck was devastation on a whole new level. Thunder echoed between rows of containers as fields of sparks spread from their points of impacts.

As the gang members shifted into even higher levels of panic I shifted my attention to the data feeds. With the direct link and sensors of the drones I could start punching through Bakuda’s stealth technology. Regrettably it confirmed my fears regarding the level of traps and hidden mines that had been prepared for me. Or I assumed they were for me, as that level of high energy ordinance was overkill for anyone else. If she was on site and running defensive explosions this would have been a very different encounter.

Instead, she was still trying to keep my first duplicate out of her destroyed files. That was something she probably never imagined being an issue. The servers in the lab had been horribly destroyed, wrecked beyond any reasonable hope of recovery. The thing was, my recovery skills went far beyond what was reasonable. I could literally fix anything, and so could my duplicates. Of course, splitting focus between holding off Bakuda’s increasingly aggressive attempts to detonate the workshop and microcircuitry repair and database recovery was a trial.

What had already been pulled from the restored databases was concerning. There was data from Leet’s work, as expected. It also contained analysis of various capes, including detailed scans of their powers. I was willing to bet that every time someone from the Protectorate or Wards had a run in with the ABB after Bakuda had joined every action they took had been recorded and analyzed. In her build up she had managed to turn the city’s holding pattern into a vector for expanding her tinker understanding, and now everyone was paying the price. That was worrying, but had nothing on the scraps of information my duplicate was pulling in his search for her encryption protocols.

Bakuda had data from the Protectorate. I was only seeing the pieces of it that my duplicate was encountering, but it was clear from the content and formatting that this was internal and confidential Protectorate information. Judging by the sheer number of fragments that were being restored, the ABB had managed to access what had to be a tremendous amount of data.

Everything pointed to the use of Bakuda’s scanning bombs. I had thought they were deployed in response to my actions, but if she had them available during the attack on the Rig she would have been able to seize entire databases, deconstruct technology down to highly detailed blueprints, and leave the affected equipment in such a devastated state that nobody would suspect it had been compromised.

There were snips of Armsmaster’s records in the servers, which possibly explained some of the advancements I had seen in Bakuda’s missile tech since Saturday. Going from grenades and mortars with the occasional rocket to tracking micro-missiles was a massive step, and not something easily accomplished. Bakuda’s specialty seemed to be able to cover launch and delivery mechanisms to some extent, but not to a level that allowed this kind of precision. Not until she had been able to plunder Armsmaster’s technology.

The tech would have been bad enough, but there were other scraps of information that appeared to have been plundered during the assault on the Rig. Security protocols, communication encryptions, response plans, and threat assessments. Information that would have been dangerous in the hands of a layman and absolutely devastating when given to a powerful thinker. Suddenly March’s coordination of ABB forces against the rest of the city made a lot more sense.

It was fascinating information, but both me and my duplicate knew that wasn’t what was important. The lab was full of fascinating data and technology. Prototypes of bombs, assembly equipment, plans, blueprints, and experimental technology. We could have spent a week picking through everything Bakuda had assembled and amassed, but she wasn’t about to give us the opportunity. My duplicate was trying to rebuild a database while trying to stop a tinker who specialized in bombs from detonating her bombs.

It was a losing battle. There was really no other possibility. He was working inside the heart of her operation and fighting against every countermeasure she had been able to assemble within the core of her specialization. He was able to stall her, but couldn’t hold out forever.

The only question was if he would be able to secure the dead man’s switch before she was able to blow the lab.

Both myself and the second duplicate networked with him, providing what support we could while also dealing with our own concerns. My own actions involved monitoring the container yard and directing the drones in their search and pursuit. The first duplicate lest an open line as he worked frantically to repair and decode Bakuda’s computer core, shifting most of the countermeasure work to me and the second duplicate. We split the jamming and interference tasks between us as slowly the information on the dead man’s switch started to come together.

It was a thing of beauty, a masterpiece of communications technology, fail-safes, exotic physics, and staggeringly advanced mathematical principles. The portion of the code that served as the key, the source for the effect, was orders of magnitude more complex that what was in play in the field. I was only seeing bits and pieces of it, chunks of a coding structure that dwarfed any communications protocol I had ever seen.

My first duplicate worked like lightning, repairing and analyzing data with all the speed our skill and power would allow. Meanwhile I combined my efforts with the second duplicate as we tried to hold back Bakuda’s redoubled attempts to blow the lab. I split focus between my assault on the ABB and the digital battleground as we scrambled to counter every one of Bakuda’s numerous and creative detonation triggers.

We lost ground against her efforts. Bit by bit signals slipped through, diverting our attention to attempt to electronically disarm the triggered device. While working to counter that detonation three more signals would slip past. All the while my first duplicate scrambled to make sense of the trove of coding he had been granted access to.

I watched as the situation slipped away from us. A bomb triggered by an ultra-low frequency transmission went unnoticed until it hit a critical point. The device was countered, but not before it linked with a dozen others, setting them to explode in a chain reaction. We fought, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Every device we countered set three more to detonate, all while my first duplicate worked, blind to the devastation cascading around him.

Then the blasts started. Powerful, fixed explosions designed to completely remove the building from the face of the planet. Just before the bombs consumed him there was a final compressed transmission from my first duplicate, along with a sense of satisfaction.

Then he was gone, and so was nearly a block of abandoned industrial real estate. I could see the flash of the explosion from my elevated position, followed by the thunderous rumble as the shockwave caught up. All the treasures contained within were lost, all except what had been salvaged by the duplicate who sacrificed himself, the greatest of which was contained within his final transmission.

What he had found was less than I hoped but more than I expected. It was a breakdown of a tiny section of the code. Not enough to block it, subvert it, or bypass it. The threat of Bakuda’s death still loomed, but not to the extent it previously had. Because the analysis contained a tiny but essential piece of the signal structure.

The reason the dead man’s switch was so impossible was the staggering number of interlinked effects used to convey it. Multiple communication methods for every aspect, making it almost impossible to understand. Until now. My duplicate had managed to parse out a single aspect of the transmission. The mechanism used for communication with the remote bombs. Bakuda’s ability to detonate them required return communication. While I couldn’t crack the encryption of that communication I now had enough understanding of the effects used to detect it.

I could track Bakuda’s bombs. Well, not all of them, but I could track the bombs she implanted in her conscripts. Which meant I could track every conscripted member of the ABB. It was a petty victory, but still held significance. Without being able to freely deploy her forces Bakuda would effectively be shut down. She could still threaten them, but there was a difference between hostage taking and slave soldiers.

Already my scanners were propagating a map of the assembled ABB forces. Bakuda's decision to implant every member of her forces would be her undoing. It didn’t matter if they were conscript or career ABB, I had their location.

So, what did I do with it? I considered my next step as drones pursued ABB through rows containers and the Alchemy constellation passed by in the Celestial Forge. I was down one duplicate and currently had no forces active in the city. This was the kind of data that would allow the heroes to mount an effective response, but I couldn’t guarantee they would trust me to act on it. Releasing it publicly like I did with my earlier scan data would give away the fact that I had cracked this portion of the signal. I doubted Bakuda could manage a remote change to something this complex, but giving March a heads up would present her with the opportunity to turn what could be a decisive strike against the ABB into a quagmire.

It also wasn’t that easy a thing to track. I could manage it, but you would need either a tinker or an expert in the field of communications to recreate it. That drastically limited who would be able to act on this information.

Really, all I could do was send it to the Protectorate and PRT and hope they didn’t make a mess of things. I could mop things up after I managed the ABB leadership, but this could at least let the heroes make a difference. Of course, that was assuming they actually acted on the information. I elected to send it to local police, military, and emergency relief forces as well. Knowing that multiple agencies had access to information might be enough to push the PRT into action rather than an analysis spiral.

I left Survey to handle the release while I focused on the container yard. In addition to rows and rows of shipping containers there were also a handful of buildings of various sizes. One regrettable feature of Bakuda’s stealth technology was the fact that it blocked long range detection of the newly cracked detonation signal. My drones could detect implanted gang members within a few dozen meters, but I wasn’t able to pick out the precise location of every gang member in the facility.

I was, however, able to use the drones’ data to locate the sources of Bakuda’s jamming fields. My second duplicate had torn apart several similar devices in his push through the ABB base and was well acquainted with them. Enough that the presence of two drones in the area of effect was enough to grant me a targeting solution.

My pistol leapt from the magnetic holster on my hip and into my hand. With a mental signal it expanded, drawing out from its compact form to a shape resembling a high-power rifle. I held the oversized weapon in a single hand and extended it towards the container yard. Advanced targeting systems interfaced with my implant and supplemented by my technokinesis guided the weapon to a direct line to the first of the stealth generators.

With the squeeze of a trigger a power field activated, shearing a speck the size of a grain of sand from the weapon’s ammo block. Power fields were a product of my Weaponsmith power, disintegration fields that could slice through any material. The integration of one into my sidearm was the only way to facilitate the use of adamantium as an ammunition source. Specifically, gravity Dust infused volcano forged adamantium that had been alloyed to have the density of osmium.

The penetrating power of the weapon was nearly beyond description, and as such it could be merely pointed towards the position of a generator with the assurance that any amount of intervening material would be about as consequential as shooting through a light covering of spring leaves.

There were dangers to this approach. Shots that went through everything, well, they went through everything. I was basically counting on the low profile of the round to minimize chances of fatally injuring any unintended targets. It was a risk I was willing to take when dealing with official members of the gang instead of conscripted civilians.

The round launched from my weapon with tremendous force, which was totally countered by the inertial plate on my chest. The combination of element zero, high density material, and a ragnite energy source, all worked with my fashion ability to give me a resistance to impact and recoil normally only found in fixed gun emplacements. I was able to fire a man portable artillery piece, in one hand, while perched on the tip of a cargo crane, without moving a millimeter.

Without any evident recoil the force of the shot wasn’t apparent until it struck a stack of cargo containers and punched a hole straight through to the concrete foundation of the yard. Bakuda’s stealth device, a transmission disk the size of a Wi-Fi router, was ripped apart under the force of the shot. Immediately detailed scans of the area became possible, including the location of every implanted explosive. The exposed ABB members were quickly hunted down by drones, driven out of cover by multilaser shots, or taken out as groups by selective use of non-lethal ordinance.

Sometimes that was a micro-missile of tranquilizer webbing. Sometimes it was dispersed knock-out gas. Sometimes it was magically augmented taser shocks from a drone. Sometimes it was needles of crystalized sedative fired with sniper accuracy from the motoroid’s secondary weapons. The point was as shot after shot brought down the fields that provided some measure of concealment entire sections of the yard were purged of active troops. As shot after shot tore through intervening material to bring down stealth fields the area of the yard concealed from my sensors dwindled.

Which is probably why I finally managed to trigger a response from the ABB leadership. Well, I say finally, but it had only been a few moments. I had made my appearance, rained fire and drones on the facility, assisted in the extraction of Bakuda’s signal, and started shredding their stealth systems in rapid succession. I'm pretty sure most of the rank-and-file forces didn’t have any real understanding of what was happening. From their perspective I had basically appeared, and then the world turned to pure chaos.

It was in that chaos that I came face to face with the villain I had squared off against on my very first night as a cape. Oni Lee’s demon mask moved out from the cover of a shipping container and raised a tinker tech launch device. It was a kind of compressed missile launcher, smaller than the shoulder fired variety, but still wielded in both hands and very much aimed towards me. A swarm of missiles blasted forth, trailing smoke in twisting lines as they navigated through the containers to converge on my position.

Then collapsed into dust as a round from my rifle punched through the cape’s demon mask, reducing him and all his equipment to ashes.

As vindicating as it was to see a cloud of Bakuda’s deadly ordinance evaporating in midair, the feeling was short-lived. Three more copies of Oni Lee appeared across the site and opened up with the same swarm of missiles. I managed to pick off two of the clones while concentrated laser fire punched through the third’s meager cover and reduced him to dust, but I knew what was coming next. When the next set of copies stepped out to fire their payloads I was already moving.

I called to Tetra through the Dragon’s Pulse and felt her fibers grip my body. Red lines flared through my costume as launched myself in a burst of crimson light. I leapt from the crane with my rifle shifting into its composite carbide/plasma blade configuration. The trajectory of my jump seemed to be taking me beyond the boundaries of the yard, but a flash of gray from the Dust weave in my costume triggered a reaction in the ground beneath me. With a surge of energy, the rock Dust called up a towering range of stone, scattering containers and cutting off the southern end of the storage area.

The monolith loomed a good fifty feet over the ground as it rose to meet me. I flipped in midair and began running along the vertical surface, continuous reactions of Dust causing more of the structure to rise to meet me. In my left hand I secured a sliver of iron and small but perfectly formed crystal from the pouches of my bandoleer. The reagents mixed and flowed into my plasma omni-blade just as the cloud of micro-missiles reached their peak speed.

My motoroid and drones were working as fast as they could to thin the swarm. Any copy that was even slightly exposed was brutally gunned down by any weapon that could reach him. Entire clouds of active munitions faded as the version of Oni Lee that sustained them was dispersed. The motoroid’s weapons fired continuously in a deadly torrent, any shot not aimed at one of the copies of the ninja cape being directed at the barrage of tinker tech death. Drones wove through the rows, letting out a continuous stream of electrical and kinetic blasts.

Still, it wasn’t enough. I knew it wouldn’t be. This was the first time I had personally faced Oni Lee with the full backing of Bakuda’s technology behind him. In fact, this time was even worse than what other capes or my duplicates had endured. It wasn’t a matter of a few tossed grenades or the odd dumb fired munition. This time I was facing an Oni Lee armed with serious tinker tech weaponry. That lone launcher was putting out a level of firepower in the same ballpark of Bakuda’s desperation attack at the storage yard, only multiplied by the number of times Oni Lee could teleport into a launch site without getting instantly killed.

This was the consequence of fighting the combined technology of an on-point Bakuda, a serious Leet, a compromised Armsmaster, all coordinated by a determined March. It was an advancement that would have overwhelmed what I could have brought against it on Saturday night.

Though fortunately not what I could manage on Thursday evening.

The Energize formula imbued into the weapon caused my sword to pulse with energy. With every frantic step against the still manifesting wall of activated rock Dust the energy grew stronger, all while a sky full of death bore down on me. Just as I reached the midpoint of the growing barrier I turned and faced the impending onslaught.

The Magic constellation passed by as I readied the sword. The last time I attempted this I had no idea what I was doing. The effect of the Evermore Alchemy formula was largely untested, I was unfamiliar with the limits of runic enchantment, and I was wielding a blade that had been involuntarily expanded by a recently gained power. The result had been the most powerful attack I had managed to date, but it was barely controlled and effectively a miracle that I hadn’t slaughtered everyone in the storage facility.

Those concerns were beneath me now. I had better equipment, precise control, and full mastery of the effect. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t dangerous. There was a good reason I was attempting this with a conjured wall fifty feet tall and eight feet thick behind me. That said, it was with full confidence that I charged the sword’s capacitors and swung it in a quick horizontal slice.

At first nothing seemed to happen. There was a scraping noise that accompanied the swing, like the grinding metal-on-metal sound effect that was always added in movies and video games, as if the blade was being badly drawn with every slice. It was subtle, but you could see the reason for the noise. My last attempt had resulted in a plane of destruction followed by a blast of a scale you only saw at nuclear test sites. Looking at the cloud of missiles I could see such an effect was the consequence of attempting this feat with a dull, shoddily made blade.

There was a distortion in the air following the path of my blade’s swing, like a bad split screen effect. The effect rapidly became worse, with each side of the ‘image’ becoming out of sync with the other. Missiles would enter the gap of the distortion and not emerge from the other side, or move at a different speed than they entered. My entire field of view seemed to be operating on a speed gradient, slower away from the ripple of the slice and faster towards it.

Then there was a sharp ripple in the air as the effect collapsed and the full force of the slash set in. So much energy was being contained in such a thin plane that new and exciting laws of physics were required to explain it. The distorted ‘split-screen’ effect had become a line of brilliant white. From an external perspective it looked completely inert and stationary, but the effect on the world around it told a different story.

Everything in the air, on both sides of the slash, was pulled into that white plane like debris approaching an event horizon. It seemed like it was being dragged by the force of the wind, but I could tell there were more complicated effects involved, and not just because of the projected mass fields and gravity Dust. Inevitably every projectile that had been launched at me was torn into that glowing rift and flung out into the sky.

The effect of the slash spread far beyond the container yard’s airspace. This was the reason for raising the rock barrier, it shielded the rest of the city from the effects. Instead, the horrible vacuum effects sending vortices of wind through containers and sweeping unsecured items into the air was limited to the immediate area. At least until the slash extended past the boundaries of the yard, but with it angling upwards it really was only visible as a white flash followed by a distortion in the clouds.

It was a tremendous display of force, a casual clearing of every attack that had been directed my way and a massive disruption to the environment, but I didn’t count on that being enough to stop Oni Lee. The man was famed for his mindless determination. At best this would keep him off balance for a few seconds while the effects of the slash played out. Fortunately. I was ready for that, and already on the move.

I leapt from the wall towards the waterline. The absence of any currently docked container ships made this an easy task. Channeling two different Dust circuits at the same time was a different matter. It was something I would never have been able to manage without Garment’s redesign of my costume bringing me more in tune with my Aura. Additionally, the insights from That Undefinable Thing definitely had some applications to the use and nature of Aura. Combined with my level of elemental mastery it allowed me to manage both effects with ease.

A bank of ice rose from the water, providing a stable surface to guide my path around the yard with the other hand I called upon woven pure gravity Dust and channeled it in a series of pulses through the ground of the container yard. Intricate patterns of purple energy snaked under the rows of containers, then, upon covering the breadth of the facility, shifted into a blinding purple glow.

Five glowing paths of gravity Dust trailed out from my position and with a single application everything above them was pulled into the air. Shipping containers, loose equipment, and gang members rose helplessly, like birthday balloons.

To stress a metaphor, some of those balloons were going to be popped.

Five copies of Oni Lee were caught in the gravity effect, pulled from cover and quickly dispatched by either my drones or motoroid. I raced along the water’s edge, ice rising to meet my steps while elemental fury rained down on the storage yard. What was probably a carefully arranged maze of containers was thrown into chaos as gravity fields pulled hundreds of tons of equipment into the air, tornados of wind Dust ravaged the area, spikes of earth scattered barricades, and raging rivers of enhanced water washed paths clear of clones and gang members alike.

If I had been willing to go fully lethal I could have unleashed my stored burn Dust and leveled the entire facility in short order. However, with the body count that would create in unpowered members, and more significantly, the potential of catching Bakuda in the effect, I was forced to take a more conservative approach.

Conservative by my standards, meaning instead of just reducing everything within two blocks to a charred crater I was raining Dust, alchemy, and omni-tool effects down on Oni Lee and any portion of the container yard he dared to use for cover. I danced between monoliths of ice, stone, molten metal, and even persistent wind effects, moving over and through the facility without any interaction with Bakuda’s traps and March’s killing fields. Any time some of his clones managed to launch a flurry of missiles without being immediately dusted, they learned just how easily I could launch blinding slashes of energy from my sword. The sky above Brockton was beginning to look like a patchwork of blue and white as repeated slashes cut through the clouds leaving distortions in the atmosphere, and probably launching no small amount of air into space as a result.

Despite all of that I wasn’t able to land a finishing hit on Oni Lee. I had thought the cape had been quick with his teleport and duplication power when I last faced him, but between Bakuda and however March had instructed him he was pushing it to the limit. From what I could tell no actions were taken as his primary self, he would simply leave a copy to act and move on to safety. It was basically the principle my own duplicates had instilled in me, only taken to the absolute extreme. Even connection to the Dragon’s Pulse wasn’t enough to track his original before it had departed, leaving a chain of five copies behind it.

Even though he had been able to avoid taking a hit the balance of the fight was turning towards my favor. The container yard was literally turning upside down from my actions. Even his largest concentrations of barrages had failed to make it through my combined defenses, and he was running out of avenues from which to strike. I was closing on him, and he knew it.

Which was likely why, after a particularly intense but ultimately futile assault, the masked cape fell back. I couldn’t say where, but there was a decided gap in appearances that made me nervous. I set my motoroid on overwatch, dispatched my drones to the intact portions of the yard, and moved to pick off the last of Bakuda’s stealth devices.

One, two, three shots dropped jamming fields. Then I lost telemetry. More than that, I lost all my aerial observations. It happened in a fraction of a second, and suddenly all five drones were gone and my motoroid was a stream of warnings and error messages as it plummeted towards the ground. Fleet’s onboard program was crippled and didn’t know what was happening. Survey was trying to pull together a response. I felt the tension from both programs and the concern from my remaining duplicate as he prepared to rush to my side.

I didn’t wait for an answer. It didn’t matter what that attack was. All that mattered was it had penetrated my defenses. My motoroid was constructed of materials so durable there was hardly a force on the planet that could scratch them, now it was careening towards the ground in a sparking wreck. My new drones were shielded with kinetic barriers that were durable to such an extent that Purity would need to work to bring them down. They had shattered in less than a second with barely time to recognize the arrival of the attack that brought them down.

I was not waiting around. Survey could pick through those sensor logs later. I hated leaving my motoroid, but it was pure magitek, even in its control systems. What they could learn from it was limited, and I would rather counter their reverse engineering techniques through long range bombardment than any exposure to that attack.

It may have been my connection to Aura, that vague danger sense it provided, but everything was telling me to run. To get out. That whatever their final play was, whatever brought down six aerial units at the same instant was not something I wanted to face. Not now, not ever.

I turned and ran. No, I didn’t run. Running would have kept me here too long. I leapt. I practically flew. Life fiber energy surged through my body as I launched myself out of the container yard like a cannonball. Divine boots cratered the ground beneath me as I pushed off with all my force, and shot towards the city.

Every sense I had was operating at its maximum level. Desperately watching for anything that could be a threat. Hunting for the cause, the vector that allowed that last attack. My motoroid was barely beginning to sink towards the earth and I was soaring away at a desperate speed, leaving the site of this battle behind me. And I still didn’t feel safe.

For good reason, as it happened. My body collided with a form that appeared in midair, directly in the path of my leap. It was the kind of impact that should have sent me into a completely uncontrolled death spiral. Fortunately, the ‘stability’ aspect of my divine boots was a serious enchantment, not something to be defeated by things like a complete lack of leverage. So instead, the collision did nothing to me except bleed momentum as the form exploded into ash.

Unfortunately, it seemed that was the objective, or at least an acceptable objective, of the action. Because another form appeared in my path, and another. More and more speed bled off as I plowed through the duplicates that appeared to intercept me. I shifted the position of my sword to bring them down before they could collide with me, but I had already lost most of my speed.

Oni Lee. Of course, it was Oni Lee. Sacrificing himself, probably at March’s direction to keep me in range of whatever their attack actually was.

The tactic of intercepting my leap may have worked if my movement was as unpowered as it appeared, but I had resources to call upon. Even without flight systems of the level of my motoroid I had gravity, wind, and burn Dust circuits woven into my cape and clothing that would let me rocket past any interference. I was in the process of activating them when the horrible reality of the situation made itself known.

I had prepared for suicide attacks, but the timing and mechanics of Bakuda’s bombs had made the chance of Oni Lee landing an attack unlikely. That was when I had been basing my estimates of his teleport time on past performance and displays during the recent conflicts. That was when I had foolishly dismissed timing as a difficult aspect when March was in play. And that was when I assumed the attack would involve one of Bakuda’s bombs.

That was one of the safest bets. Bakuda was a bundle of twisted ego. The idea that she would allow anyone else to bring down the person who had shown her up, who had embarrassed her, it was insane. But apparently March specialized in insane, and had been able to convince Bakuda to take a back seat in their final assault.

Because when Oni Lee appeared above me, and then beside me, and then around me, and then progressively more and more of what would count as ‘around’ me he wasn’t wielding his micro-missile launcher. He wasn’t holding some Bakuda super bomb. He wasn’t holding any technology at all.

Instead, each copy of the cape held a thick board braced to their arm, like a parody of a shield. Parody because it wasn’t going to do anything to protect its wielder. Not with that misty purple pattern sparking across it.

March’s striker power, that omni-dimensional explosion, was painted on the board held by every copy of Oni Lee. Somehow, impossibly, Oni Lee was able to duplicate March’s ridiculously powerful attack. Oni Lee was able to teleport March’s ridiculously powerful attack. With Oni Lee, March's ridiculously powerful attack could be delivered to anywhere Oni Lee could reach and, with her help, timed perfectly to detonate on top of the victim.

Well, in my case on top, beside, beneath, and around. The Magitech constellation passed by as I realized just how nightmarish this trap actually was. Oni Lee was teleporting without any delay. There was no pause to consider his next location. The only explanation was that he was making his first jump with all his following jumps already planned. As such I was effectively swarmed by a cluster of the deadliest attacks possible, mounted on a delivery system that had been specialized for March’s power.

The item in question was nearly two feet wide and several inches thick. The combination allowed a huge area for her striker power to be carried, with the thickness ensuring the most powerful variant of it. I was receiving information from the magic scanner in my visor and none of it was good. The snaking trail that was perfectly duplicated on each of the shields surrounding me was sparking down to its last moments. Its very last moments. I had a fraction of a second before the simultaneous detonation of an entire swarm of the deadliest effect possible from a parahuman.

I barely had time to react. Without the life fiber energy coursing through me I would have had no time to react. As it stood it took my training, divine reflexes, life fiber alterations, direct enhancements from Tetra, and the full force of One Thing at a Time just to have a hope of taking any action. Mostly it was allowing me to experience the onset of mind-numbing terror at a rate that would have impressed the most cowardly individual on the planet.

Make no mistake. Terror was the correct response to this situation. I was surrounded by death. Absolute, unquestionable death. All my touted invincibility, the progression from the durability of a piece of steel strapped to my wrist, upgraded to hyper-alloys, then Skyforged metals, then mithril, then enchanted metals, then adamantium, then volcano wrought hybrid materials, then full on divine armor, none of it made any difference against this attack.

A single instance of it could kill me. The assembled blast from dozens of copies would reduce my body to the consistency of chunky salsa, at least what portions of it weren’t annihilated by multidimensional effects of the blast.

I was staring death in the face and only had an instant to find a way out. It took much less than that to realize there wasn’t an ‘out’ from this situation. I would be limited to the slightest of actions before the effect went off. March had timed this as close as possible. Whoever, wherever the original Oni Lee was, he would have barely enough time to cast down the bomb board and save himself. Of course, with March what would normally be considered ‘barely enough time’ was basically a guarantee of success.

I put the mechanism of this trap out of my mind. I stopped thinking about how it had been set up, how this attack mechanism could basically kill any cape on the planet with a decent shot against Endbringers. I didn’t consider the implications of this, what would happen if I failed, the aftermath and my very probable death on a single mistake. Instead, I focused solely on finding a way out of this alive.

I couldn’t kill enough of the Oni Lee clones before the detonation. My reflexes weren’t that fast, and every other attack method was too slow. There was no way to clear the crowd.

So, I adjusted my goal from ‘uninjured’ to ‘alive’. Objective? Protect head and chest. Everything else was expendable in the protection of those two areas. If I left this even technically alive, with a functioning brain and enough heart and lungs to keep it going, then I could fix everything else. I didn’t dwell on what that would look like and instead focused solely on that goal. Get out of this technically alive.

The sword was in my hand. My Energize formula had worn off, but that just reduced it from the category of ‘tactical weapon’ to ‘incredibly deadly weapon’. A single second of spare time would have been enough to reduce the clustered clones to mincemeat. I did not have that second. March knew I didn’t have that second. That thinker had made sure I didn’t have that second.

I could disperse some of them. I had enough time for a single swipe, one arc of death cutting through the cluster. Enough to cut a swath through the crowd of clones, but not enough to save me. I needed more. And I was limited in what I could deploy.

Dust was out of the question. Even with improved Aura control from my costume I couldn’t activate the woven effects nearly fast enough to make a difference here. Not even with my mastery of elemental weaponry. Not even the burn Dust, which benefited from my pyrokinesis.

I needed something that could launch an attack with no delay, one that was deadly and one that I could direct. I had a single option, and was already activating it. The effect I could most quickly deploy was the melee contingency of my omni-tool. Going back to its original purpose, sending out a cloud of plasma to clear space for a military engineer who found himself over his head. The way I had used it against Uber, and the way I was using it now.

There was no time for consideration. All my previous thoughts stood bundled in the instant of recognition of the situation. Once I started to act everything sped up to the true pace of the situation. A blinding instant of desperate panic as I tried to save my life from the deadliest combination of cape powers possible.

My right hand gripped the plasma blade and swung up over my head. For me it was like moving through soup, slowly cutting through each copy of the masked duplicator, watching cloth and flesh vaporize under the extreme heat and energy fields of the blade before fading into a cloud of ash. The sweep took the blade in an arc across my chest and over my head, cutting through everybody in its path, and clearing the most dangerously placed of the watermarked bombs.

At the same time my omni-tool surged with energy, redlining its systems to convert stores of omni-gel into clouds of high energy plasma. Even as I swung my blade I felt the warmth of the burning material through my pyrokinesis. That flare of glowing power, crafted by machinery and directed through technology. And now directed through my will.

Instead of the dispersed cloud of burning mist that would normally accompany the release of the melee contingency the effect in play was closer to a slow-motion video of a lightning strike. Concentrated tendrils of high energy plasma snaked out from the omni-tool, forcing their way through the resistive medium of the atmosphere.

Normally this was a non-issue, but normally you weren’t attempting a precision strike on a dozen targets in less than a tenth of a second. Trying to bring thermal energy to bear at that speed was like trying to force water through a concrete wall. A rather apt metaphor as threads of plasma forked and twitched their way through the air until they encountered one of their targets. At that point a surge of power flowed forth through the path of reduced resistance, annihilating any clone it touched.

I have no idea what this must have looked like from an outside perspective. The sudden appearance of a mid-air rugby scrum followed by a blue sword flash and the cascading crackle of directed plasma? Would it even be recognizable when viewed at normal speed?

Honestly I was too focused to care. All that mattered was directing my attacks. Every clone that dusted improved my chances for survival. Every extra inch of sword movement, every burst of heat, it brought me closer to living through this. I raced against the dozen glowing clocks that filled my field of vision as I desperately tried to bring down just one more clone before the sparking trail reached the end of its path.

And then it did. Purple blue explosions rippled from every surface. The copies that held them were consumed by the effect, but their work was done. I felt a multitude of blasts tear into my body, ripping, battering, shattering. Nothing made any difference to it. It shredded my costume, ruptured skin, pulped flesh, and shattered bone.

It was an absolute maelstrom of destruction, and not just from the weight of the blast. Every piece of equipment I was wearing was reduced to ruin. Armor plates bent, buckled and fractured, micromanipulators seized, warped and burned out. My omni-tool ruptured, sending a spray of concentrated omni-gel to be swallowed in the chaos. My costume and cape, with all its enchantments, rune work, and Dust circuitry was sundered, placing me in the center of an overload of elemental energy that would have been impressive if not for the competing might of the clustered omni-dimensional explosion that was centered on my body.

And then I was plummeting. I struggled to breathe, blink, or think, but my desperate gambit had succeeded, at least in a broad sense. I wasn’t dead. I was alive enough to feel the world drop away and sense the ground approaching all too fast.

My body impacted the surface of the container yard with a wet splat. I had just enough awareness to see the trail of my motoroid’s smoking wreck as it followed my example and buried itself into the ground at terminal velocity, casting up a shower of green sparks from its impact site.

The sparks, the magitek emissions caused a reaction, a quick movement that drew my attention. Movement in relation to magitek. Cape. No, capes.

I struggled to shift my body towards the movement. The pain I was in was beyond description. I couldn’t even come up with a clever allegory for it. It was just terrible. A deep, personal pain that was sharp, burning, and freezing all at the same time.

With the state of my body, it was no wonder. I might have had better luck trying to find a bone that wasn’t broken. I was a crumpled mess of ruined flesh and wrecked equipment. My costume was in tatters, letting me see the devastated state of my body. Well, partially see. My visor had taken part of a blast. Half of it was gone and the other half was shattered, rendering the lens useless. My exposed eye could see, but my vision was tinged red, for obvious reasons.

Still, with some desperate flailing I was able to shift myself just enough to see the beginnings of movement. Figures approaching my position as the Magic constellation passed me by. A man in a red demon mask was in the lead. Oni Lee, with his launcher shouldered and his stride professional. No sense of anger, pride, or determination. The same empty mannerisms with which he always conducted himself.

Behind him I saw the much more apprehensive forms of ABB gang members. Some were armed, but several were carrying small pieces of equipment. Video cameras. They were recording, or possibly streaming this. No matter what they were holding they didn’t seem happy to be here, and the reason was clear.

Before the attack the container yard had been turned upside down by Dust effects. Now it had been turned inside out, and also by Dust effects. I could see exactly what had happened. Miniaturization had allowed me to condense an insane amount of Dust circuits into my cloak and costume. Those concerns I had about Garment’s dresses counting as tactical weapons? The circuits in my costume were more condensed, efficient, and dozens of times more numerous.

It was an arsenal that could level a city, and it had just been detonated. Within a city. Well, at the edge of a city, but that was a small mercy. March’s attack had torn through meticulously crafted control circuitry and let loose blasts of raw Dust in every direction, flying off like the spokes of a wheel. Just from where I was lying I could see a miniature glacier of ice streaking out into the bay, along with a tiny mountain range, a fifteen-foot-wide line of fire sizzling and sparking on the surface of the water, a deep gouge cut into the earth, and a solid, unmoving bank of mist, the result of a release of steam Dust.

That was just what was extending through the container yard and into the bay. I didn’t want to think about what had happened to the Docks.

Really, I couldn’t think about what had happened to the Docks. I couldn't think about much of anything. The pain was just too bad. On top of every other effect, I was now aware of the sensation of my nerves being electrocuted and a deep seething ache extending all the way to my bones. It was a combination of every type of pain you could imagine, all turned up to eleven and served at the same time.

I knew I needed to push past it. I needed to focus, to activate my nanites, to heal and to get back in the fight. But I couldn’t. It was too much pain, too much damage. I wanted to scream, but I could barely breathe. Instead, I settled for vague flailing twitches.

I watched as the roaring wall of burn Dust parted, revealing a towering figure. Ten feet tall and covered in silver scales. Lung had made his appearance. Specifically made his appearance. There were two cameras on him, one on me, and one catching the reaction of his men. Was this going to be spliced together later, or did he have a director somewhere coordinating things? Someone from a local TV station with a bomb in their head, sitting in a control room saying things like ‘Go to camera three. Now zoom in for the big execution.’.

I didn’t know. I had no idea what was happening. I couldn’t focus enough to access my implant, my omni-tool was a wreck, and I had no idea if there was any functionality left in the crashed motoroid beyond the regular sparks that caused synchronized flinches in Lung and Oni Lee.

Lung. Lung was big. Lung was partially ramped up. Lung had been fighting. He had been fighting someone to prepare for this. March had managed that again. She had found Lung an opponent and kept him away from me until she was ready to strike. The question of who he had been fighting was answered by the form Lung was dragging behind him.

White, gold, and red. No, just white and gold. The red was blood. Triumph. Lung lifted the former Ward by one leg and tossed him aside. I didn’t know how this had been set up. Isolated while on a patrol when the attacks began? Driven to the container yard, or captured and forced to fight? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was Lung had his sacrifice fight. How they had kept that concealed, especially with a cape whose power was super shouting I had no idea. Stealth tech of some description, most likely.

That didn’t matter. All that mattered was the lizard man striding towards me. Lung stopped at the front of his men and grinned down with his deformed, fanged mouth.

“So…” His voice was coarse, like it was coming from a throat not designed for human speech. Still, he pressed on, posturing as he went. “The mighty, fallen. Upstarts, ignorant children who think they can challenge Lung, that they know the meaning of power. They all learn. All that have tried to oppose me have paid for their insolence. One more link in a chain of failure.”

He gestured towards his side with a clawed hand and a smaller figure stepped through the fog bank. I recognized the short stature, the military uniform in green and red, and the rabbit ears. Though last time I had seen them they had emerged from a peaked cap, not an executioner’s hood.

Theatrics. They were making a show of this. That was the reason for the multiple cameras, for the posturing, for the dress-up and the oversized sword that March was carrying. Lung knew I could heal, and he didn’t know the limits of my durability. He wasn’t going to let himself be seen smashing impotently at a broken cape trying to end his life. He was apparently willing to order an elaborate execution, at least by the standards of a field conflict.

It was a fact I was desperately grateful for. I had no doubt that if blue lines sprouted on my flesh they would cut this short to go for the killing stroke. At the moment I could barely move, much less fight or dodge. But there was one factor in my advantage. I was a paranoid bastard, and while I hadn’t prepared for this particular situation some of my obsessive concern was currently paying dividends.

Nanites were not my only method of healing. They were unquestionably my best method of healing, as well as my least costly and easiest, but I had many others. Evermore Alchemy wasn’t going to be much help at the moment. Even though I had obsessively carried the components on me I was in no state to mix them. But that wasn’t the only form of backup medical alchemy I had on my person.

Healing potions. Ever since I had set out to rescue Weld I had kept a supply of healing potions on hand. Both the true healing potions of Innate Talent: Alchemist and the restorative potions of Natural Alchemy had been continually stocked and, thanks to the efforts of my duplicates, maintained at the peak of my crafting ability and power.

I obviously wasn’t going to be pulling an emergency potion vial out of the wreckage of my equipment, but that didn’t matter. With these potions the important part was getting them into your body. Drinking was obviously the most convenient method, but having them blasted into your body cavity as you caught a devastating multi-spatial explosion could also do the trick.

I mean, it included a pile of broken glass with it, but in my current state that was the least of my worries.

Immediate exposure to my supply of true healing potions was probably a major factor in my survival. The red liquid of those potions would trigger immediate restoration of the body, and probably was fighting against the damage of March’s blasts as they were accumulating.

Natural Alchemy potions were far less magical in their effects. Technically they weren’t magical at all, just concentrated natural energy. My buffing natural alchemy potions were currently in the sparking remains of my motoroid, but I had kept the healing potions at hand. As a consequence, I was under the effect of about a half dozen highly potent restorative effects that functioned in a manner far less showy than my nanite healing.

It was a power I had never used before, never shown to anyone. I had to hope that that lack of exposure would be enough to throw off the coordination of the damn timing thinker who had been assigned to my execution.

As March sauntered across the yard with her oversized borderline-novelty sword held lightly she gave no sense of urgency. The giant two-handed blade was held in a light grip and swung back and forth, its tip leaving purple trails in the ground that would spark and burst into fissures the moment she had stepped over them. Trust March to lean into showmanship.

Actually, the entire ABB was putting more work into this presentation than I expected. I had made some pompous stands myself, but it was always towards another purpose. Buying time for a secondary objective, allowing people to get into place, or just fishing for information. I never showed off for the purpose of showing off.

Well, never intentionally showed off. My aesthetic powers didn’t give me that much choice in the matter. Even now, lying in a splatter of my own blood, I had a sense I was positioned like something out of a tragic renaissance painting. I could barely move my body, but my posing power was making sure what feeble adjustments I could make were going to look good.

I had a sense that this was very much about the spectacle for the ABB. Brian had said how important reputation was for capes. While I hadn’t managed a decisive victory, I had consistently driven off their forces. The ABB was the most dangerous and feared force in the city, and yet every time I encountered their forces they were routed. This was more than an assassination; it was a show of strength.

Specifically, it was a desperate attempt to create the impression that they had power, control, and command of the situation. Basically, anything that would dilute the accurate impression that they had pulled a Hail Mary sucker punch and gotten in a lucky hit against a cape who would otherwise have happily fought their combined forces on his own. Who was in fact doing just that until a moment ago.

March was certainly playing for the cameras as she sauntered towards me. I could feel the potions working, the worst of the internal damage pulling itself together. The more she dragged this out the better my chances, but that was a terrifying prospect when all it would take was one swipe of that stupid sword to end me for good.

I really cannot overstate how stupid that sword was. Even with my mind wracked by pain I was immediately drawn to the impracticality of the weapon. It was the wrong size for her, but frankly almost any blade she would find would be too large for someone her size, so the lack of ergonomics was a minor issue, but one my powers were still happy to inform me of. It was also stainless steel, at least which parts of it weren’t cheap enamel or useless decorations. It was a horrible material to use for a blade, but then again March didn’t really care about a sword’s conventional durability, not with her power.

The look of the piece was a joke, an insult. It was an over designed mess, something out of a bad fantasy movie or video game. Overly detailed embellishments on the blade, a ridiculous spiky guard, the grip lined with a material that looked nice but obviously provided no meaningful traction, and for some reason a short chain dangling off of the pommel.

It was style over substance for someone who didn’t need to worry about substance. She obviously just wanted a big scary blade to do her final swing. I could have designed something that would follow the aesthetic directions that mess was going for, look better, and simultaneously actually function as a proper sword.

But none of that was relevant to the situation, it was just a consequence of the powers rolling around in my head. And possibly the distracting aspects of the mind-numbing pain that still coursed through my body as the Size constellation missed a connection.

The young cape giggled as she approached, causing the black hood to crinkle and her rabbit ears to shake irreverently. “So here we are. Little dominos, all falling down.”

I could barely manage a cough in response, a glob of blood leaking out and dripping down my chin. The display only seemed to amuse the girl, at least until a thaumic discharge from my crashed motoroid caused a cascade of reactions through the assembled capes.

Oni Lee flinched slightly, a disturbing response from the normally emotionless man. Lung tensed, then turned towards the crash site with what was somehow a more irate look than his partially transformed face normally wore. There was a dramatic response from the collapsed form of Triumph as the hero twitched, writhed, and finally vomited in a visceral display.

I didn’t know how much of that was the reaction to the magitek energy and how much was the toll he had taken from going one on one with Lung while I was dueling with Oni Lee. I knew he had some kind of healing factor and a not terrible brute rating. If he wasn’t dead yet there was a good chance he would recover, at least depending on how the rest of this mess played out.

It was somehow unsurprising that March had a reaction to the thaumic energy that was diametrically opposed to every other cape present. Rather than tense she seemed to relax, to sink into the burst of power, and react with almost longing as it passed. She paused her advance to give the crash site a long look then turned back towards my prone form.

“Re-markable.” She sang. “You really did it. You saw it as well.” She whispered conspiratorially. I felt my reforming guts wrench at the implications of her words. “But you didn’t use it. Why? If you could pull back the curtain like that, why move on?” She shook her head. “Such a shame. Someone who can reach the agents, but decided to move on. I don’t know the kind of look you got, how it worked, but to mistake the finish line for a stepping stone? I’ll never understand that.”

March… March knew about passengers. Really knew. She wasn’t speaking like someone who had read the theory and was working from abstract theories. The reference to a ‘look behind the curtain’, she had seen them. I didn’t know how she had managed that, but somehow she had gotten a look at the mechanics of the cycle. Somehow she had seen how things operated, the mechanics that drove powers, and was working towards it.

My passenger as much as confirmed it. That was her threat. That was the ‘worse than the Endbringers’ thing she was working towards. The passengers. The source of powers. March wanted access to it for some purpose. It didn’t matter what her intentions were, messing around with that was so dangerous that she could have been after nothing but a sightseeing tour and still trigger an unparalleled disaster.

And March had a multidimensional attack. If anyone could threaten the realm of passengers, it was her. This slip of a girl with her childish speech patterns, her ridiculous costume, and her irreverent behavior could trigger a disaster of unparalleled proportions.

March was watching me, watching my reactions. Even with her face concealed I could see how much she was enjoying it. There must be something about thinkers that made them get a thrill from revealing how much they knew to the ignorant and misinformed. I was helpless, in pain, and panicking at the implications of her words and she was loving every moment of it.

“Oh,” She leaned over me and crooned. “Is that regret? Disappointment? Someone didn’t grab the brass ring when they had the chance and now it’s slipping away.” The motoroid sparked again and March glanced towards it. “Did you even know what you had, or was it buried under all that other technology? So many new ideas that you let the best one pass you by.”

I coughed again. I could feel the potions working and it wasn’t a pleasant sensation. I had never tested this kind of formula before, it was created off of the understanding granted by my power, not any practical experience. I knew what it could do, but not how it would act, what it would feel like. I could feel my body coming together, but the sensation of it was almost as bad as the pain.

No. No it wasn’t. Nothing was as bad as this pain. The healing sensation was distinct from the pain, but nowhere near as horrible. It was like a million tiny cords writhing through my body. It was distinct, distinct enough to be noticeable over the combo platter of pain being shoved into my mind, but its level of unpleasantness didn’t even approach the horrible feeling of my injuries.

“Don’t worry.” March whispered. “I’ll make sure it’s put to good use. So many doors opening, and we’ll be together again, forever.” She paused and looked down. “Well, not you. Shame. Alone forever. And you could have had eternity.” She looked to her blade, then paused before reaching towards me. “Oh, one last thing before the last thing. I promised Bakuda I’d give you a present, especially from her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to get her toys ready before you decided to send that inconsiderate houseguest of a robot, so this will have to do.”

With my one clear eye I saw her hand reach towards my face. “Now, don’t flinch, or we’ll miss the big finish.”

I bit down on the pain and held as rigidly still as I could while she traced a line with the tip of her gloved finger. She started on my forehead and moved straight down, passing over my eye. Through my eye. The feeling was electric. Her finger wasn’t moving across the surface, it was dipping slightly beneath the skin. Phasing through the material as it left a trail that felt like a swarm of ants beneath my skin.

Her striker power. If it wasn’t obvious enough I could see from the purplish tinge that covered my vision as the watermark passed over and through my eye. Then she pulled her hand back and I felt the mark begin to spark, snaking down my face, flaring in front of my vision and terminating on my cheek.

Then it burst. My face split open in a fresh blast of pain. What vision I had went black and I was limited to shadows through the shattered lens of my visor and what I could pull from my other senses over the pain. The first thing being Lung calling out in a gruff voice.

“Enough. Finish it.”

With my vision blocked I could focus on other things without distraction. Most of that was pain, the horrible pain gripping my body, but that wasn’t everything. I was without my eyes, but I had other senses.

Through my pyrokinesis I could still feel the heat around me. The still roaring wall of flame caused by an expulsion of divinely enhanced Dust from my costume when March’s attack struck. The little blobs of body heat signaling the positions of capes and ABB members. Some under the effects of my earlier subdual attacks, collapsed and running slightly cooler than the active members, some of which were running around to provide aid to their downed comrades and some who were attending to the ABB capes, carrying items with their own bursts of heat. Weapons, supplies, or video equipment. The distinction between technokinesis and pyrokinesis was nebulous. I could feel the heat coursing through the equipment carried as well as I could the heat flowing through a gang member’s veins.

It was all passive. I couldn’t reach out or influence anything, not in my current state, not with my current focus. All I could do was watch and pray. Pray that I would be able to recover before March readied the massive sword and dropped it at Lung’s order.

Lung. That massive ball of thermal energy standing like a man. Seeing it like this I wondered how I could have ever missed him. How had he been able to hide during my attack while also fighting his own battle? How had I ever overlooked that conduit to a bottomless well of flame standing on the battlefield.

And it wasn’t just pyrokinesis that drew my attention. Lung radiated life force in a way I had never detected before. The Dragon’s Pulse from his body was like an entirely different form of existence. Not the cycle of intake, growth and expulsion of energy that characterized most people. Lung burst with life, with power. There was a torrent within him.

What little I could detect of emotions was more than enough to pick up the state of his being. He was angry, and that anger was strength. Not only was he running at a level that would trouble most capes in the city, he was actually holding himself back. The nature of his power, possibly the will of his passenger, stood ready to throw open the flood gates. Faced with a broken, battered, cape seconds away from execution his power was on edge. It was ready for a fight, and making sure Lung was ready as well. Ready for war. Ready for conflict.

Conflict. Was that what had been happening in this city? Passengers loved conflict. It was the purpose of their existence. Anything that facilitated it was encouraged. Anything that allowed them to grow through the experience was rewarded. I had never noticed before, but I had never been focused on the Dragon’s Pulse in the presence of a power as naked in its motives as Lung’s was.

The response to conflict was not supposed to work this way. It was slow, gradual, and largely inconsistent. I had seen the passengers, been fully appraised on the mechanics of their existence. They were not supposed to respond this way. But Lung’s was, and, while the resonance wasn’t as clear, so were March’s and Oni Lee’s. Their passengers liked the conflict I presented and the information that could be gained from facing me. And when a passenger liked something they did what they could to encourage it.

I knew my passenger wasn’t normal, but I had underestimated how atypical it was in the eyes of other powers. Whatever they were gaining from facing me was something that normal parahuman conflict couldn’t equate to. I was effectively a walking Sechen range for everyone who dealt with me.

The implications were drastic, but I wasn’t in a position to dwell on them, just as I wasn’t in a position to dwell on the Forge connecting to the Toolkits constellation, connecting to a minor mote that granted me a woodworking workshop. All the connection to the heat energy of my environment, of the flows of chi through the world, wouldn’t save me when March was raising her stupid sword and looking to Lung for his signal.

Or so I thought. Combined I could feel the energy pattern of the world around me, the position of March’s body posed to strike, Lung raising his arm to signal her, even the pattern spread across the yard by the fading light of the sun as it sank behind the city. I could feel all that around me, but I could also feel the energy within me.

It had been the strike to my face. That petty act of sadism, that last injury, had triggered a response. The Dragon’s Pulse let me feel the energy of my own body, the way it shifted based on health and injury. When March split my face, I felt the disruption as my body was damaged. Then I felt part of it snap back. Part of the energy coursing through my body instantly restored. Regenerated. The immediate recovery that was only possible from a lifeform whose healing abilities defied all physical explanation and understanding.

I had been surrounded by bombs of unbelievable power, all of which had blasted inward. The result was devastation, and the surface of my body was ravaged. It was a miracle that all my limbs were still attached, though that was marginal in some cases. I was being held together by divine fortitude and healing potions, which were the only effects that allowed me to survive the blast and the shrapnel of my equipment that had been embedded into my body.

Through the panic, the pain, and the threat of death I had forgotten exactly what was included in my equipment. Who was included in my equipment. The writhing within my body wasn’t due to the natural alchemy potion. The snap back of life energy following March’s power splitting my face wasn’t my own. And the red strand hanging from my mouth wasn’t blood.

As the final rays of the sun slipped behind the city and the yard was cast into the deep shadows of sunset I opened myself up to the power that had been embedded within me. I felt that familiar presence. The warm, caring, slightly petulant outlook was nowhere to be found. Instead, it was confused, frightened and angry.

I extended my mind through the Dragon’s Pulse and felt the link to my own life energy. The scale of damage communicated through the link took that anger to full blind burning rage. Lung dropped his arm and March prepared to swing her final blade.

And the world turned red.

The blazing crimson light burning from my body was no normal illumination. It had a physical presence. An aura blasted out from my prone form, sending wind and dust billowing, and knocking the normally assured thinker reeling, sliding back and struggling to keep her footing.

The pulsing energy was enough to push my body from the ground. I struggled and planted my feet, feeling my torso lifted by the sheer weight of power flowing forth. With a surge of energy my body levered over my knees, lurching upright and then collapsing into a forward hunch, all while blazing red fibers writhed forth from my injuries.

Life fibers could draw strength from two sources. Bio neural energy, and blood. Up to this point Tetra had only been exposed to neural energy. Sometimes in extreme amounts, and sometimes to the point of being a serious threat to those around her, but she was always limited, restricted to what could be channeled through the surface of the body. Through contact with skin.

The energy that could be gained from blood was on a completely different level. My own durability had effectively negated any chance of accidental exposure, even while using her in the field. Then, in a single instant, March had coordinated a blast that drove the life fibers clinging to the surface of my body deep within my tissue.

The blast had been horribly damaging for Tetra, but life fibers could regenerate like nothing else in the universe. The damage from the explosion had been devastating, but it was an attack from which she could quickly recover. And she found herself in a strange, frightening world.

Surrounded by a medium of the greatest power she had ever encountered, but cut off from everything she knew. I was too injured, in too much pain to feel her through the Dragon’s Pulse, leaving her alone, panicked, and angry. She wanted the familiar, she wanted security, and she wanted to be safe.

Then March had split my face open, and she was able to glean what was happening. That I was hurt. That I was in danger. That I needed help.

This, the burning blasts of crimson light acting as a physical force on the world, the desperate flailing of her fibers as she struggled to hold my body together, the pure, unlimited rage burning within her at those who would injure her, me, us, it was the result of all those things coming to a head.

Tetra was powerful in her base form, just from the power she could pull from the surface of my body. Now she was wrapped around my organs, through my muscles, in my veins and parallel to my nerves. She was surrounded by blood, the truest form of power for a creature of life fibers. Blood. No, more than that. It was divine blood. All the power of my demigod physiology that had allowed me to endure her surface drains with trivial effort was flowing into her now, the strength of blood boosted by divine ichor.

She had no context for what she was currently experiencing, and I was right there with her. The power of life fibers was already intoxicating, but this was beyond anything I had felt before. It actually caused a laugh to bubble to my lips. Well, a wet, panting sound that probably the closest thing I could manage at the moment. The sensation coursing through me from the life fiber energy was enough to drive the pain from my body. It was her first blood. Wait, first blood of a Greek demigod. Greek first blood. That was…

“Proto… Aima….” I spook the Greek phrase with a mad grin on my slumped face, a burning strand of life fibers hanging from the corner of my mouth. I didn’t need to see, really couldn’t see, but could feel the presence of those around me.

Fear. There was fear everywhere. From the reactions of the Dragon’s Pulse to the simple biological reaction of blood being pulled from the faces of the gang members, causing a drop in the temperature of their skin. Even Oni Lee and March were registering caution and confusion.

But not Lung. Whatever he was feeling was impossible to read over the torrent of excitement from his power, his passenger. The excitement for the coming conflict was palpable, no matter how he tried to restrain it.

Whatever spell had been cast; March was the first to push through it. It made sense that the timing thinker would try to regain the initiative. She raised the stupid sword and pointed toward me. “You…”

Her voice died as I lurched upright, levering too far and feeling my head snap back. Feet planted I pulled my body forward and lowered my head to face her. Tattered scraps of a costume clung to my body, interspersed with open wounds and broken equipment. The face I lowered to her was concealed by half a visor, shreds of a mask, and a deep vertical fissure where the right eye would be. I could feel the heat from Tetra’s glowing fibers as they zigzagged across the gap, working to pull it closed.

The same effect was happening across my body, red fibers frantically trying to close wounds, reinforce damage, or just wildly flailing through the air in an attempt to find any purchase.

I couldn’t really see March, but I could feel her. Feel the position of her body, her movements, and even her intention and hostility through the Dragon’s Pulse. My will, my anger, was united with Tetra. She was the cause of this. She would pay.

She adjusted her hold on the blade and opened her mouth to say something, but it was drowned out by the sound of exploding concrete. My movement left a furrow in the foundation of the container yard where I had stood. My sudden arrival shattered the ground beneath March’s feet. She probably would have lost her footing if not for the fact that I had the wrist of her sword arm in a vice grip.

I could feel her mind, her power, her energy at work, groping for a way out of the situation. A way to turn things to her advantage, the way she always did. That wouldn’t happen. Loose fibers from wounds on my arm wrapped around March’s wrist, burning through her costume and causing the rabbit cape to scream and flail. I pulled an arm around my body and struck out, catching the thinker in the side without releasing my grip.

Even with the speed of my movement I could see her try to twist her body to absorb the force. The strength of her timing power, active even while being overwhelmed. At best it saved her from instantly being killed by the blow. I felt bones snap as my fist connected with the tiny cape, both in her torso and in her arm where my grip held her. The impact tore her from my grip in a bloody motion and sent her flying, painfully bouncing along the concrete before stopping dead against a cargo container.

Without a second thought I bust forward again, launching myself at Lung before the hulking cape could react. This time there were no complicated holds, no elegant maneuvers, no strategy. Just a straight shot. A direct hit to the center of his mass.

Scales shattered under the force of my blow and the ABB’s leader went flying. There was none of March’s bouncing on the concrete. He launched in a direct line that embedded the man into a shipping container, collapsing it and the surrounding stacks on top of him.

Silence reigned through the courtyard. I knew that I needed to strike, to stop them. To finish Lung off before he could get any stronger. To end Oni Lee to remove the threat he posed. To make sure March stayed down for good. But I couldn’t.

Because the pain came back.

I dropped to a knee and screamed. My body was finally intact enough to express the total agony I was feeling. I let every ounce of the horrible feeling gripping my body flow into that sound, and cried out to the heavens. I swear I could see the containers shake around me.

I didn’t know why it was hurting so much. Yes, I was horribly injured and held together by a patch work of alien parasite tendrils, but that shouldn’t explain why the worst hurt wasn’t coming from my injuries. It was coming from everywhere else.

And then I saw it.

Snaking across exposed flesh, at least what parts that were intact enough to see, was a burning red line. And then a jagged yellow line pushing its way to the surface. Then a gray fissure. Then a sharp green twist. Then an angular blue chain of polygons.

Dust. When March had split me like a party piñata and sent overpowered dust effects flying in every direction not all of it had been blasted outward. Just like how Tetra had been driven into my body a portion of the Dust woven into my clothes had been infused into my flesh.

I knew Dust could be used by embedding it into your body. I knew and I never even attempted it. That was because the process was both dangerous, difficult to control, and intensely painful. Even if you could withstand the damage the very nature of dust would set off every pain receptor it encountered. It was an agonizing process and an absolute last resort.

And that was assuming you were infusing a limited area, or using a couple of crystals. Not that you took divinely enhanced Dust and drove it into the deep tissue of your body. It was no wonder I was in agony. I was carrying a motherload of Dust that was firing without any direction or control.

I watched helplessly as the dust patterns that had bubbled to the surface began to glow, spark, smoke, frost over, or in the case of one line of rock Dust, begin to merge with the concrete beneath my hand. I did not have the Aura control to direct this. I barely had any Aura control to begin with. All my work with that power had been facilitated by the training wheels that were my costume and shield. Now the costume was in tatters and the shield was wrecked.

No. No, the shield wasn’t wrecked. I didn’t know how I knew that, but despite the twisted remains of the adamantium band on my wrist being clearly visible I knew the shield was fine. It… it was the runes. The soul-bound enchatment. That was more than just a base emulation, a teleport effect. It was an act of magic that had been crafted by divine perfection. A true emulation of Miss Militia’s power, and Miss Militia didn’t lose access to a weapon just because it took damage.

I could feel the link. The connection between myself and the icon of my Aura. I needed it, desperately, as a way to access my Aura, to mitigate the damage of the Dust in my system. That need, the burning necessity made the connection grow stronger.

This wouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t like calling the weapon from a distance of a few feet. This was restoration to its true form after catastrophic damage. A return to start, to the beyond perfect form that had been infused into the item.

I was running out of time. The dust was spreading, growing stronger. Even with the durability of my remaining shreds of costume helping me endure the damage the pain would leave me incapacitated. The Forge helpfully informed me that Clothing constellation had made a connection, Super Sea Snails. A little aquarium of ten special sea snails whose shells could empower clothing in… confusing ways.

Putting that aside and fighting through the pain I raised my left hand into the air. Burning lines in a dozen hues danced across it as the Dust continued to advance. My fingers convulsed in pain, warping my hand into a twisted claw. I bit down and focused on the link. It was there. I could reach it. It would come if I called, if I screamed for it.

“TRAUMA!”

A glowing gray mass bust from my body, warping around my hand and forming into the gauntlet and shield of my Aura weapon. A clawed metal glove extended from the tips of my fingers to past my elbow. A disk of serrated metal was mounted on the forearm, a nest of cruel barbs, spikes, and razors ringing the glowing reticle of the lantern. Beneath the shield a spool of razor wire was mounted next to a grapnel launcher.

As I watched, red strands of Tetra’s fibers began wrapping round the black metal of the shield and gauntlet. It seemed to be driven by equal parts curiosity and excitement and the fibers wove over the surface, through joints, and along edges of the blades. With a final twist the mass secured itself, assigning a crimson pattern to the black metal and linking it to the life fibers coursing through my body.

There was a gray shimmer and the Dust coursing through my body, well it didn’t settle so much as hold position. The pain dropped from mind numbing to merely arduous. It was like a weight falling from my shoulders, and with a final push of will I climbed to my feet and called to my nanites.

I felt the shudder go through the ABB grunts as the blue lines slowly spread over my body. Then I saw their reactions as the nanites closed the fissure in my face and rebuilt my eye. Wounds Tetra had been knitting together closed on their own, and bones and muscle were reformed. The mess that was my torso was quickly repaired, making me acutely aware of what a dangerous state I was in, and how lucky I had been to avoid immediate death.

And how I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Tetra was still embedded inside my body. The nanites couldn’t resolve the situation. She was effectively fused with several parts of my body, including vital organs. The extensive training that I had done with her, and her exposure to my blood, was causing a level of biological confusion. The extraction would be a delicate, directed process, not something I could manage with split focus in the field.

And there was another issue. Blood. Tetra was still surrounded by my blood, and she had no understanding of its importance or how to regulate her behavior. She was still drawing in blood to fuel herself, and would continue until there was no more blood. I hadn’t noticed how light headed I had been getting before the nanite restoration reversed the effect. Now the reality of the situation was sinking in.

I had just gotten the Tailor power. I knew what life fibers were capable of and how to work with them. How to safely work with them. Part of that meant knowing the dangers of working with them, the risks they could pose.

The idea of blending a person with life fibers was theoretically possible, but that was theoretical in the extreme. The idea that maybe, somehow, some form of symbiosis could be induced. In ideal conditions. If you started very young and eased in over the entire period of childhood development. Trying it on an older child was just torture that would end in failure. Trying it on an adult was just a complicated form of execution.

My physiology protected me from some of the worst effects, but there were certain problems that couldn’t be countered. The rate at which my nanites could restore blood was currently faster than Tetra was consuming it, but she was getting stronger, and that meant her drain was accelerating. Not quickly, but consistently. If this fight drew itself out I would start losing ground. Two guesses as to what happens if you run out of blood, and the first one doesn’t count.

I was pulled out of my contemplation by the sound of wrenching metal. Silver claws punched through one of the containers in the pile created by Lung’s impact. A gout of fire flowed out as the gap was ripped wider, peeling open the steel and revealing an empowered Lung, over twelve feet tall and wreathed in fire. His body was beginning to shift away from a human form, with digitigrade legs and an extended neck, as well as an expression of inhuman fury on his face.

I felt Tetra’s drive to charge in and annihilate him, but I forced myself to hold back. This was a bad match. Lung was approaching the point where he could heal off almost anything, and he was advancing quickly. Much faster than normal. Meeting force with force would only accelerate that growth. Every piece of equipment I had prepared for this was wrecked. A quick check through my shield showed March’s blast had even reached my subspace pocket, damaging the equipment stored there.

Stupid omni-dimensional blast.

I needed to hit him hard enough to put him down in one shot, but with Oni Lee’s presence I wasn’t sure I could manage that, and any drawn-out conflict would make things worse. If I was in a better state I might be able to field craft something or use alchemy, but that just wasn’t possible while maintaining nanites, holding back Tetra’s inhuman anger and managing the dust in my system.

The smart thing would be to make sure March was finished, fall back, and reconnect with my remaining duplicate. It was still hard to focus on my implant, but he had messaged me the instant he learned about the attack. Help was coming. I didn’t need to get caught in a fight.

Then I felt a twitching sensation on my right hand. My eyes dropped and I froze. A tattered and stained white glove was pulling itself together, patching loose threads and making links to torn sections of cloth. I felt the same set of actions beneath the gauntlet on my right hand. Across my body the shredded remains of my costume began to shift, moving from a ragged collection of scraps into as close to a fashionable arrangement as possible. Threads flowed together, material was sewed into new shapes, and even some of the protruding life fibers were worked into the design.

The design. Garment. Garment had been hurt. Not just a few holes and tears to a dress she was piloting, but serious damage to the gloves, to the core of her being. I had never worried about her when she came with me. My Fashion reinforcement power extended to all the clothing I wore, including Garment’s gloves. They were some of the most durable items on the planet when connected to me.

And March’s blasts had torn through that durability like nothing. I didn’t know what would happen to Garment if the gloves were damaged, but I was seeing it now. The gloves acted as the focus and anchor for Garment’s spirit and powers. With them in shreds she was reduced to a fraction of her former strength.

What would have been a lighting quick repair complete with summoned materials was a slow ponderous shifting of fabric. Still, even in her reduced state, even while damaged and broken she was trying to help me. To do what she could.

Anger burned within me. The rage I had been holding back broke through. Maybe I would have been able to keep it under control, but Tetra was feeling the same thing. She didn’t understand the nuances of it, but she knew who Garment was, she liked Garment, and she knew that Garment was hurt.

The Dragon’s Pulse linking us became a feedback loop, reinforcing each other’s fury, anger on behalf of the person feeling anger, repeated until the rage was a palpable thing. Until I was glowing like a red sun and ready to rain destruction upon my enemies. I was racing against Lung’s power and my own limitations. Even with nanites restoring me, eventually Tetra was going to outpace them and bring disaster for both of us. But Garment had been hurt. None of that mattered. All that mattered was beating the person responsible. All that mattered was stopping Lung before I ran out of blood.

Before my body is dry.

Lung tried to move first, dropping his body and shifting as to charge. I was flying towards him before he got the chance, colliding with his torso and sending him skidding back along the ground while I clawed at his face and neck. I moved to bring the barbed mass of my shield down onto his neck in a thunderous swing, but he shifted suddenly. A pair of bony growths from his back gave him enough leverage to twist his body to the side and protect his head.

Instead, the mass of Aura enhanced adamantium cut into his arm. The shield wasn’t designed for slicing, it was too cruel a weapon for that. With the strength of my swing and the sharpness of the material it punched through the flesh of Lung’s arm, but did so like a meat grinder. The complete opposite of a clean cut, it left a ragged bloody stump where his left arm used to be.

The Dragon roared and spit a blast of fire into my face. I ignored it and shifted my right hand from frantically clawing at Lung’s face and neck to a solid grip on his damaged left arm. With a single jerk, I tore the appendage from the remaining strands of viscera that held it to Lung’s torso, then brought it down like a club.

At this point Lung was pushing fourteen feet tall and the arm was nearly the same size as me. That didn’t matter in the face of life fiber strength, but did matter to a dragon man who took a blow from a weapon that held about six percent of his body weight directly to the forehead.

Lung’s head snapped back and impacted the pavement. Unfortunately, with the speed we were still moving and Lung’s snake-like neck, that saw his head pulled under his body and then caught, causing his body to flip, throwing me off.

I twisted, and prepared to move in to finish him, but was greeted by the sight of Oni Lee posed with his micro launcher. Shifting targets, I dashed forward and reduced the copy to dust, only to be greeted with the sight of two more versions of the cape on the stack of crates.

They opened up with the launchers and I was made acutely aware of my lack of ranged weaponry. I resorted to launching my grapnel, keeping one hand on the razor wire to control it. The action served to infuse the attack with the Dust that had continued to boil to the surface of my body, turning it into a sparking, burning line of death.

A quick flick sent the wire whipping through the oncoming assault. Even with Aura my control wasn’t fine enough to catch all the missiles, but the arcing dust energy took care of any I couldn’t reach.

That meant I had the opportunity to see exactly what Bakuda had prepared for me in that launcher. Not all of the missiles detonated, but the ones that went off were terrifying. Warped space, deleted areas of matter, what looked like tiny black holes, and of course a sputtering time stop effect, its missile too damaged to properly deploy the time prison it contained.

I was moving to finish Lung off, but more copies of Oni Lee appeared to intercept me. Some I managed to catch before they could launch attacks, dropped with either unarmed strikes or the edges of my shield. With an idea of my dashing range, he started appearing further back to take firing positions. My grapnel and razor wire was deployed again, burning and slicing through copies.

It looked like I might be overwhelmed, but incredibly Tetra started mirroring my actions. Burning cords of life fibers extended from the seams of my former wounds and lashed out against copies of the masked cape. Burning wire and glowing thread cut through the night, reducing every copy they touched to ash. With Tetra’s help the defensive stand turned into a running battle, chasing the teleporter through the rows of containers, over the devastation from both my earlier assault and the mass release of Dust when I was ambushed.

Oni Lee was teleporting at close to the limit of human perception, dropping copies the moment the previous one formed. I was cutting them down almost as fast. Dust burned over my skin, turning simple blows into explosions of elemental might. Entire teams of clones were taken out with a single swing. Missiles were burned or frozen out of the air, and Tetra acted independently, slicing down any copy that showed its face.

I was running along the side of containers, bouncing between monoliths of ice or rock dust, or swinging on the path of my grapnel. It was a level of mobility that was pushing a true teleporter to his limit. A limit he finally reached when I launched myself skyward from a stack of shipping containers and spotted the assassin cape amassing duplicates in a sniper position, perfectly arranged to ambush the path I had considered taking.

A grapnel buried itself in the ground in the center of the clones, followed immediately by the impact of a furious cape with a body writhing with red threads, covered in glowing scars, and wearing Garment’s best attempt at a field-sewn Barbarian Chic outfit. Not that they had time to appreciate it as I spun, lashing out with every weapon at my disposal. Wire and life fiber cut through the clones, leaving me in a cloud of ash. I readied myself of the next appearance, the follow up attack, but it didn’t come. Then I saw the wall.

Specifically, the energetic red splatter painted across a wall of containers. Oni Lee, with his rapid teleportation, had finally been an instant too slow. The attack had caught him. Maybe not entirely, but enough to cause serious injury.

Had he slunk off to lick his wounds, or was he preparing a final desperation attack? Whatever the case, he was no longer in top form. Judging from the spray it had been a fairly serious cut. Either he was running to get medical attention or he was going to bleed out in minutes. Either way, it gave me enough time to go after Lung.

A roar and the sound of bat wings answered that thought. With two heavy beats the form of the Dragon of Brockton Bay rose over the container yard, silver scales highlighted by the last rays of the sun.

Despite the rumors, it was actually unconfirmed that Lung could grow wings. Most people’s opinion on the matter was basically ‘sure, why not?’. Basically, if Lung got to the point of flying he was so far out of your depth that you might as well call it a day. Don’t stick around to take pictures, just let him be.

Which was honestly good advice. This was a faster advancement than Lung had ever shown before. Dragging this out would only make putting him down more difficult. Retreat was the best option.

Which is when the Forge decided to give me another present. I had gotten several powers since my arrival at this conflict, none of which were the least bit relevant to the situation at hand. It seemed the Forge wanted to make up for that lapse, at the worst time possible.

In spades.

The power was another from the Toolkits constellation. It was a tiny mote called Armor-Shift Manufacture and provided a small machine for my workshop that would take any piece of armor placed inside it and grant it the ability to change form to accommodate any shifts in its wearer’s body. It also came with two tiny motes. The first was called Martial Artist: Muay Thai. It granted all of the basics of Muay Thai, as well as several advanced principles and techniques. It also had the unique feature of covering how to apply the technique to a different form.

In case the pattern wasn’t obvious from the first two abilities, what they were working to facilitate became clear with the third. It granted me an incidental mote called Beast Change! - Inostrancevia, and suddenly I was a little less human. Another power had warped my genetics, this time granting something called the zoanthrope gene. A genetic feature that facilitated a person’s transformation into a hybrid of man and animal. Potentially any animal that did exist or had existed in the history of the planet.

It was a completely scientific way to make a person a werewolf, or were-anything, really. I was a ‘natural’ zoanthrope, but there was engineering potential here. It was possible to create artificial versions of this state, particularly with my powers and knowledge. Another free, monstrous power up that I could suddenly inflict on people.

And it was power. Even without the transformation being triggered I could feel the energy, the strength and instincts burning beneath my skin. It was a state that was enhanced by the life fibers. That aspect of genetic advancement that was specific to life fiber energy was combining with the unique features of the zoanthrope gene, driving it to new heights of power, and new heights of rage.

And that was expressing itself now. The zoanthrope gene could express itself in any way. Any possible animal. And what animal did I get? Not a wolf, tiger, bear, or shark. Not anything that would show up on heraldry or as the mascots of sports teams. Not even something people would have heard of. No, my form was obscure, confusing, and of questionable utility. I hoped that wasn’t a comment on me.

My zoanthrope form was an inostrancevia. A saber-toothed dinosaur wolf from a quarter BILLION years ago. It wasn’t even fair to call it a dinosaur, since it predated even the earliest examples. It was a predator from the dawn of creation, outside of time and anything recognizable to it, but still driven and dangerous.

And it had a target. I had a target. Lung was hanging over the container yard, burning like a second sun. I didn’t care if he was taunting me, or trying to draw out the conflict. I didn’t care about the time limit from Tetra’s blood drain. I didn’t care about the fact that I had no concrete plan to put him down beyond ‘hit him harder’. I was directing healing nanites, holding back the massive Dust incursion in my body with barely controlled Aura, and struggling to regulate the emotional link with Tetra. There was nothing left to address the fresh set of primordial predator instincts blooming in my body.

I stood up and roared, an action which drew the attention of Lung and the remaining gang members who were still scrambling through the site, carrying out old orders, seeing to injured comrades, and for some reason still recording the confrontation well past the point of any useful propaganda for the gang.

My roar dropped in pitch and took on a guttural quality. Containers rumbled as my bloody roar echoed across the facility. Bristly hair rippled over my body and I felt the positions of my bones shift. The clothes I wore may have been shadows of their former selves, but they were still constructed with my power. They would always fit, even if the person wearing them turned into a Lopingian-era werewolf. My face extended into a muzzle and my teeth transformed to saber like fangs. Muscles expanded, taking on new characteristics and power, and my hands and feet grew claws.

I crouched, digging the claws of my feet into the steel of the container beneath me. Remains of my divine boots had shifted enough to allow that purchase. Specifically, the purchase of a launch platform. My new body, a monstrous form covered in the glow of life fibers, nanites, and Dust, coiled like a spring, and launched itself into the air, directly into the path of the fluttering dragon man.

Lung saw me coming and made a token effort to avoid my charge. Token and ultimately futile, given the speed at which I moved. That would be categorized as blinding just under the influence of life fibers. Adding Dust, Aura, and zoanthrope genetics meant there was no hope. I instinctively drew on the fresh knowledge of Muay Thai and met Lung’s flying form with the mother of all knee strikes, driven directly into his chest.

With no leverage to resist the impact Lung’s wings folded as both of us were launched over the bay. My strike had shattered the armor of his chest, but the lack of resistance was favoring Lung. Most of the impact of the force was transferred into velocity as we careened out over the water. Lung struggled with my eight-foot form. Less than half his size, but exponentially stronger. His desperate flailing was totally ineffective against my might as I clawed up his torso, opened my mouth wider than any creature that wasn’t part crocodile should be able to manage, and sank my saber teeth into his snake neck.

The scales meant to protect him shattered and buckled under the force of my bite. I was running on pure instinct, immediately shifting my grip and using the leverage afforded by my jaw to rain knee and elbow strikes upon him. Lung roared and twisted his own head to try to snap at me with a mouth full of flaming teeth. The flames were ignored and I felt his monstrous metal fangs warp or shatter against my durability.

A swipe from my shield as the Magic constellation passed by was enough to cause him to rear back and shift grab for me with both hands. He tore me away, taking off a chunk of his neck as he did so. I could already see it beginning to heal, a sign we were approaching a critical level of his growth. With a desperate motion he threw me towards the surface of the bay and frantically beat his wings to gain altitude.

With enhanced animal agility it took a fraction of a second to steady myself. A fraction more to plan my next move, and another fraction to set it into motion. By the time I reached the water's surface I had my legs beneath me, posed to strike. The instant I met the liquid I kicked with all the force I could bring to bear.

It was like a bomb had gone off. The water launched itself away from my foot. I swear I could see the exposed seafloor in the aftermath of the impact. But just for an instant, then I was rocketing back into the air, directly at Lung.

The cape was bigger now, at least twenty feet, and appeared to be growing smaller secondary wings. Whether they improved his agility or he was just more prepared, this time he actually managed a decent effort at dodging my attack. He tucked his wings and rolled out of the way while bringing up a hand to shoot a stream of fire. This wasn’t like his previous efforts, not a dispersed blast of moderate flames. Instead, it came like a jet from a cutting torch, only directed as a focused, long range weapon.

I may have been drowning in prehistoric instincts, managing nanite healing, containing an arsenal of Dust, and moderating a bloom of evolutionary life fiber energy from a being that was slowly killing me, but that didn’t mean I was going to let something like this pass. Lung was trying to use fire. On me. A random, sloppy, dispersed, and lazy version of flame manipulation. The art of life, of creation, used as a blunt instrument. Even through all the ways I was splitting my focus, I was insulted.

I twisted in midair, letting the stream flow past me. Then I reached out and grabbed it. Burning air flowed under my hands without shifting my grip. I used the stream for leverage, swung my body around, and bounded up the line of fire directly towards Lung’s flying form.

It is a unique experience seeing pure shock on the face of a creature that left any practical human expressiveness behind three transformation stages ago. Seeing a fanged x-shaped mouth hang open as a prehistoric wolf man climbs up a stream of fire to kick him in the face warmed my heart in a way that had nothing to do with my proximity to a thermal effect that could liquify steel in an instant.

Lung’s jaw turned to powder under the force of my strike, and the blow took most of his head with it. The cape flailed randomly, pulling out of my path and leaving me to careen into the sky. I rolled to steady myself and sighted on Lung’s form. The damage to his head hadn’t finished him, despite probably being enough to pulp the contents of his skull.

Right. I bit down on the conflicting focus and instincts I was dealing with. Regenerator cape. That meant a core somewhere in their body. Usually the head, but not always, and usually not for serious regenerators. No doubt other people had tried to end Lung’s transformation with cranial trauma, and it had probably gone as well for them as it was for me.

I took a moment to appreciate the insane height I had reached as my velocity dropped off, leaving me hanging in the air over the bay. Lung sputtered below me, the damage to his head slowly reversing, but beyond the immediate fight I had the whole city spread before me. The Rig stood over the bay, still scorched and broken from Saturday’s attack. From my height I could see the impact of the ABB conscripts at work. Fires, occasional explosions, flashing sirens, and the presence of more exotic effects. The time frozen mess that was Bakuda workshop stood out, as did the concentrations of lights, clouds, and colorful flares where ABB territory bordered the areas held by the Merchants and Empire. However, none of them held a candle to the impact of March’s strike against me.

The point where it had happened was clearly visible, right at the western edge of the container yard. It was clear in that it was the center of a starburst of multicolored Dust effects stretching out from the point of impact, extending for multiple blocks. Every effect I had woven into that costume had been violently discharged in a display that could be shown on a map of the city.

Glowing lines of crackling shock Dust, the flaming trail of burn Dust, multiple ice walls, or rock Dust creating either a line of monoliths or a sudden fissure in the ground. Water Dust splitting the earth to create a new waterway, or wind Dust causing a corridor of gale force conditions. Gravity Dust compressing trees and buildings to near collapse, or causing everything in its path to float.

Mercifully the effect was limited to the ‘industrial’ areas of the north Docks, which were currently only really industrial in terms of zoning rather than economy. Still, it was harrowing to see how far the effects had spread. It wasn’t as intentionally dangerous as Bakuda’s weapons, and thankfully most of the truly dangerous Dust expulsions, burn Dust, lightning Dust, or even that new magma Dust, had been directed towards the bay or boat graveyard. There was a line of ice Dust cutting through the north end of the boardwalk, and all manner of strategic Dust types active inland, but that should be mostly property damage in an area with little activity.

At least I could say my exploding wardrobe did less damage than Bakuda’s coordinated attack forces.

My moment of hang time expired and I started to drop again. I set my sights of Lung, seeing the dragon nearly recovered from my last attack. I fired a grapnel and the anchor bit into the dragon-man’s armored back. Before he could react I launched myself towards him, leveraging the razor wire to add a spin to my motion. With my shield extended I blazed past Lung, raking the barbs and spikes of my shield through his spine with all the speed my dive and rotation would allow. I tore through him, leaving a bloody mess of his spine and shredding one wing.

He steadied himself with blasts of fire, being careful to direct them away from me, while his wing healed at a terrifying rate. My trajectory continued towards the bay, but a second grapnel line swung me towards the wall of ice that had extended from the container yard.

I landed on top of the frozen edifice and stared up at the recovering gang leader. Lung was fighting for altitude, working to stay out of my range until, I assume, he built enough strength to damage me. I doubted that would happen, but I was working under other limits, and would reach mine before he reached his. At that point I would be abandoning the city to a fully ramped up Lung, something a full alliance of Brockton’s Capes would be hard pressed to stop.

A sudden message broke through the chaos of my mind, priority codes screaming directly from my implant to my gray matter.

“Get clear!”

My second duplicate was here. It was easy to forget, despite the seeming lifetime from March’s attack, mere minutes had passed. The pace of combat, particularly when operating under the effect of enhancements, was insane.

As was my duplicate’s opening move.

The world turned red and the sound of tortured air echoed through the city. A crimson beam cut through the sky and struck Lung dead center. I could see the shadow of his form within the beam, a smoldering silhouette within a field of white. Particles flaked off from his form, and I recognized the full expression of the weapon, opened at maximum power for the longest duration possible.

When it finally had to cut out a blackened, emaciated shape hung in the air. Stubs of wings failed to keep it aloft even as feeble jets of flame were directed towards the ocean in an attempt to stay in the air. His right forearm and most of his left leg was missing, and he looked half dead.

But Lung was healing. Two lasers might have finished him off, but at this point, with him careening past twenty feet in height, it just wasn’t enough.

Which is probably why my duplicate decided to respond with a follow-up maneuver that is generally known as ‘all the missiles’. Please understand, that is not an exaggeration in the slightest. He fired everything, regardless of relevance to the current situation. If the munition could be loaded into one of the motoroid’s launchers it was now flying at Lung.

The result was a field of death that made Oni Lee’s duplicated missile swarms look conservative. Over two hundred warheads, launched in miniaturized form and unfolded midair on their way to the target, bore down on the charred form of the parahuman gang leader.

I will give Lung credit. With the life he has lived, and the amount of time he spent in the cape community, he obviously recognized death when he saw it flying towards him. He immediately reversed the flow of the fire jets keeping him aloft and dove straight towards the water.

I watched as Lung’s rapidly healing body disappeared under the waves, followed by a swarm of missiles that made Bakuda’s bombardment attempt from Monday afternoon look like a firework show. I clung to the top of the wall of ice as the detonations started. And continued. And continued some more.

It really was a lot of missiles.

I became aware of communications efforts from my duplicate. Actually, I became aware that there had been communications efforts from pretty much the instant I was struck by March’s ambush. The combined distractions had kept me from even noticing them, much less addressing the situation. It was lucky that my duplicate had been there to step up. He’d even contacted the local authorities on behalf of Triumph and to warn them about March, both critical tasks that I’d been too distracted to even think about attempting. I focused on the various personal crises I was managing and tried to spare enough mental space to reply.

“I’m… okay.” I attempted. Interfacing with my implant was hard. Just forming words to send in that format was suddenly a major effort. “Situation bad. Some stuff… From the healing…”

“I know.” Replied my duplicate. “Don’t worry, I have a full breakdown of events and your current medical condition.”

I frowned and tried to sort my call logs. “How…?”

“The nanobot matrix.” He replied. “When I couldn’t reach you, or your copies of Fleet or Survey, I was able to contact the nascent A.I. of the nanobots in your system. They knew how to interface with the neural implant thanks to switching out the processors, so they were able to keep me apprised of the situation.”

I spotted the duplicate’s motoroid flying towards me with drones in formation and unnecessarily waved it down with a clawed hand. Between the constant cycling of my blood, the life fiber energy, the animal instincts, and the tremendous amount of Dust still in my system I was feeling… Well, lightheaded would be an understatement. I was lucky to still be functional.

I shook my head. This was important. “The nanobots… couldn’t tell you everything. There’s… something. Through the Dragon’s Pulse. Lung, or his passenger. It’s responding to threat.” I took a breath and focused again. “We set him off. It’s like nothing else. Growing faster. Less restrictions.” I looked out over the bay. “That might not be enough.”

The motoroid arrested its momentum with a burst from its thrusters and turned its scanners towards the bay. The duplicate’s response was all the confirmation I needed.

“Fuck.”

I didn’t need to ask for clarification as the surface of the water breached. What came out, propelled mostly by jets of fire from its fore and hind limbs, had obviously been through hell. The fact that it was rapidly healing didn’t seem to be much of a comfort to a creature that looked more like a collection of raw hamburger stapled to a skeleton than any kind of living thing.

Lung was back. He was healing. And he was pissed.

“Here.” Came my duplicate’s message. “Take the potions. They should ease the strain from Tetra, at the very least.”

The flying suit began dispensing a handful of potions. Looking at the vials I briefly considered how to handle them before just throwing them en masse into my primordial wolf mouth and chewing them like a handful of Gushers. Oh, the advantage of extreme durability and regeneration.

Instantly I felt a sense of relief as the bodily systems I had been struggling to keep ahead of Tetra’s drain received a massive boost. It calmed me to the point where I could really appreciate how screwed I was.

Lung was over thirty feet tall. He was full-on Leviathan height, with all the power that state entailed. The actual Endbringer in question hadn’t been able to overpower him at this point. It may have been the trauma, desperation and mental strain, but I didn’t know how we were going to handle this. Just the weight of power flowing off of Lung was deafening, at least by the standards of the Dragon’s Pulse. It was so overwhelming I couldn’t even feel my duplicate’s chi from within the armor.

No, I definitely couldn’t feel my duplicate’s chi. There was no trace of it within the armor. He wasn’t inside the armor. He had sent an empty suit. Meaning I was facing down Endbringer Lung with a handful of equipment, an empty motoroid, and a serious medical crisis.

“Where are you?” I struggled to message my duplicate.

“Okay, don’t be mad.”

I considered his response and decided that yes, I was most definitely going to be mad. “What are you doing?”

His answer came as a rapid data string. “When I saw that Lung was ramping up I figured we’d need more help. I didn’t know the reason for why he was getting so strong, but that’s kind of academic anyway. Also, I know you probably wanted to be the first to drive it, so sorry for cutting in line.”

I looked at Lung’s rapidly repairing body towering over the bay, and considered what an appropriate response would be to a situation like then. Then I considered what my duplicate would be able to bring to bear. Then I stopped considering because I saw exactly what he had done.

Nearly fifty feet of Super-Ceramic Composite Gundarium Alloy launched itself over my position and into the gang leader. For the second time that day I got to see a truly shocked expression on a face that really shouldn’t be capable of expressions, much less shocked ones.

The mobile suits were capable of being deployed directly from the warehouse with a few minutes deployment time. The question of how that worked was one of those aspects of the Forge where no answer was available. It just did. At a signal from me, or from my duplicates, a suit would take a minute to prep its launch, then a few minutes to arrive at its destination. The route it took, the mechanism of moving from a sealed workshop to the real world, or where exactly it entered the outside universe was something the Forge wasn’t concerned about. The suits could be deployed if called, and my duplicate had made the call.

And as a result, he was now piloting a giant robot into combat with Lung. The mobile suit swooped down on Lung, four 60mm Vulcan guns spitting shells into his body at the speed of a rotary cannon. The damage was negligible with Lung’s regeneration, but served to distract him as the duplicate drove the Gun-EZ into a flying tackle.

For the first time in the fight that Lung was the one who found himself out of his weight class. The mobile suit had almost twenty feet on him, and was hitting at full thrust. Once again, fighting from a flying position came to bite Lung in the ass as simple Newtonian physics saw him carried out, across the bay and away from the city.

I have to admit I was more than a little envious of the sheer exhilaration conveyed from my duplicate as he piloted our giant robot into a slug match with an enormous monster. It was a petty gripe, and I was immensely grateful for the situation. I took a breath and tried to steady myself.

And suddenly found it much easier to steady myself.

The Forge had just made another connection. It was a midsized mote from the quality constellation called Secret of Steel. The power itself was actually an instruction manual, a text on Japanese smithing techniques. If followed precisely it could produce items that were significantly beyond what should be possible from just their material and craftsmanship. Edges that could cut through steel, nearly indestructible armor and simple tools that functioned as well as modern technology.

But that wasn’t what was significant about this power. Like how Armor-Shift Manufacture was a fairly basic item with massively disruptive supplemental powers, Secret of Steel’s real significance was in the powers that came bundled with it.

For one, the Secret of Steel was immediately applied to my lantern shield. More than that, it actually created an effect where the shield would advance with me as I grew in skill and power. What skill, you ask? Why the comprehensive understanding of ninjutsu that I had just been blessed with, including the use of my lantern shield, or more specifically its wire component, as my metaphorical ‘sword’, or expression of offensive power.

This wasn’t basic ninjutsu either. It came with the full stealth and deception side of things, as well as introduction to ki manipulation. As in magic ninja trick ki manipulation. Oh, and I had ki now, which was basically a new flavor on what I’d been doing with chi control or the Dragon’s Pulse.

The expanded understanding of ki was actually the really significant part of the ability. The power granted me an understanding of Sei Ki, or internally focused energy. It was an art that taught the mechanics of inner calm, centeredness, and clarity of thought in battle. All things I desperately needed right now. With a single breath I felt the strain of balancing so many conflicting forces melt away. I could focus, I could think, and I could actually function properly, even under my current physical strain.

That strain was also slightly mitigated by another power. Master’s Body, or the body of a martial art’s master. I wasn’t totally there yet, not all the way to ‘master’, but what I had been granted was enough to reduce the stress from life fibers, embedded Dust, and my own zoanthrope transformation.

The power also came with a philosophy. Katsujinken, the life-giving fist. Contrary to every destructive and overwhelming mental change I had endured, this was one I could see myself fully accepting. It was the simple view that you should protect those who cannot protect themselves and improve the lives of those around you. That purposefully killing is not something that should be sought out, and was akin to defeat. That peace was something worth fighting for.

What was probably most comforting was the fact that it was a set of principles, not an obligation. I was free to embrace or reject the ideals of the philosophy, to stray from the path and try to find my way back. The important thing was the fact that it had effects that facilitated its ideals. Holding the principles granted a calm demeanor and the ability to set people at ease, and allowed the chance for a dialog before fighting.

It was everything I had neglected, and exactly what I needed as a cape. Unfortunately, not precisely what I needed at this moment. Looking out over the bay with newly gained calm and focus I saw a mostly restored Lung squaring off against my duplicate. The time for dialogue had passed, and was unlikely to be productive against Lung anyway.

Peace and nonviolence were worth striving for, but force in the defense of another was fully acceptable within this philosophy. I would have to fight to win, to do what it took to stop Lung and protect the people of this city. If that ended his life it wouldn’t be a victory, but it would let those living under his yoke know a measure of peace. I could accept a personal loss for the safety of those who couldn’t fight for themselves.

With my mind clear I felt my implant link with the copy of Survey on the remote hub and the version of Fleet running on the motoroid. I also recognized the signs of my nanobots interfacing with my neural implant and the other systems of my body. In response to an expression of concern from Survey, Garment twitched the clothing of my abbreviated costume, much to the A.I.’s relief.

I took one final breath and focused on my Sei Ki. The mechanics were still unfamiliar, the sensations strange, but I could feel the interactions of powers within my body. With a force of will I was able to sever the link between my zoanthrope genetics and the still surging life fiber energy.

Primal instincts dampened even further than they initially had. I suddenly felt control over the state, the change. With a sinking sensation my bones shifted, my claws disappeared, and my body shifted back to a human shape.

Well, except for the extruding life fibers, patterns of active Dust and circuit tracing from a set of nanites trying their best to keep the entire mess alive and upright.

In the distance the mobile suit had drawn both of its beam sabers. The saber granted from Anaheim Degree was a mass of high energy plasma bound in an I-field of Minovsky Particles. Nothing but contained thermal energy, and of dubious usefulness against Lung.

The beam saber from Exotic Compatibility was an entirely different beast, and beyond the superficial similarities barely deserved to be in the same category as Anaheim Degree’s plasma sword. It was a bound ionization field of charged particles that caused any matter exposed by it to rip itself apart. It was a disintegration sword, one against which thermal resistance meant nothing.

Which was how my duplicate was facing off against the recovered Lung. The plasma blade in his suit’s left hand began to warp in shape, spreading over the handle in a broad plane. Combined technokinesis and pyrokinesis, generating a plasma shield, a defensive compliment to the annulation blade in his right hand. An improvised beam shield, one that could be used for physical and energy defense.

Lung dove towards the suit and quickly learned the folly of that strategy. Launched fire blasts were deflected by the pyrokinetic abilities of the my duplicate or the burning shield protecting his robot. When the beast of a cape closed to grapple the beam saber shot out, cleaving through Lung’s torso and shearing off an arm and one of his four wings. The dragon narrowly avoided the second swipe by launching himself backwards with the force of his pyrokinesis, but the suit engaged its rockets and pursued him.

I focused on the situation at hand. My mind wasn’t clear enough to craft or perform alchemy, but at least I was no longer blindly charging into a fight with a villain who relied on people blindly charging into fights with them. My duplicate was in an airborne mecha duel with the dragon man, something I was still envious of, but unless his disintegration sword got an exceptionally lucky hit and caught Lung’s core it was only going to be a holding action that would make things worse.

I had no idea how to fix this situation, but thankfully I wasn’t the only one who could. I opened my communication protocols to my duplicate and A.I.s. and raised the question.

“We need a way to defeat Lung. At this point anything that causes less damage than he’s likely to cause if he slips past us will be entertained. We need a solution and have limited options.”

My duplicate was the first to chime in. “You were right about him growing fast. He’s putting out a lot of energy. Probably going to be a threat to the suit's armor before long, either physical or thermal, though I can mitigate that with pyrokinesis. I’m working on field upgrades, but I’m not sure if I can stay ahead of him.”

It was weird hearing the idea of modifying an in-use vehicle from an outside perspective. I knew I could do that kind of work, but hearing someone else say it, or work it into a battle strategy, was kind of unsettling.

“Plus, I’ve got less than twenty minutes of duration left.” The duplicate continued. “And with the state you’re in I don’t want you downing another potion outside of lab conditions. Not with that much Dust in your system. It could pop the next batch the moment they form.”

That was a grim thought. Another timer we were working under. And as much as the recent powers had helped my mind and body endure this mess I knew how dire the situation was, and knew that I couldn’t hold out forever. We needed to resolve this and get back to the workshop to find a way to fix things.

“Solutions to the current conflict would likely involve effective containment, removal of enemy from areas of threat to civilians, or complete destruction beyond the ability to recover.” Survey listed. “Initial and secondary options are unlikely with current resources, tertiary option is possible, but will require extreme measures.”

I swallowed as Fleet broke in with his own suggestion for the tertiary option. The nanobot matrix also had some ideas, mostly connected to rather extreme alchemical principles. I wasn’t that comfortable with the idea, and even less so with it being suggested by my A.I.s, but I accepted the necessity.

At the very least Lung was currently away from shore and isolated from the city. Whatever action we needed to take could be done without interference from the city. Any plan to remove, contain, or subdue a rampaging Lung would be a delicate operation, and it was a mercy that we could act without opposition.

Which, of course, was when a sonic boom cracked over the city drawing my eyes up to see a contrail turn into a downward dive. A path that no commercial airliner would take. Fleet provided me with scanner data of the craft while Survey helpfully informed me that Dragon had arrived six minutes ahead of her earliest estimated arrival time.

I swore under my breath as Dragon’s suit turned towards where the mobile suit was engaged in a midair battle with Lung, now closer to 35 feet than his earlier 30. If he was growing in response to threat then Dragon would not help matters. The Knowledge constellation passed by as I considered my next action.

As I watched Lung dove in close enough to slash at one of the torso plates of the mobile suit, only to fall back on the thrust from jets of flame as the beam saber almost removed his neck and shoulders. All the while the trail of jet exhaust signaling Dragons arrival grew closer, seeming to accelerate as it did.

That was really just a result of the fact that the suit was dropping from a cruising altitude of around 40,000 feet. A plane that seemed to crawl across the sky was really blazing through the air at insane speeds, it just looked peaceful from a distance. The same could be said about Dragon’s suit. From a distance, tranquil white dot inching through the sky. Zoomed in, nightmarish mechanical beast swooping towards you.

From Fleet’s relaying of the motoroid’s sensors I could see the structure of the suit. It was a new model, about 45 feet long, with the feeling that it had been intended for local operation rather than her usual rapid response. In fact, she may have red-lined the turbines to get to the city in time. She probably was already en route when the attack started.

And now she was headed to my oceanic battle with Lung rather than to provide any support with the situation in the Docks. Survey informed me that this new model was called the Cetus, so maybe a battle over water was an appropriate move for a suit named after a sea monster.

There was a limit to what I could tell about the structure and armament of the suit in its current form. Everything was folded down to a minimum profile to facilitate aerodynamics. It looked like her normal quadrupedal design with some impressive secondary armaments and a long ‘neck’ and ‘tail’ area.

This was not a situation I wanted to deal with. I still wasn’t sure the exact nature of the mental effect Dragon was under, but it was absolutely clear that she was compelled to oppose me. There was a chance that she would prioritize Lung, but I had no doubt that the second he was dealt with she would be after me.

There was also the problem that Dragon was coming into the battle with a new suit, a suit she had built after declaring her intention to pursue me. I didn’t know what that thing was armed with, but it was a safe bet that the loadout would lean much more heavily towards counters to my abilities than to Lung’s.

There was a flare of discomfort as the balance between embedded Dust, life fibers, new genetics, and nanites shifted slightly. I took a breath to center myself, feeling the digital or spiritual connection to Fleet, Survey, Tetra, Garment, and even the nanobot matrix. It reminded me I wasn’t in this alone. Sei ki could keep me focused, Katsujinken could moderate my approach to the situation, and the people around me could help. Wanted to help.

I opened myself up to their assistance, to whatever they could do. Their options were limited, but they wanted to help any way they could. Garment was doing everything she could to hold my costume together, which was all she could manage and something I was grateful for.

Tetra had managed to recognize that the blind overpowering rage that resonated between us was not helping the situation. She was trying to regulate her feelings, but was still scared, uncertain, and confused. I tried to reassure her and expressed gratitude for her moderation of the emotional link.

Survey was operating in a limited capacity. She was functioning from a copy on the remote QEC hub and the version running on my duplicate’s omni-tool. Fleet was sharing the motoroid’s processing space and sensor data with her, as well as drone controls, but she was in a more limited position than she was used to being. Mostly she was providing summaries from reports in the city and analysis of other sensors with a feeling of frustration for not being able to do more.

Fleet was, surprisingly, not operating the giant robot. A quick check confirmed that the primary version of Fleet had documented the mobile suit on its arrival to the workshop, but hadn’t made modifications or installed a remote copy. He was about as disappointed by that as I was, but was content to provide support based on what was actually a much more comprehensive tactical modeling history than anyone would have guessed. That was probably where his anti-Lung suggestion had come from, and regrettably it was something we might actually need to act on.

I was fascinated to see both the level of engagement and advanced development that was demonstrated by the nanobot matrix in my system. The divinely crafted nanotech had taken actions to manage communications when I was effectively incapacitated, monitored my medical condition, provided moderate support, and independently interfaced with Fleet, Survey, and Tetra to a limited extent. It was an unexpected ally and one I was grateful for.

And I would need all the support I could get. I needed to get into that fight, both to support my duplicate and to run interference from Dragon. Huh. I would be fighting both Lung and Dragon. That wouldn’t be likely to get confusing. I put that out of my mind, approved the various proposals, and gave the signal to move out.

As Fleet launched my motoroid into the sky with the drones trailing behind it I looked down from the ice shelf at the lapping waves of the bay. The hardest part of this fight had been the environment working against me. Fighting a flying opponent over water wasn’t ideal, but it was also the best way to avoid collateral damage.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t prepared for this kind of thing. In addition to the motoroid’s flight systems I had a half dozen ways to address my limited three-dimensional mobility. It was just that they were either unavailable or inapplicable in this situation.

Direct action from mass effect fields, Dust weaves, micro thrusters, or elemental weaponry all relied on actually having those things in a state that wasn’t a shredded mess. The near total loss of equipment wasn’t something I had prepared for. I had other options, but those relied on being able to focus on either alchemy or pyrokinesis, and my focus was very much spoken for at the moment.

So, my flight options were limited, but that didn’t mean I was unable to act. What I was about to try would probably have been technically possible earlier in the fight, but only if I was willing to accept a complete lack of control and precision. If my boots were fully intact maybe I could have opened with it, but they were running at reduced capacity.

Reduced capacity for something that was on the level of gods was still pretty impressive, and when combined with my latest power it was more than enough to handle this. I tensed, and then launched myself out towards the bay as the Forge missed a connection to the Resources and Durability constellation.

The moment I hit the water I kicked down, beginning a rapid stride that took me on a path following my motoroid. Just running on water wasn’t hard. Anyone who could move at seventy miles per hour would be able to manage it.

Okay, maybe it was hard, but I was working with a different set of metrics.

The thing is there’s a big difference from being able to stay above the surface while maintaining speed and actually having any sense of control or maneuverability during the act. My boots were the kind of thing that could manage it, and were certainly helping now, but most of this was the result of my new training in ninjutsu.

Even setting aside the supernatural applications of ki that were possible through that art, it was incredibly specialized in grace and precision. A master of ninjutsu could manage this without any external equipment or support. I wasn’t quite at that level, but my skill was more than enough to operate under the circumstances.

I blazed over the waves without leaving so much as a line of foam to mark my passing. The actual experience was odd and difficult to describe. I would say the closest analogy would be like trying to run across a muddy field in smooth shoes. It required constant effort to stay upright and control the direction of my movement, but I could do it.

I could run on water.

And I was basically racing Dragon to the scene of the fight. Well, referring to it as a fight badly undersold the spectacle of watching a rocket powered giant robot with a laser sword have an airborne duel with a demonic burning lizard creature.

Lung had at least learned to fear the mobile suit’s beam saber, but was now attempting to work around it. He was using his smaller size to his advantage, combining his wings with the thrust of his fire blasts to out maneuver the suit’s rocket propulsion, trying to come in from blind angles and undefended sides. He would happily ram into the suit’s burning shield, spitting fire and snapping with his snake-like neck before either being thrown off or having to dodge a beam saber strike.

Fleet was providing support through the motoroid’s weapons and creative use of the drones, but with the heavier ordnance expended the best he could manage was attempting to create openings for my duplicate to abuse. There had been some early hopes of success through chaining the electrical attacks of the drones into a burst of lightning that was of Olympian scale, but Lung had managed to take out one of the drones on the last attempt at a strike, and was on guard for that tactic now.

That’s the thing. Lung was fighting smart. It wasn’t what you expected from someone generally known as a ‘rage dragon’, but it was well within his ability. Brutes weren’t actually dumb, and that went double for the ones who managed to become a gang leaders in control of a major portion of a large city. Time was on his side in this fight, not ours. I needed to get into the conflict, and hopefully before Dragon swooped in.

When I did reach the scene, well, my options were somewhat limited. I was a giant ball of life fiber enhanced strength, but with limited ability to apply it. My shield was fantastic as a defensive and mobility tool, but had never been intended for direct offence. I was still crackling with a dangerous amount of Dust, but it was difficult to apply in a meaningful way.

I needed a weapon, and I found that need answered by an unexpected source. A source that had proved to be an extremely stalwart ally through this entire ordeal.

My nanobots answered my call. The intelligence sustained by them was too basic to handle real speech, but it was advanced enough to recognize a need and propose ways to address it. The nanobots had been designed as an assembly system, but the designs that had served as their base were some of the most advanced I had access to. They were capable of incredible utility, as demonstrated by the proposal they presented.

The A.I. was simple, but it understood its purpose. Thus, just as Fleet had fun building operational simulations of any vehicle he could and Survey worked to collect and analyze every piece of data possible, the matrix worked to prepare for assembly. It had linked with the computer core, and as such copied, analyzed, and assessed every design stored within that system. And, while it wouldn’t be equivalent to the works created with the benefits of my powers, it could emulate that technology.

I elected to trust the design, selection, and assembly mechanics to the matrix. It wasn’t something I could be actively involved with, not in my current state. I could get to the battle, and I could fight. For everything else I was willing to delegate. And it needed to be delegated quickly, as I was rapidly approaching the scene of the conflict.

Well, about a hundred feet beneath the scene of the conflict. That was the consequence of dealing with an airborne duel. I was probably lucky that this wasn’t being undertaken at the flight ceiling of either of the combatants.

Also, it was clear why my duplicate had called the Gun-EZ. The Leo, in addition to being less powerful, wouldn’t have been able to sustain this level of aerial combat. I was surprised the Gun-EZ was doing as well as it was, and suspected that might be the result of those ‘modifications’ my duplicate mentioned.

The matrix signaled that it was ready to begin weapon emulation. I gave them the go ahead and quickly set my trajectory, then leaped.

Any hope of a surprise attack died as Lung’s head swung towards the massive explosion on the surface of the water, then quickly shifted to track the cape launching towards him with the speed of a railgun round. I felt nanobots flow through my system towards my right hand, seeping out through the rips in Garment’s glove to take the form of a blade.

But there was more to it than that. Tetra’s fibers were being pulled from my body and worked into the composite of nanobots that was forming the sword. I quickly realized what had happened. The matrix didn’t stop analyzing technology just because it was out of the workshop. They had observed the fibers’ interaction with my shield, and how Tetra was able to emulate my wire attacks. They had extrapolated from that, somehow interfaced with Tetra, and found a way to integrate life fiber reinforcement into what would otherwise be a fairly basic sword.

Nanobots were brilliant, but there was a limit to what they could form when using themselves as building blocks. Just from a basic level, they couldn’t make an edge sharper than their smallest component. While that was still miles sharper than a conventional blade it wasn’t monomolecular.

Life fibers were sub- monomolecular. Their structure had a base level that was closer to a spatial distortion than a living being. They were enigmas of physics capable of incredible feats, and the matrix was completely willing to take advantage of that. With Tetra’s reinforcement what would have at best been a short sword formed into a monstrously long slashing instrument of gleaming red metal.

It was a single edged blade, moderately thin, but that was mostly in comparison to its length. Nearly ten feet of blade, a weapon that would be completely impossible to use in any situation but open-air combat. It grew into shape as I shot into the sky, completing its formation just as I reached striking range.

I don’t know if he knew what was coming, or if he had just learned to constantly be on his guard, but at the first sign of my arrival he rolled out of the way, hiding his wings behind his back and bringing up all four limbs to protect himself. As such the attack only cost him an arm and a leg, rather than, let’s say, splitting the difference.

I shot past and evaluated the damage. Butchery was of only middling use against him. Lung was perfectly happy to fight without any of his limbs, and the damn things grew back so fast that it was barely an inconvenience for him. It was the reason why Lung had a reputation for being unstoppable.

That said, it was also past the point where retreat was in any way an appealing option. Lung had hit the point about five feet ago where he could level the city. Right now, my only real option was to see this through, one way or another. If I couldn’t stop Lung before my various timers hit zero then the results wouldn’t be much different than if I left now. No matter which way this turned out, I was in it until the end.

The roar of turbines echoed over the water, drawing my attention to Dragon's arrival. She was air braking for everything she was worth, switching from her suit’s aerodynamic form to one suited for VTOL operation. As she pulled towards us, weapons rising to full readiness, I wondered for a brief moment if she was going to try to take me and leave Lung to his rampage.

Instead, her opening barrage targeted ABB leader. Concentrated laser bursts, cannons that fired charged particles, lightning cannons, a set of missiles that burst into containment foam, and a kind of hard light beam were unleashed from the craft. It didn’t take more than a moment’s assessment to tell me that the bulk of those weapons were designed to be highly effective against technology, with the rest being designed for combat against highly durable targets.

Lung may not have had any technology to be disrupted, but his nervous system didn’t seem to enjoy the exposure to that much electrical energy. I doubted the containment foam would accomplish much, but the hard light beam hit him like a truck, launching him even further from the city.

Unfortunately, with Lung temporarily departed, Dragon turned towards me. My duplicate launched up, and I shifted my fall to land on the shoulder of the mobile suit. My motoroid and remaining drones fell in around me as we squared off against Dragon’s suit.

“Hello Dragon.”

It didn’t matter that we were fifty feet apart, or the fact that I was using a normal speaking voice when surrounded by high winds and the roar of nuclear rockets and jet turbines. It didn’t even matter that there may have been specific protocols about speaking with me.

This was the power of Katsujinken. A philosophy of peace with power to back up its principles. Combat could not start without the chance for dialogue. A real chance, not a compromise. Lung was careening away, but he wouldn’t get a chance to recover while we were speaking. We wouldn’t be ambushed or miss a critical opportunity. We were protected from any factor that would have made attempting discussion an unacceptable risk.

That was the power at work. It wasn’t exactly a temporal effect, at least nothing that could be quantified or abused. We were still talking for the time we were talking. The world wasn’t frozen, but at the same time nothing was happening. It was closer to a video game cutscene, or maybe dialogue segment.

The point was, thanks to this power I could finally attempt to avoid another misunderstanding that would make a bad situation even worse and allow the villains of the city to gain more ground.

“Apeiron.” Dragon’s voice sounded delighted, even as her suit took an aggressive stance. “I must confess, I hadn’t expected something of this level from you. I must learn not to underestimate you.”

“I assure you, this was reactionary, self-defense really.” I looked towards Lung’s careening form. “Though I admit some of it has gotten away from me.”

“I can see that.” Three types of energy dancing across my skin in varying levels of severity would be somewhat noticeable. “There was some concern about your condition, following the encounter at the Docks.”

The reminder momentarily disrupted the internal forces I was trying to balance. I was reminded of the timer I was under. My duplicate’s healing potions were already dropping off, and I wouldn’t be able to stay ahead of Tetra’s drain forever. He was right, I needed to get back to the workshop and get proper medical treatment.

With respect to Dragon’s comment about the Docks, Survey confirmed the ABB broadcast, and the significant reaction to it, both locally and online. I didn’t have time to get into the speculation, but this was probably going to be worse than the aftermath of Saturday night.

“I assure you, I have it under control.” I lied. “And on the subject of our previous encounter, I assure you I will keep the details to myself.”

“That’s hardly relevant to the current situation.” It was phrased to sound dismissive, but I could hear the weight of the relief in her voice. Whatever restrained her had some cracks in its control. Fortunately, I had become somewhat used to dealing with individuals with limited abilities to communicate. It was a relief to know there was something under the control.

Even if it was just a second layer of control designed to lull me into a false sense of security. But hey, paranoia was the order of the day when dealing with masters. I’d seen that firsthand from the Brockton PRT.

“If you say so.” I conceded. “Tell me, do you actually have anything that can stop or contain Lung in this state?”

“Local policies specifically prohibit any coordination with you over this or any other matter.” She replied in a frustrated voice. “Though in the interest of a public statement on potential weapon hazards, I am not loaded with any significant munitions, at least none on a scale that could disable Lung in his current state, nor any containment measures of such a level that could restrain him.” There was a pause before she continued. “Such a statement should be interpreted as a general edict in the interest of public safety and not directed at or be taken as an indication of coordination of approval of prohibited individuals.”

I smiled behind my mask. “Of course.” And then frowned. This was bad. My options and time frame were shrinking. I needed to act quickly, and that meant drastic actions. “So, your plan is to drive him off?”

“That is the only appropriate option presenting itself. A running battle may be able to put enough distance between him and the city that the time needed to return would result in the loss of most of his power.” She responded.

That was an exceptional long shot. The idea that you could put enough space between the city and Lung, even with Dragon’s weapons, wasn’t likely, there was also the fact that Lung got faster as he ramped up. If he was even half his current level by the time he got back to Brockton there would be nobody who could stop him.

I looked over from my perch on the shoulder to the head to the Gun-EZ, then up at my motoroid. It looked like those desperate plans might have to be put into place.

I just wished that Fleet wasn’t so excited about the idea.

“There might be something we can do to resolve this.” I offered.

“We?” Dragon asked.

I bit down and shook my head. Katsujinken and Sei Ki might help my focus, but I was still under a lot of stress. “Don’t worry about it. Just know this is going to be seen through, one way or the other.”

The suit bobbed its head. “I can’t agree to anything, but I will continue my original objectives and can state that Lung will remain my primary priority for the duration of this conflict.”

So, a reprieve, and an admission that whatever armistice we were working under would indeed be a temporary measure. With that it seemed whatever time Katsujinken was able to steal in the name of peace had run out. Lung had rallied and was burning a trail towards us. Dragon’s turbines roared and I shifted my grip as my duplicate engaged the suit’s fusion rockets.

The Vehicles constellation passed by as we shot to meet the monstrous gang leader. The time bought by Dragon’s attacks hadn’t done us any favors in the long run. The cape was even larger now, and healing at a frightening rate.

Dragon, with a suit actually built for aerial combat, pulled ahead and opened with another salvo. Lung was ready for it, tanking the lesser attacks and managing to take the hard light beam as a glancing hit. It sent him spinning wildly, but he was able to keep in place.

He steadied himself from the spin and rounded on Dragon, hands and teeth alight. His flames had shifted over the course of the fight from campfire orange to blinding white. His base attacks were currently outstripping the cutting beam he had attempted to use against me.

Dragon turned into a roll, but the searing flames left glowing trails across the fuselage of her suit. I knew what was going to happen even before she did. Whatever internal sensors Dragon installed in her suits ,they didn’t outclass my ability to automatically detect flaws and defects in machinery. She had damaged her turbines to arrive in time, and the sudden thermal expansion was stressing subsystems that were compromised by the strain of her flight.

A burst of smoke began to trail from the underside of Dragon’s suit, and she instantly lost maneuverability and started to struggle to stay in the air. Lung took a sharp turn, ready to close on the tinker.

I didn’t even need coordination with my duplicate to decide what to do. The mobile suit’s rockets overloaded themselves, sending us forward at a tremendous speed. Just as Lung was reaching out for Dragon with burning claws a glowing shield of plasma bound in an I-field slammed into him. The impact caused him to lurch in mid air and threw me from the suit’s shoulder.

Actually, it was more of a leap. I was still together enough to plot out the dynamics of the impact and take advantage of it. The extended shield slammed into Lung’s body, causing his head to flail forward. At the same time, I shifted my enormous blade to a two handed, downward grip, and took to the air.

The fibers linking the blade to my body felt strange, particularly while changing grip, but they also presented an opportunity. I focused through the clarity provided by my shield and drew upon my Aura. Dust responded to Aura in a completely unique fashion. Precise control could accomplish anything Dust weaving could manage with nothing more than a vial of powered crystals.

I was not going for anything so grand. My goal was much simpler. A dangerous amount of Dust was coursing through my system, as were active life fibers and probably any number of other dangerous materials. I couldn’t do anything about them, but I could channel the Dust. Especially if I had a vector to send it through. Such as a network of fibers through my entire body, all leading to a weapon ready to plunge into a titanic flying monster.

I had no idea if this was a good idea, or if it represented any reasonable way to use Dust. What I did know was I wanted the stuff out of my body, and I had the perfect vector and ideal target for it. Across my body dozens of patches of Dust flared as they were activated and channeled towards my sword. The immense blade pulsed, then swelled as entire crystalline formations began to pepper its length. The pain and frustration that had come with it faded, channeled towards the object of my fury.

For the third time I got to see a very human look of surprise on an inhuman face as I launched forward and plunged the energetic, burning life fiber blade into Lung’ forehead.

Lung was currently close to forty feet tall, and every inch of him lit up with the discharge of energy. I swear I could see his skeleton through his flesh like something out of a cartoon. Scales cracked and exploded from his body. One wing turned black with frostbite and a portion of his shoulder petrified. A claw exploded in a burst of wind as the giant cape flailed wildly, roaring out blasts of white/blue flames as he did.

The thrashing sent me flying from his head, basically splitting his skull in half as I was flung into the sky. The strike had drained almost all the traces of Dust from my body, and left me feeling drained in an entirely new sense.

It was clear now, the Dust had been horrible for my body, damaging me in ways I never considered, but the stress of it, particularly when mitigated by other effects, had been triggering an adrenaline response that had kept me going. Basically, it was what had happened to the Undersiders on Saturday, but taken to a horrific new level. I had been running off of stress chemicals, and now those chemicals were dying out.

I looked at Lung’s charred, twitching body and allowed myself a moment of hope, hope that we may finally have done enough damage to end this madness. The mobile suit was still engaged with him, and at that moment was winding up for a final strike.

And then everything went wrong.

Lung was still firing blasts of superheated plasma. To say they were being fired blindly would be too kind considering the state of his head. Randomly would be a better term, or maybe instinctively. The thing was, targeted blasts can be predicted and avoided. Random blasts can’t.

Isn’t there a saying about how the best swordsman in the world isn’t afraid of fighting the second best, he’s afraid of fighting the worst. Someone who’s never held a sword before and has no idea what he’s doing. Someone as likely to stab himself as his opponent, or both.

Random flailing blasts. That’s how one of Lung’s claws found its way past the shield to the side of the mobile suit while burning like the sun. That’s how a stream of atomizing plasma was able to cut through armor designed for a class of warfare the world had never seen. That’s how a burst of reactor material was sent venting through a hole punching straight through the suit, fracturing plates across the torso, scorching and warping joints. That’s how Lung’s focused plasma blast ended up shooting through the chassis of the mobile suit, stretching towards the distant city. That’s how the shield and saber flickered out, the fusion rockets cut off, and fifty feet of war machine began to drop towards the ocean’s surface.

I was hanging in midair, half dead and watching the strongest attack I had ever landed be healed away by a flailing mindless beast who more resembled a pinwheel firework than any kind of serious opponent. Dragon’s options were limited as she worked to dodge the random blasts. I didn’t realize exactly how bad the situation was until she launched a salvo of missiles.

The rockets streaked through the air approaching the ABB cape, then began behaving erratically, then sparked, and finally went completely out of control, either burning out, prematurely detonating, or spinning off in a random direction.

Fleet’s sensors were able to confirm my fears. Minovsky particles. The Gun-EZ had suffered damage to its Minovsky Ultracompact Fusion Reactor. The breach had saturated the area with Minovsky particles. Worse, they had been blasted in the direction of the city. Minovsky particles didn’t have a massive spread, but they held cohesion extremely well. At the very least we were looking at a strip of affected space extending across the bay and probably into a portion of the city. I could already see lights going out in the North Docks, marking an area about two blocks wide as it cut into the city. The complications of my fight causing yet more problems for the citizens of Brockton.

I’m not sure Lung even noticed the disruption effect as his head recovered enough to focus on Dragon once more. I found myself suspended by one of the remaining drones as I watched the conflict play out. The field interfered with conventional communications, but the drone’s presence was an assurance that my duplicate was still alive.

Which meant my motoroid was intact as well. I looked up at Fleet, cut off from normal communication, but recognized his initiative from how the suit had been positioned. We were out of options and running out of time. We were down to the last resort.

All that remained was getting Lung into position.

I stared down at the monstrous creature currently dogfighting with Dragon. I was in no shape to deal with this situation. I was mentally and physically spent. I was running off fumes, nanites, and fading healing potions. My body had been through enough hell that I wasn’t even sure what I was anymore, and I just missed a connection to the Time constellation. I was the worst person to take on this fight.

But I was the only one who could do it. Lung may have been big but he wasn’t strong enough to hurt me. His fires might have gotten stronger, but he was fumbling with an art that I had been born to. He might have been vicious, but I had a righteous cause.

I could do this, because I needed to do this. With the strain of the Dust that had been attacking my body cleared I focused my mind and reached out to the matrix. The sword was disassembled and absorbed into my body. With a signal my shield collapsed back into its wristband form. I connected with the nascent A.I. of the nanobots and sent them to begin their new construction.

Silver gold liquid emerged from my shoulders, forming into the shape of vectored repulsors. Personal flight on a level I didn’t have the focus of clarity to deploy before. The flailing threads of life fibers calmed and wrapped themselves around my flesh, granting me a temporary boost to their already impressive strength. I breathed and felt the heat of Lung’s fire, his truly dangerous ability, but one that wasn’t his to fully control. Before I could only sense and defend from the heat. Now I was its master.

With a signal the drone released me from its mass field and I dropped towards the conflict. The repulsors on my back fired, launching me down like a bullet. Lung was so occupied with Dragon he barely reacted to my presence, shifting in his usual tactic.

Clearly not anticipating my mid-air course correction. Or the sudden shift to zoanthrope form.

Lung was the size of your typical townhouse, so please understand fighting him was like fighting a piece of architecture. The damage I did as it impacted him felt more like vandalism than injury. I climbed and scraped across his body, using my claws for grip and repulsors to maintain footing. Even with the strength of my blows being able to leave massive craters of shattered scales and pulped flesh, it wasn’t enough to stop him.

I knew this. I knew his strength, his size, his regeneration. It didn’t take long for Lung to completely ignore my presence. An ant crawling across his leg, or a mosquito in his ear. Annoying, but nothing on the threat posed by Dragon.

That was what he was focused on, and that was what clued him in to something being wrong. Lung, at this size, was capable of throwing out levels of heat that would boil steel. It didn’t take more than a few exchanges for him to realize he was coming up short in the fire blast department, and to go looking for the cause.

It was rather easier to find. Even when you tower over someone by the height of a building you’re not going to overlook them when they’re running around with a miniature sun in their hands.

This was the meaning of pyrokinesis. Control. Direction. Purpose. Not randomly throwing flames, but directed action. When it came to the manipulation of flame intensity was drastically more important than volume, and a true test of skill. Anyone with a fire-based power could throw out flame. A few people could direct it. When it came to concentrating it, well that was the real test of skill.

And that’s what I had done. Siphoned flame from Lung’s fire blasts, maneuvering bursts, and aura, and concentrated them into a two-foot-wide chunk of solid thermal energy.

The shard of glowing plasma in my hand was beyond anything Lung could dream of producing. It was something that could barely exist within a conventional setting. Even with all conductive properties suspended the radiant energy alone would have destroyed any material on earth at the distance I was holding it.

Lung looked down and watched in horror as trails of white plasma leaked from his active flames, feeding the shard in my hands. He reared and raised a hand to swat me away.

And was met with the sound of fusion rockets and a plasma shield to the face.

Field repair. My duplicate had managed to contain and fix a reactor breach. I was impressed by the feat, but stunned when I saw the state of the mobile suit.

It was fixed, but not through any conventional repair. The blasted section had closed, but done so with a ropy, organic texture. The entire suit moved with an unnatural fluidity, and what had previously appeared to be fixed limited joints showed the pattern of corded musculature.

It was the nanobots. They were intended for manufacturing, but their base designs were full-on gray goo nano swarms. They were a type of technology that could absorb and assimilate without limit. A tiny sample of them would be able to subvert and weaponize an entire city. They were more than capable of subsuming a mobile suit when properly directed.

And they were being directed. A familiar set of circuit-like lines was spread across the surface of the mobile suit. Directed nanite control from my duplicate, managing the repairs, direction, and, as I watched in amazement, upgrading of the suit.

The Gun-EZ was an incredible machine, but somewhat poorly armed. It would have been due for a major refit to get its arsenal up to snuff. With an onboard nanotech colony that wasn’t necessary.

Weapons and gun mounts grew out of the surface of the mobile suit. Dozens of armaments, all different and all insanely powerful. Before Lung could act he found himself bombarded by a full salvo of laser fire, exotic energy, hard light, energy propellant, concentrated plasma, flash fabricated missiles, and bursts of exotic physics.

Whatever he’d been planting to attempt was lost under the weight of fire. The mobile suit raised it’s shield arm and signaled me.

“Ready!”

I nodded and kicked away from the exploding monster, adding more momentum to the beast’s assent. With careful timing I hurled the shard of concentrated thermal energy towards lung’s chest Just as my duplicate stressed his pyrokinesis to the limit, expanding the mobile suit’s beam shield in size and strength.

The shard struck Lung and released its energy in a single blinding burst. Really, the only comparable force would be a nuclear explosion, but those tended to be less focused. The specific shape of the charge launched Lung into the sky, thousands and thousands of feet up. My duplicate held the plasma shield against a force that made rocket exhaust look like a gentle breeze.

When the blast cleared Lung was a dot in the sky, a stunned and burning, and probably badly injured speck at the heights of a commercial airliner.

Dragon shifted her suit from beneath the cover of the nano-enhanced mobile suit’s shield. Her main systems were still in operation, but I could tell some of her technology was struggling under the effects of the Minovsky particle I-field.

I got the sense that she was taking a hard look at the mobile suit before she spoke through her external speakers. “What…” She paused and turned more towards the now rather biological looking face of the mobile suit. “Who is that?”

The suit’s eyes flashed and it spoke through its own external speakers. “That is not relevant to this situation. Lung is the priority.”

I honestly didn’t know if that was my duplicate, of if I was hearing the first spoken words of the matrix. Either way Dragon seemed to accept the response. “That wasn’t enough.” She commented. “Heat resistance and durability. He’s recovering and rounding on us.” I could hear the concern in her voice as she spoke.

“It wasn’t supposed to finish him. It was supposed to get him away from the city.” I explained. “Thinner air will also help reduce the collateral damage.”

“What are you…” She tried to ask, but a building blue light in the sky cut her off.

“You’re going to want to brace for this. It’s going to be bad.” I warned her, and clung to the shoulder of the mobile suit as it dove towards the water. She held position for a fraction of a second before diving after us.

I could barely see what was happening, it was just too far away and I was without any sensor data. I really didn’t need to see it anyway, not with the level of plans and simulations that Fleet had provided in support of his proposal. He, or at least the copy of him running on the motoroid wasn’t going to survive this, but he was okay with that. It was a duplicated motoroid, and I’m sure he couldn’t imagine a better way to go out.

When the duplicates had shown me the mass effect core they had planned to install in my new motoroid I had made a joke about an FTL motorcycle. Well, Fleet didn’t take that as a joke. For Fleet it was dead serious, and something that deserved dedicated consideration and modeling. And as such, when the call went out for any plans that could put down Lung, Fleet had been ready.

I had never expected him to suggest FTL ramming.

Our path took us out of the I-field, allowing me to link to my duplicate again, which meant communication with Survey, and with Fleet. I could view the sensor data from his position so high in the air that the curvature of the earth was visible and you could see the sky shift from blue to black. I could see the floating form of Lung, blackened and injured, but still refusing to die. I could see him turn a skeletal snake head towards the blue glow of Fleet’s charging mass field as the motoroid shifted from robot to motorcycle form. I could see the corridor of mass effect projection form, bending the laws of physics on their head. And I could feel Fleet’s satisfaction, conveyed through a final transfer of data for all his other copies before he engaged his engine and launched the motoroid at relativistic speeds.

Lung was fifty feet tall, rapidly regenerating, and insanely durable. He had stood up to an Endbringer, defied the forces of the C.U.I., and maintained a hold on Brockton Bay for nearly a decade. At full strength there was no telling what he could survive, what it would take to put him down, but looking up at that blue streak that turned into a spray of burning white tearing towards the horizon, I think he may have met his match.

Then my concerns were more along the lines of ‘Oh shit, shockwave’ as the consequences of performing an atmospheric FTL launch, even in thin atmosphere, became apparent. The blast drove both of us towards the water, with the suit taking the brunt of it. I had enough time to see Dragon’s craft go under before I was submerged myself, the shock shifting me back to my human form. I kicked up, managing to push myself through the surface of the water with one burst of life fiber assisted strength and the force of my improvised thrusters. Floating above the bay I took in the aftermath of the attack.

The sea was parting. Well, not literally, but there was a shockwave effect moving through it. I watched the wave mount as it approached the city, rising high enough to wash over the boardwalk and soak coastal areas of Downtown. Weirdly, the arrangement of Dust effects centered in the North Docks acted as a breakwater, preventing the effects of the blast from reaching shore.

It was a mercifully light cost to the attack, and the reason we had pushed for as high a launch as possible. An impact at sea level would have sent a tsunami level wave at the city, and probably every coast from here to Boston.

And I had just killed someone. He was a monster, sure, but it was still an intentional act of murder. Even if I didn’t pull the trigger I signed the death warrant. With every aspect of my mentality ready to dismiss the event or congratulate me for it, my Katsujinken made this feel like a failure.

I was kind of grateful for that. For the fact that there was some moderating force in the Forge that held human life as valuable. As important. Even if I had to feel like crap for saving the city from Lung, at least I felt like crap for the right reason.

Oh, and a connection to the Toolkits constellation. Prismatic Laboratory, a workshop addition specializing in exotic light and colors. Very exotic. Also, some additions. A candle that could actually hold off death for ten minutes, but only once every ten years. And two sets of ‘connections’, relationships with groups of people who would send small gifts and tokens of affections. And the groups I got were squid monsters and… demons?

I was pulled out of my concerning contemplation when I received a message from my duplicate.

“Taking the suit back to the Workshop. Your ride should be here soon. She’ll get you home.”

Before I could ask for clarification I heard the sound of repulsors. Not the approach of repulsors, but the sound, immediately and directly on top of me. I looked up and found a familiar set of purple armor floating above me.

I smiled at sight. “The duplicate contacted you?”

The bottom of her helmet retracted and Aisha flashed me a grin. “Couldn’t let you have all the fun.” She turned towards the sky where the aftermath of Fleet’s suicide run was still visible. “Lung dead?”

“Probably.” I admitted.

“Good.” She started calmly before tuning back to me. “So, you look like shit, and the other guy said you’d probably collapse the second this was over.” I swayed slightly, having to leave the control of my repulsors to the nanobot matrix that had constructed them.

“Yeah.” I confessed. “That’s about right.”

“Right.” She gave a confident nod, but I could hear the worry in her voice. “Uh, haven’t really put this to the test, but I think I might be able to cover someone else with my power, providing you don’t like move or talk or anything.” She added uncertainty.

I gave her a tired nod. “If not, the armor has stealth tech. Should be able to conceal us if we're careful.”

“Well, I’ll have to take your word for that. Mini-Fleet is handling most of the driving on this thing, and I can barely work the helmet on my own.” Oh, right. She’d had the suit for what, a few hours? If that. “And he is insufferably proud of that.” She pointed towards the sky.

I turned to look again, but found myself light headed. I was adrenalin crashing bad, and I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I passed out and lost nanite healing.

“Fuck.” Aisha exclaimed. “Okay, just go limp or something. We can work this out.”

I wasn’t really comfortable being hauled from my great victory like a sack of potatoes, but there was no way around it. Aisha activating her power on another person was a complicated process, with more than one incident where I panicked and tried to activate my own repulsors before just absorbing them at her insistence.

It really did work better if I didn’t do, say or even look at anything while she was hauling me. Apparently it took a lot of concentration, so it was really Fleet who was handling the ‘flying’ part of things. Regardless, she managed to get us to the back door of Garment’s shop without being noticed, then helped me fumble with the workshop key in one of the back rooms of the studio.

By that point Tetra’s drain was well beyond what my nanites could cover. I was half unconscious and light headed, barely noticing the duplicate who met me at the door. From that point everything was a series of sounds and blurred images.

“Help me get him to the clinic. The drones can help, but I need to keep him calm.”

“He kept talking about the Docks, the container yard. His motorcycle crashed there, and the other ABB…”

“We’ll deal with it. Here. Get him onto the medical bed.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“It’s a mess. Damn is it a mess.”

“What’s that red stuff? It did this? He never told me about it.”

“I won’t have time to explain. I’m down to my last minutes. Here, help me get those gloves off him.”

“Right. Wait, is that Garment? Is she going to be okay?”

“She’ll be fine. She would have healed in a day, but I can fix her. Look, we can fix anything. It’s a power. And here, take this.”

“What am I supposed to do with this? I thought they didn’t work for me?”

“They won’t. After I’m gone make sure he drinks it. We have loads of them, and Fleet and Survey should be able to help. Probably Garment too, providing I can… Yes!”

“Thank God. Are you okay?”

There was a sense of motion in the room and I felt gloved fingers caress my face. I tried to focus, but my eyes were heavy and my vision was tinged dark red.

“Crap, I think he’s fading.”

“You mean…”

“No, just about to pass out. I need to take over the nanites.” I felt a hand on my chest, and suddenly the focus I’d been driving myself to hold was no longer necessary. Another load removed from my shoulders. I could relax. “And we need more healing potions. And scanners. Crap, this is going to take some serious work to fix.”

“What can I do?”

“Listen to Survey. And Fleet, and the next set of duplicates. They’re going to have to take point on this. Make sure he can take the potion. It shouldn’t duplicate Tetra…”

“Tetra?”

“The red stuff. You haven’t met her yet.”

“Her?”

“Later, or the next guys will explain. Point is, that’s the big problem and it won’t copy along with him. Give them enough time and they can fix this. If not… Well, listen to Garment and Survey and do what you can.”

I didn’t like the tone of that statement, but the conversations in the room were sounding further and further away. The last thing I remember before fading into sleep was the sensation of a gloved hand squeezing my own hand in a reassuring grip.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Valuable Memories: Bigs (Big O) 300:

You have knowledge related to any particular concept-the construction of Megadei, the nature of memories, Bigs, or the creation of chimeras. Paradigm will have a vested interest in you, and will protect you and provide you with funds if you work for them.

That Undefinable Thing (Tales of Symphonia) 300:

Even if you can't describe it, you can still manipulate it. You can now make physical tools and containers for souls, as well as gaining the knowledge of how to use the soul as a power source for magic, machinery, and living bodies. Given proper resources (raw souls), you can create Exspheres and Key Crests which can then power the things mentioned in your place.

Anything powered by their user’s soul is known intimately to them, inhabited by the soul the same way a body is inhabited by a soul. It becomes in all ways an extension of the self, for good or ill. While the soul is infinite, it can be diminished and grown. Take care.

Iconic Outfit (Tales of Symphonia) Free:

This outfit is rugged, stylish, and undeniably YOU.

Questionably Practical Weapon (Tales of Symphonia) Free:

You're fighting with that? Really? And merchants will sell you more and more deadly upgrades? If you want this can be a well crafted mundane weapon instead.

Workshop: Woodworking (Warehouse) 100:

Each purchase of this adds to your Personal Reality Workshop needed to perform specific type of craft, which is to be specified when purchase is made. It comes with a basic set of tools and supplies. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Additional purchases can add different types of Workshops to your Personal Reality or expand existing ones. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat backed to be restored to its original condition within 48 hours if damaged or destroyed.

Sea Snail Shells (Splatoon) 300:

You have a small breeding population of around 10 Super Sea Snails, large snails with crystalline, conical shells. The snails are hermaphroditic but and they live for around 15 years. They're more than they seem, though they provide an invaluable service- Their shells can be used to imbue hats, shirts, and pairs of shoes with extra Ability Slots, or reroll the abilities of a clothing item with 3 full slots. This kills the Sea Snail, but if you're careful to keep up the population then eventually you might have an entire wardrobe of 3-slot clothing. Also, they're delicious when cooked right.

Armor-Shift Manufacture (Bloody Roar) 100:

A small machine - big enough to hold a massive pauldron or two - that gives any pieces of armor or clothing placed inside a specific quality: When their wearer changes form, the armor and clothing changes form with him / her.

Beast Change!: Inostrancevia (Bloody Roar) Free:

You can freely access your Zoanthrope form, becoming a monstrous humanoid that is a horrific combination of human and beast. Reptile, mammal, avian, amphibian, piscine, it does not matter what. If it existed in Earth’s lifetime, you can choose it. (Yes, this includes Dinosaurs. No, it does not include microorganisms.)

Martial Artist: Muay Thai (Bloody Roar) Free:

Pick one martial art from Earth’s history & various cultures. You now know the basics of this art, as well as a few of the more advanced moves. More beneficially, you know how to apply this martial art to your Zoanthrope form - and combine the two into a deadly style of combat. Wrestling forms and dances are also accepted if they can be theoretically used in combat.

Secret of Steel (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) 400:

An illustrated guide created by the greatest master of weapons the world has ever known. It keenly details the techniques, methods and setup required to create weapons using traditional Japanese techniques. This text goes beyond that however, and if the directions are followed perfectly it can be used to forge weapons, armor, and tools that are far better than anything that could possibly be made even with the most advanced metallurgic technology. Objects created—while still composed of steel—will be significantly stronger than steel and can withstand blows from a Martial Arts Master. Blades made using these techniques will be preternaturally sharp, able to cut through stone, steel and perhaps even more with proper strength and training. Such bladed weapons will almost never lose their edge and require virtually no maintenance. Armor made using these techniques is nearly indestructible and will never rust or corrode. Normal tools will work with such efficiency that even primitive tools can accomplish feats of scale equivalent to highly advanced modern technology. For example, a scythe made with these techniques could harvest an entire field in the same amount of time as a combine harvester or a simple hoe could do the work of a tractortowed plough.

Katsujinken (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:

Those who follow the path of “Katsujinken” or “life giving fist” hold that the true purpose of martial arts is to protect those who cannot protect themselves and improve the lives of those around them. People who follow this viewpoint view the death of their opponent as tantamount to defeat and shun those who purposefully kill. By embarking on this path, you develop a kind and calm demeanor, capable of setting just about anyone at ease. So long as you hold to this philosophy, you will be able to have a brief but significant dialogue with your opponent before any act of open combat.

Sei Ki (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:

Ki is the life force, energy or breath that flows through all living things. Martial artists harness their Ki to perform amazing feats of strength and abilities, with master's able to channel their Ki into effects that are truly superhuman.

Those who utilize Sei Ki seek to focus their Ki inwards. In battle this results in an inner calm and centeredness that lends itself well to thoughtful action and awareness of surroundings. Those who have Sei Ki will be able to master techniques that do not rely on power or anger but on wits, talent and skill. Sei users will be more likely to come up with new inventive solutions in combat and will frequently have moments of insight that may turn an unwinnable battle in their favor.

Weapons (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:

Martial artists who embark on the path of weapons will seek to master a physical implement to augment their fighting style. These tend to be much more lethal than unarmed fighters, but are at a disadvantage when disarmed or caught without their weapon. Whenever you fight with a weapon corresponding to your martial art, you will find that you consistently deal more damage and are more accurate with your strikes than if you fought unarmed.

Martial Arts Ninjutsu (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:

All who enter this world know at the very least the basics of their chosen martial art as well as its various strengths and weaknesses. The more styles you choose to study, the longer it will take to incorporate them into a cohesive and usable whole. You may also choose any realworld martial art not listed here if you so desire. You will however remain a novice in your style unless you can somehow obtain a master or worthy sparring partner.

Ninjutsu A martial art believed to have once been practiced by the shinobi of Japan. This style is based primarily around precision, stealth and deception. Its users are particularly skilled at kneading their ki, allowing them to engage in maneuvers and techniques that to the untrained eye appear like magic. It is both an unarmed and armed martial art.

Master’s Body (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free after 10 years:

You possess the body of a master. You are very near tireless, capable of fighting for days without sleep and only limited food. You never run out of breath, and will still be able to engage in vigorous physical activity even after extreme exercise. You now have access to a limitless logarithmic growth of your physical strength, durability, speed and agility.

“Sword” - Lantern Shield (History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi) Free:

You receive a “sword”. Not necessarily a literal sword; rather a tool that you carry into battle and which you place your heart, soul and trust in.

If you selected weapon however, you receive your choice of melee weapon. It acts and functions as though it were created using the “Secret of Steel” making it more durable than most weapons formed using modern metallurgic techniques. As you grow in skill the weapon will as well, allowing you to hit slightly harder, swing slightly faster and strike with greater accuracy than you would with any other mundane weapon. By the time you have reached master status, you will be able to use this weapon with robotic precision, able to cut or break through a modern tank. Of course without this weapon you will be unable to do nearly half of those things, but that is the price paid when one embarks on the path of weapons. You may instead choose an existing weapon you have to receive this benefits, but it must be compatible with your martial art.

Prismatic Laboratory (Fallen London) 400:

The principle of acute observation is light! And to that end, you have fashioned a workspace of lenses, liquids, critters and crystals to focus upon recreating a spectrum of lights fantastic. Ah, the impossible palette: those colours only seen in the Neath! You may not always produce something like it, but you will produce their inks and lenses in time.

St Andrew’s Candle (Fallen London) Free:

That candle you had so long ago. It feels heavier now, perhaps it has fed upon your sins, perhaps it too has changed as you have. St Andrew’s Candle no longer burns low, for indeed it resists all attempts to extinguish it. But in the case of your sudden and fatal injury, it flares in brilliant ignition, granting you ten more minutes of life and action as it burns itself down from wick to stub. It will not heal your injuries, but it will prevent new ones from forming. Should you survive and reverse your fatality, the candle will not and will only renew itself at the beginning of a new jump or after ten years post-spark. The light it gives is a true Neathy light, a reminder of your time in the Fifth City.

Connections: Hell (Fallen London) Free:

Those amber eyed Devils have taken a shine to you. From their Westernmost halls, to the Brass Embassy on Ladybones, there’s not a tempter who doesn’t know you. Their gifts include nevercooling brass, poisonous wine, masquerade invites, chemicals, and a few bottled souls that strayed away from the archives. Cannot take with Church.

They will send you gifts every fortnight as payment for some obscure service. Similar factions may be present in future jumps.

Connections: Rubbery Men (Fallen London) Free:

Ssaloshagosh? How do you spell that? They risk stonings and harsh glances as they make their way to your abode, but by some alien measure it is worth it. Their slimy packages reveal amber of various colours, tiny unusual skulls and pocket change from ancient cities. Cannot take with Revolutionary.

They will send you gifts every fortnight as payment for some obscure service. Similar factions may be present in future jumps.


	49. 41.1 Interlude Victoria

(Author’s Note: This interlude was originally intended to be the addendum for chapter 41. I didn’t have time to finish it for that chapter, and decided to expand it to a full interlude. Unfortunately, other commitments had impacted my writing time and I was only able to cover half the content I intended. As such the second half of this interlude will be included next week, and will cover a lot of the points raised regarding chapter 41. Regrettably, this interlude stops just before that point is reached, but those details will be addressed next time.)

41.1 Interlude Victoria

Victoria sat at the corner table of the coffee shop, idly checking her phone. It wasn’t one of the shops she typically visited, but she couldn’t handle those right now. The major chains or dressed up cafés of the boardwalk were just too much.

Normally she was fine with the attention that came with being a public cape. Sure, sometimes there were the people who would get too forward with Amy, but she was always there to step in. Crowds were a lot less intimidating when you knew there was no chance of being overpowered and you could always fly off when things got too much.

Except lately there was nowhere that she could fly off to. Her mind jumped back to her house, a building that felt much too empty, more than Amy’s absence would warrant. She had thought that her father’s bad days were the worst their family would have to endure, but nothing prepared her for this.

Well, not nothing. She looked down as her phone buzzed, announcing a text message from Missy.

‘Still being held on standby. No idea if anything’s going to happen. Hanging out with the guardsmen.’

The young cape had attached some selfies taken with members of the National Guard, framing the team of Vista, Clockblocker, and Browbeat with some smiling soldiers. The guardsmen were still standing by in the event that ‘something’ happened. The idea of supervillains clashing with military forces wasn’t a pleasant one, but it at least seemed like something was happening, something was being done to counter the madness that had taken over the city.

She quickly entered a reply.

‘Good luck. Hope it doesn’t come to that.’

The girl replied with a complicated emoji, a questioning eyebrow with sweat drops and half gritted teeth. Vicky grinned at it. She knew the girl was desperate for action, but couldn’t exactly wish for a villain attack. The indecisive reply was the best she could do.

Missy had been a surprisingly big help since their conversation on Monday night. Victoria never really connected with the girl; the five-year age difference had proven too much of a barrier, despite them working together often enough. It had taken everything falling apart, for each of them, before they finally opened up with each other.

And for once Missy had the undeniable edge in experience. Victoria knew what was happening in her house. The disclosure of Amy’s testimony had been done with the highest confidentiality, so of course the entire city knew what it contained. Still, it was unconfirmed, so everyone was politely keeping their mouths shut as they stood by and watched her family fall apart.

It was something Missy had a terrifying amount of first hand understanding with.

The girl had shared stories of when her own parents’ marriage was falling apart. It was eerily similar: Missy’s dad’s health problems, her mother’s cheating, then the horrible period where neither of them wanted to be the first one to leave, then the nightmare of a custody agreement. Suddenly Vicky understood why Missy tried to spend as much time in the Wards HQ as she could get away with.

She took another look at the shared picture and remembered that she wasn’t the only one Missy had started opening up to. It was just the last person she had ever expected.

Technically the three capes in the picture constituted what would be considered the Wards second team, or B-team, or delta squad, or whatever they ended up calling it. After the gallery there had been a push to build on what worked, meaning the Wards could be split into two teams of three with one member on console, with Weld leading the first team, and Clockblocker leading the second team.

That was something she never thought she would see. Sure, academically she knew Dennis would lead the Wards sometime after Dean, but she had never been able to actually picture him in the role. Missy had to repeatedly tell her the story of Clockblocker’s plan and strategy at the gallery, and she still had trouble believing it was the same person who had frozen her and stacked packing peanuts in her hair.

Looking at the way the cape held himself in the picture you would never guess he had been known as the team joker. Maybe there was some truth about hidden depths and people rising to the occasion. Dennis clearly had some leadership potential, and Vicky was shocked when Missy told her how much the loss of the Forsberg Gallery was weighing on the boy. According to Missy he was taking it as both a personal failure and an irreplaceable loss.

It was a point of common ground that had done a lot to repair the relationship between Dennis and Missy. Apparently Dennis was good at leveraging the skills and abilities of people under his command, and was giving Missy the distinction her experience warranted. Being recognized like that was a big deal for a girl with an uncontrollable home life.

Vicky had to wonder if she was headed for the same situation that Vista had gone through. Missy’s parents had gone through a nightmare divorce, but they didn’t have the complication of superpowers or a hero team mixed into it. She didn’t actually know if her parents were headed for divorce, but she had seen the same situation play out with enough of her friends from Arcadia to know how it went down.

Somebody cheated, then there were the rounds of accusations, circling of lawyers, possible separations, then sometimes the parents stayed together and sometimes they didn’t. Vicky had the sense it was mostly based on prenup agreements or some aspect of how assets would be divided. Kind of like what happened to Missy, only with a couple of extra zeros on everything, given the average income of your typical Arcadia parent.

New Wave was a mess, and an uncomfortably public mess. It was the kind of situation Aunt Sarah would have done everything she could to prevent, only she had been the one to set it off. Or would that be Amy? Her mom? Uncle Neil?

Apeiron?

She pulled back before she could get caught in that particular rabbit hole. Whatever the tinker’s plans or intentions, he hadn’t done anything to her family, not since his first appearance. All this, it was on them. She hated it, but that was the truth.

She turned towards the opening door of the coffee shop and smiled at the reason for her visit. Possibly the least well regarded, but apparently most stable, member of her family walked into the store.

“Uncle Mike!” She waved to him from her table. At this time of day, the coffee shop was mostly empty, and well situated for a quiet conversation. That said, they still drew a bit of attention. Mostly passive interest, but a couple of flashes of recognition from some of the older patrons. Vicky wondered if they remembered when Lightstar was still in New Wave, or if they just were able to place his face.

“Hey Vicky.” He replied. The man placed a quick order at the counter and settled into the corner table with a cup of drip coffee, faster and simpler than her half fat latte. She gave him a questioning look.

“Do you have to get back soon?” She inquired.

Her uncle shook his head. “No, I’m off shift unless they have another emergency. Just got used to drinking basic coffee. I guess it comes from working with cops.”

The girl nodded. “Uh, how does that work anyway? I mean, it’s like half-Protectorate or something?”

“Protectorate affiliate. Also, technically a police contractor. There’s less glory and more paperwork than you get as an independent or full member of the Protectorate, but it’s also quieter work.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but it’s a good fit for me.”

She nodded again, and hoped she hadn’t sounded like she was fishing for job opportunities. It was a horrible feeling, having not just your home but your future turned upside down. She had never really given it too much thought. Stay in Brockton, go to college, work with New Wave, collaborate with the Protectorate. Some vague idea about Dean taking a similar path out of the Wards and into the Protectorate proper. Them circling each other until… something happened.

No part of that ever included a contingency for New Wave not existing. It was something that had always been there, and now it was falling apart. Suddenly she had to think about what she was going to do, what she could do without that beacon of stability in her life.

“So, uh, you just deal with normal crimes? No capes?” She asked in as neutral a tone as she could manage.

“Generally. The police are always happy to get some cape help on their side. The extra firepower is actually a big deterrent. If I do end up facing a villain it’s usually because the info was bad or something changed at the last minute. In those cases, it can get kind of heavy, but they’ll be calling in the PRT and local Protectorate.” He explained.

“So, you just go against normal humans?” Somehow it didn’t seem like a proper balance to her. She remembered all the times she had gone up against unpowered members of the ABB, Merchants, or Empire. Yeah, she was more durable than most capes, but it was never even a fight. Just brutally one sided.

Too brutal. Her mind jumped back to the last time she had to make that desperate call to Amy. And then to the words that had been echoing in her head for a week.

‘So, ‘lack of restraint’ was about right?’

She shook off those thoughts and focused on her uncle’s reply. “It’s not like I’m going out picking fights.” She hid a shudder at the phrasing he used. “Usually I support the SWAT team, or provide additional firepower on serious raids. I’ve got a… um, a kind of night vision power.” He made a nebulous gesture. “It helps me cover angles normal people can’t, so usually I watch the back or handle vantage points, that kind of thing.”

Vicky remembered the stories. Well, not her mother’s stories. She hadn’t really mentioned her uncle since he left. Not Aunt Sarah’s stories either. Was it her father? Uncle Neil?

A horrible pit formed in her stomach when she realized she was remembering a story from her Aunt Jess. Fleur. She must have been babysitting her and Amy at the time, and shared a story about Uncle Mike using his blaster power, laying down explosive orbs to hedge in ‘bad guys’. Her aunt always made Mike seem like her knight in shining armor, just the way she described things…

She held back the reaction and fought for something else to say. “Uh, what’s it like? Working for the police, instead of the Protectorate?”

The man shrugged, but had a small smile on his face. “Different. I mean, really different. Capes, the PRT, all that sprang up in the last couple of decades. Cops have been cops for centuries. It’s a totally different culture.” A troubled look crossed his face. “Sometimes those cultures don’t blend too well.”

“What do you mean?” She asked, leaning forward.

She recognized the look on her uncle’s face. The expression that indicated he was considering whether he should be discussing this with her, with someone her age. Whatever the topic it must have passed the checks for violence, adult content, and embarrassing or confidential details seeing how he continued after shaking his head.

“It’s probably good to get a handle on this. The PRT, the Protectorate? They’re basically a separate jurisdiction working alongside the police. There’s a lot of overlap, and the relationship isn’t always that friendly. Generally when the PRT wants jurisdiction they get it, but there’s not always the impression that it’s for a good reason, or is being handled properly.” The her uncle explained.

Vicky nodded, following the concept, even if she couldn’t place it precisely. “Do you run into that a lot?”

“Some.” He admitted. “Back home it comes up occasionally.” He smiled again. “I actually have to play mediator between departments every now and then. Generally petty stuff, investigations into related crimes or how to handle non-powered henchmen or gang members.” His voice dropped. “Nothing as bad as what’s happening here.”

Vicky’s eyebrows rose and she replied in the same subdued voice. “The Brockton police don’t get along with the PRT?”

The look he gave her was almost painful to endure, like she had missed the most obvious thing in the world. Thinking back, when was the last time she had dealt with a police officer, rather than someone from the Protectorate or PRT? She knew they were there, but somehow they weren’t part of her life as a cape. She had just kind of slotted the PRT into the role of ‘local authority’ and thought nothing of it.

“The PRT manages parahuman crime, which in this city is expanded to all gang activities, except they don’t have the resources to manage the full extent of a gang’s actions. So, you have normal cops trying to deal with the street level aspects of the Empire or the ABB, then the PRT swoops in because a cape showed up at one of the sites they were staking out. The whole thing turns into a mess of who has what authority where. Cops don’t want to end up running into Hookwolf or something, but they can’t actually deal with any of the problems when their investigations are being usurped.”

“I never thought about it like that.” Vicky kind of suspected Uncle Mike was speaking from a bit of a biased perspective, given how closely he was working with the city’s police department, but she could see where he was coming from.

“It’s not just the gangs. You have random investigations getting transferred across all the time, usually with barely any explanation. Sometimes it’s just because a hero is connected in some way.” He shook his head grimly. “I heard about some horrible case from the start of the year at one of the schools that got taken out of police hands because there was some proximity to a Ward.”

Vicky didn’t remember anything from Arcadia, but if it was horrible, that was probably Winslow. There was always terrible stuff being said about that school. From the gangs and the drug problems to the nightmarish urban legend about the girl in the locker that had cropped up recently. It was just a place that attracted that kind of stuff.

Her uncle must have seen her reaction, because he pulled back slightly. “Sorry if I’ve been laying things on a little thick.” He sighed. “A lot of the officers were caught in the second wave of blasts on Saturday. It hit most of the departments pretty hard, as well as the rest of the emergency services. It’s not the kind of thing people get over easily.”

Vicky swallowed and nodded. “I understand.” She did, and felt horrible for it. With everything that had been happening she hadn’t given a second thought to the trap Bakuda had set, the second set of bombs designed to hit relief forces. The obvious effect was slowing the dispatch to a crawl until every site was examined with a fine-tooth comb, but that was on the city-wide scale. It overlooked the impact on all the people, the police, the paramedics, the firefighters, who had been caught in that disaster.

Maybe there was something to that divide between police and capes.

Her uncle sighed again. “Sorry to dump that on you. I know you're dealing with a lot, It’s mostly from just coming off shift.”

“It’s okay.” She assured him, but she could see he didn’t believe her.

“How are things at home? With your mom?” He pressed. She let out a sigh before replying.

“It’s not… great. Dad’s still doing his night patrols…” she trailed off, not wanting to elaborate on that situation. He had been making spectacular inroads against the gangs, and when she first heard she hoped he might be doing better. Recovering. Then she saw the videos. Like a tiny sun. Reckless, irreverent, and nearly self-destructive in his boldness.

If it was a teenage cape or new member of the Protectorate in the streets she would have been impressed. Instead, seeing her father like that, it just looked wrong. He was being intentionally careless, and she was worried for him. Worried about what that could mean. Worried in a way she didn’t want to think about.

She swallowed her concern and pressed on. “Mom’s been dealing with something at the PRT headquarters that she won’t talk about. I thought it might be about Amy, but apparently that’s not it.” She looked up at her uncle, pursuing the real reason she asked him to meet her. “Have you…”

“I spoke with her on Tuesday. She was doing okay, all things considered.” He admitted.

“Is she…” Victoria took a moment to collect herself. “Is she alright? It’s been nearly a week, and with everything that’s happened… I'm really worried.”

Her uncle nodded. “She’s having a rough time, but she’s managing well enough. I had a call with her yesterday.” Vicky gave him an inquiring look. “They're moving her into off-site holding, so at least she’s out of formal containment. She still has limited access, but she’s not in a cell anymore.”

Vicky felt a relief bubble within her. “Do you know when… If she can have visitors?”

Mike shook his head. “There’s something else going on, more tests. Contact is restricted until they sort that out.”

The bubble of relief popped and Vicky felt dread rush up to take its place. “It’s not Apeiron, is it?”

She said the words in a small voice, but with absolute certainty. Her uncle nodded at her.

“Probably not. There’s still suspicion, but the behaviors don’t match up. Just from a high level, if he could influence capes he would have a dozen better uses for it than targeting Amy and sending her into a situation where she’d get caught.” Vicky nodded as he continued. “There’s something else, but I couldn’t tell you what it is. I doubt the people inside the Protectorate are fully briefed, and I’m about three degrees separated from them.” He gave her a sad look. “Sorry I can’t be more help.”

She nodded. It was about what she expected. She was happy to at least get some news, some update on her sister, but she had been holding out hope for something more, some chance that things could turn around.

Looking back at how she felt at the start of this mess it seemed unbelievably naive. Pushing past the initial confusion, Amy’s babbled warnings about the tinker and ABB actions as they removed her cast, she had felt a level of certainty when her sister had gone to speak with Armsmaster and Director Piggot. It had felt right, things were back on track. That horrible, gaping, embarrassing loss at the bank could be put behind them. She was convinced that Amy was giving the heads of the Protectorate and PRT everything they needed to bring down the tinker, the Undersiders, and anyone else connected to this mess.

Then everything started to go wrong. At first she managed to stay positive, or at least made her best attempt. Things were worse than she thought. The tinker had hit Amy with some mysterious master effect and planted information about her family. She initially thought it was misinformation, a ploy to throw things off, but that idea died when she saw her Aunt Sarah’s reaction.

She remembered the fights between her mother and aunt. Even in her room with the door closed she could hear them shouting at each other. She’d never seen an argument like that, and it was the last time she had seen her mother and Aunt Sarah together since the mess began.

The accusations were true. It was horrible, but she had managed to use it to steel her resolve. Clearly the tinker was planning something. Attacking Amy, revealing information to turn her family against each other, giving vague warnings about the ABB. All clearly some ploy.

In retrospect it had been a wonderful line of thinking to hold herself to. Everything could be blamed on some shadowy machination from the mystery tinker. If you stretched your logic far enough you could even blame him for the way the bank had turned out. Clearly without his weapons they would have triumphed. Hell, if he was planning on that level then why not assume he coordinated everything, the attack, response, and consequences.

Dean’s armor? His fault. Carlos’s injuries? His fault. Amy’s broken wrist? His fault. Tattletale’s threats? His fault. Her overreaction to them? His fault. The bad press? His fault. The PRT reprimand? His fault. Dean having to leave for New York with no notice and barely enough time to say goodbye? Entirely his fault.

Then Saturday happened. The Cape Blackout. An attack so well coordinated and widespread that New Wave would have been pressed to the limit even if they were in top form. Instead, you had individual members bumbling around putting out fires, sometimes literally, rather than acting as the precision strike team they were supposed to be.

And then she saw the video, and learned exactly what it was she had been building up in her mind. Somehow, despite assigning the tinker an amount of blame, power, and assumed influence just short of a Simurgh Bomb she had managed to come up short.

Afterwards they were calling it a textbook case for a perfect cape debut. She hated the assessment, but couldn’t argue with it. Initially she had thought it was just another of his plots, another way from him to advance his schemes for the city. That was before his next appearance confirmed that he must have some style power working to support him. Too many little elements always lined up to complement his actions. A shaker power designed to look good.

That was when the worldview she had been holding since the event on Thursday night, and probably a lot longer, had started to crack. Everything, every assumption, hinged on the idea that the newly dubbed Apeiron was working from the shadows out of necessity. That he was some cowardly weakling, another Coil-type, playing puppet master from behind the scenes.

It made sense, the cape crafted super weapons, handed them out with the assistance of his thinker power or technology or whatever he used to coordinate things, and caused chaos without having to risk himself. It let everything he did be blamed on his schemes. Even healing Amy was just the start of a chain of effect. You didn’t have to consider what he said, you didn’t have to think of him as a person, and you could fondly imagine the day when you dragged him into the light, away from all his stupid technology, and kicked his ass all the way to the Protectorate HQ.

After the broadcast from Saturday night you couldn’t think like that anymore. Apeiron wasn’t someone hiding in the shadows, he wasn’t a weakling, and most of all, he was a person. He was a person with concerns, standards, and an actual personality. He cared about people, maybe only through contracts, but more than any moustache twirling villain should.

There was depth there she couldn’t ignore, not with the power and abilities he casually displayed. He was strong enough that the idea of him needing to hide and manipulate from the shadows was ridiculous. Before that video she figured him for a new tinker with a lucky specialization. As the video went on that shifted from ‘Could give Armsmaster a run for his money.’ to ‘How much of the Protectorate is it going to take to bring this guy down?’ to ‘Apparently the city is still standing because Apeiron was feeling generous.’.

The man used something that was being compared to nuclear weaponry to cut down missiles. He seemed to pull out new powers and technology every other minute of the fight. The only reason Bakuda… she almost thought ‘walked out’, but that wasn’t the case. The only reason Bakuda escaped was because Uber and Leet had somehow managed to reclaim the stride of their early years.

Nobody liked to talk about it anymore, but she remembered when Leet used to regularly embarrass the heroes with his stunts. The frustration that was going through New Wave back then was tangible, and apparently it was even worse at the Protectorate. If Leet had trended up instead of down she didn’t even want to think about where he’d be right now. As it was, even a return to form was a terrifying reminder of something every hero in the city, and probably more than a few villains, was hoping would never come again.

But Apeiron had beat them. Three times he had come out ahead, either driving them off or destroying everything they brought to bear. And Apeiron was trending up, sharply. Some people were hoping for a crash, some were still assigning him blame for everything that went wrong in the city, and some were convinced he was responsible for every misfortune that hit Brockton over the last week of hell.

Victoria wasn’t one of them. She prided herself on not being the dumb blond people assumed she was, which meant as much as she wanted to blame Apeiron for everything, she couldn’t ignore the facts. Couldn’t pretend the world was different just because it would make her feel better.

Vista was doing that. Vicky hadn’t said anything to the girl about it, but the younger cape was harboring a well of resentment towards the tinker like nothing she had ever seen before. Apparently she didn’t even like using his chosen name, instead defaulting to a more villainous PRT holding designation.

Vicky would have loved to join her in her hate, but that wouldn’t help Amy. Ignoring the reality of the situation wouldn’t do any good for the city, or fix her family situation, and the reality of the situation was that Apeiron was probably the least villainous villain the city had ever seen.

Beyond the first association with the Undersiders, one that still caused waves of impotent rage to course through her, he had done nothing. No theft, no assaults, none of the myriad of petty and not so petty crimes capes were known for. He fought villains, the exact villains he said he would be focused on. He took steps to limit civilian casualties, even when the ‘civilians’ were forced into combat against him. The worst that could be definitively pinned on him was a mountain of property damage, something the city had a surplus of, and a set of tangential injuries that, given the power he threw around, could have been horrifyingly worse.

She remembered that there were some reported deaths from the storage facility fight that might have been caused by his Final Slash, but considering how bad that could have been, and how he handled himself in the aftermath, nobody was seriously going to press charges. Nobody wanted the grim tasks of digging through remains to try to find the deaths that could possibly be blamed on Apeiron instead of Bakuda. Not after he stayed to pull bombs out of people’s heads.

She really wished she could believe that it was all an elaborate trick, some inscrutable plan that only required the appearance of mercy, compassion, and careful use of power. She knew there were still people who believed that, that he was some threat waiting in the shadows for the moment to strike. But they didn’t see the whole picture. They weren’t there from the start.

They weren’t the one responsible for everything that had happened to the city.

She had been so angry. At the time it felt like an excuse, like it justified everything. She was a hero and the villains had embarrassed her. They had torn down and injured her sister, maimed her friend, swarmed her with stinging insects, and made her efforts a laughing stock. Worse, the way it ended, with Khepri casually dismantling Carlos, told everyone the truth of the situation. They didn’t have a chance from the start. They were being handled with kid gloves. That if the Undersiders were real villains, serious villains, they could have turned the Wards into a corpse pile with little effort.

It made her feel weak and powerless. That made her angry. When Amy went missing she had torn up the hospital looking for her. When she found her she was so frustrated that she just wanted something to hit, and a seemingly perfect target presented itself.

‘I’m the tinker who made the Undersiders’ weapons.’

Confessed villain right in front of her, she didn’t think. It didn’t even occur to her that she needed to think. She had an opportunity to let out all the rage that had built up since the disaster at the bank and she took it. Eagerly.

It wasn’t until afterwards that she realized how hard she had tried to hit him. Nobody knew about his durability or bullshit defenses back then. To her he was just a villain tinker standing close to her sister. She wound up and swung at him with a punch that would have put him through a wall.

That should have put him through a wall.

Why had she done it? If she had grabbed him maybe everything would have been different, but she had wanted to hit something. Maybe she was counting on Amy being there. Her sister was within arm’s reach, she was inside a hospital, there was no better place for him to walk off any injuries she decided to give him.

Instead, her fist had stopped dead. Not like it bounced off something, it just stopped, like something decided the attack didn’t happen. Then the worst thing she could imagine.

Not anger, not fear, not even irritation. Disappointment. It was like she had confirmed something for the man, like rather than charging to the rescue she was being secretly judged for her behavior. And had failed horribly. In the end he didn’t even acknowledge her. His final words were to Amy.

‘So, ‘lack of restraint’ was about right?’

She desperately wanted every suspicion about Apeiron’s plans to be true, if only because that would mean she hadn’t ruined everything. She hadn’t lashed out at an at-worst neutral cape and driven him away from ever helping the city’s heroes again. Amy had told her what he said, his thinker power steering him away from local groups, but supposedly willing to work with other teams. Maybe even New Wave, in some capacity.

At least until she had tried to kill him.

Now he was doing God knows what in some inscrutable way while everyone in the city played catch up with either him or the ABB. Even Dragon hadn’t been able to beat him, and now the world’s top tinker was talking about how she needed to chase him down while also not making any actual accusations. It was a maddening mess that all traced back to that first, stupid punch.

“Vicky? Are you okay?” Her uncle’s question brought her out of her rumination on past mistakes.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, I was just thinking about how all this started.” She sighed. “Maybe if I handled things better last week this wouldn’t have happened.”

The man sitting across from her gave her a complicated look and there was a long moment before he responded. “When your Aunt Jess died I must have gone through everything I did, every decision leading up to that moment. Every thought, every action, every incidental detail I didn’t notice, or thing I could have said or done that would have kept her from being in that place at that time.”

He let out a long breath and Vicky could see the weight of years on him. She waited for him to continue.

“Your mom, your aunt, and me, we don’t have the easiest time dealing with things outside our control. It causes problems, but you can work around it. Sarah kind of channeled that into the team. I have to be reminded when I’m getting too rigid, usually by your Aunt Beth. Your mom…” He glanced to the side before continuing. “I think you get that from her. From us. And when you have powers it’s harder to accept there are things you can’t do anything about. If you see some ways you could have handled things better and want to improve, that’s great, but there’s nothing you could have done that would guarantee things turning out the way you wanted. The world is too big for that.”

She nodded slowly, grateful for the relative privacy of the corner table. The idea of a cape family that needed control of their lives made sense, and also explained the direction they were heading. She could see the truth in her uncle’s words, but that wasn’t as comforting as it could have been, not with everything still falling apart.

She was relieved when the tone from her phone distracted her from that particular line of thought. Her uncle fished out his own at the same time, as did most of the other customers and more than a few of the staff.

Talk about Bizaro world. Uber and Leet Drop a video and Brockton stops at their word. Only the alert on the phone wasn’t from the formerly irrelevant criminal partnership.

It was from March. From the ABB.

Her fingers shook slightly as she unlocked her phone and loaded the stream. The video showed a split screen. On one side was Bakuda, terrifying as ever and somehow completely healed from her injuries. The bomb tinker was perching on a throne in a carefully framed shot with a completely redesigned costume. Seriously redesigned. Sharp angles, elaborate ornamentation, and a military cut complimented her new gas mask, some frighteningly compact design compared to her old model. She looked like a completely different cape. A more professional cape.

On the other screen was Apeiron. Once again, he had updated his costume. The visor was now clearly tinker tech in place of its former metal slats. It complimented a looser hood on the cowl that widened his silhouette, which was framed dramatically against the late afternoon sky. The cut of the rest of his costume had been revised, now sharper in a way that forcibly dragged the eye along the contours created by the seams and the pose of his body. Brilliant white gloves created a sharp contrast with the darker hues of his outfit, and paired with a billowing white cape.

It was hard to nail down exactly which aspect of it was most striking, but the parts came together with a presence that had an almost physical weight. Everything about the framing of the scene was imposing when taken individually, but combined it was almost overwhelming.

She thought about her own costume stuffed in her backpack and largely unchanged for years. It never seemed like it needed updating, but that was before there was a cape fashion war happening on top of a city-wide crisis.

“Hello Apeiron.” Bakuda’s voice came with less distortion than she had previously used. It allowed the tone of her speech to leak through. The sound was echoed from at least a half dozen other devices in the coffee shop as customers and staff crowded to watch the spectacle.

“Hello Bakuda.” The man replied in a stern voice. “You’re looking… intact.”

Vicky could see the other tinker react to the barb, and was briefly relieved, then back to terrified. Apeiron and Bakuda were squaring off. Apparently she was streaming a video call, either live or on delay. The two capes opening up on each other was the last thing the city needed, but at least this wasn’t some kind of joint announcement from the two most dangerous tinkers in the city.

“This is bad.” Her uncle muttered the obvious. He shifted around to watch her as he worked his own. “Something is either being planned or already in the works.” He lifted his device to his ear and gestured for her to continue the broadcast. “I’m going to see what I can get from the BBPD.”

Vicky nodded and turned back to the screen. For any past crisis she would have been on the phone to Aunt Sarah and New Wave would already be coordinating a response. Now she didn’t know what she should do. Call Mom? Check on Dad? Honestly, tagging along with her uncle’s police contacts probably had the best chance to make a difference.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to find this line. Perhaps we overestimated your abilities. Maybe I should have made things simpler for you?” The bomb tinker taunted. Apeiron shifted his body slightly, managing to convey mockery and derision with the slightest of movements and a completely covered face.

“So sorry to hold you in suspense. Had I known you were sitting by the phone desperately waiting for my call I would NEVER have kept you waiting.” Vicky could see the impact the words had on Bakuda and even her uncle raised an eyebrow at the unexpected direction. 

“You wish…” The bomb tinker sputtered, shifting in and out of what it was becoming apparent was an extremely rehearsed posture. “Um, you… You have no idea what you’ve blundered into.”

“I’ve got a decent picture of what you’re planning.” Apeiron taunted. A text message popped up on her screen from Vista, partially obscuring the video.

‘You seeing this? (link)’

She quickly replied with a confirmation and a question mark as the broadcast exchange continued with more derision from Apeiron.

“More hiding behind the helpless while deploying a force that is unskilled, untrained, and unwilling all in the hope of somehow carrying out your schemes.” There was derision in his tone, but Vicky couldn’t tell if it was out of genuine concern for the safety of the people caught in Bakuda’s schemes, or just some offended sense of professional standards.

Missy’s reply came up as she continued to watch the exchange.

‘No clue. Kid says tracing is a lost cause, and still waiting on orders. Hate learning about it this way.’

Vicky wasn’t thrilled about it either, but that was becoming more common. Any intelligence on the city’s conflicts primarily came from the instigators of the conflicts in question. She bit down on her own frustration and watched the broadcast.

“And, of course, leaning on your new thinker to make up for the deficiencies in your own abilities.” He continued, glaring down at the camera in a move so perfect it was hard to believe it hadn’t been scripted in advance. “How is March? Tell me, did she coordinate this as closely as everything else? How much did she have to script for you to prevent a repeat of our last encounter?”

Vicky was surprised by the intensity of Apeiron’s tone as he mentioned March. There were levels of emotions there that even Bakuda hadn’t stirred. The ABB thinker represented an entirely new set of problems that nobody seemed to understand. Everyone accepted she was helping boost the effectiveness of the ABB’s activities, but every source she had heard from was split on how deep her involvement was or how much danger she represented.

The dominant attitude seemed to be that she was a young, inexperienced cape that had gotten in over her head with the ABB. Chasing after Saturday morning dreams of playing villain nemesis and now caught in the real world. Thinkers being exploited by gangs was a common occurrence, but the same could be said about any cape whose power didn’t give them overwhelming force.

Vicky had more than a few doubts about that theory. It was apparently based on her previous activities, always joining the least dangerous groups in whatever territory she found herself in, then moving on when they got too intense. But the idea that she was some exploited child didn’t match what Missy and Denis had described from the Gallery. It didn’t line up with Flechette’s accounts of how dogged the girl had been in her pursuit, not playing villain, but actually dangerous. Breaking out devastating schemes that fit perfectly with the current disaster in Brockton Bay.

That disaster was probably the reason nobody was focusing on her. In a city with Bakuda, Lung, a nascent gang war, Dragon, and Apeiron the PRT could be forgiven for ignoring a teenage villain whose criminal record was mostly misdemeanors. Somewhat forgiven, given the potential threat that they could be overlooking.

Given the way Apeiron was referring to her, with a tone and intensity you rarely heard outside discussions of S-class threats, Victoria felt a good deal less certain about the local Protectorate’s threat assessment than she previously had. A glance at her uncle showed he picked up the implication as well, and signaled his understanding before mumbling something into his phone.

Whatever the implications might suggest Bakuda was obviously not happy about them. The cape pulled herself up and gestured dramatically. “Like she matters in any of this. Logistics doesn’t mean anything without power to back it up.”

Vicky blinked. That might be technically true, but in her time as a hero she had seen more cases of power being present without any effective direction than she had seen effectively directed power that wasn’t up to the task. It was the kind of statement that reminded her that, for all the damage the bomb tinker had wrought, the woman had triggered barely a month ago. It was an unsettling thought, made worse by the threat she followed her statement with. “Whatever you think you’ve seen out there, you have no idea what’s waiting for you.”

Vicky could almost feel the apprehension flicker through the shop. A bomb tinker making a threat on that level would chill anyone with a lick of sense to their very core.

But apparently Apeiron wasn’t included in that category. “Promises, promises.” He mocked, taking on a derisive stance. It was actually stunning how much the cape was able to convey with no facial expression, just from slight shifts of his body. He somehow managed to seem condescending as he continued. “But it’s alright. I’ve seen what you can do, so I’ve come to expect a measure of disappointment.”

“Disappoint…” The bomb tinker restrained herself and started gesturing at the camera. “You are the one who’s disappointing. You’re stumbling along, blind to the world around you. You think you are the only tinker who can develop, who can innovate and advance? You have no idea.”

The woman was making some odd motions with her hands, and seemed to be awkwardly tapping her knee in a decidedly artificial fashion. She exchanged a glance with her uncle, but he seemed as lost as her.

“What is she…” He began, only to be cut off by Apriron.

“If you want me to ask about your limbs that badly, just go ahead and explain. I’ll listen.”

The bored tone he used to invite her to explain what by any standards would be considered a medical miracle was shocking. Vicky watched as Bakuda revealed a restored hand while bragging about the wonders of her technology. Any hope of putting Apeiron off his game seemed to be a lost cause as he made an inquiry on her work with genuine concern. Bakuda’s sputtering explanations died with a single question from the cape.

“Can you cure cancer?”

You could have heard a pin drop in the coffee shop at those words, echoed through the speakers of a half-dozen devices. Bakuda struggled to defend herself as the other tinker tore into her over the impact of her actions.

Vicky didn’t know if he could actually diagnose cancer on sight, though nothing seemed too implausible when it came to that man. What she did know was how horrible cancers could get. She’d been with Amy on more than a few of her rounds to the city’s cancer wards. The image of a person slowly wasting away from destructive treatments was the most common, but she had seen worse conditions, more painful and destructive. If Bakuda really had filled herself with cancer…

Oh God, she regrew limbs. Was she looking at bone cancer as well? She didn’t even want to think about her last encounter with that. Apeiron’s reminder that Bakuda had probably tested her devices on captured civilians before using them on herself turned Vicky’s stomach. The idea of what that technology would do in an incomplete form.

That was the nightmare everyone had been ignoring. The ABB had kidnapped and enslaved dozens of people, people they saw as expendable, and people whose lives they were willing to throw away for any advantage. There had been so many nightmares hitting the city over that past week that that particularly vibrant shade of horrible had practically slipped the public consciousness.

Or had it really ‘slipped’? She knew the PRT had pull with the media. There was certainly enough disaster coverage to go around. Had they steered things away from looking into the ABB’s slave soldiers? Was that because Apeiron had freed dozens of people to their, really the Wards’, one? Or was she being too cynical?

When you stopped buying into the idea that Apeiron was steering the entire city a lot of elements started looking more like general incompetence and shortsighted behaviors piling on top of each other, rather than some master plan.

On the call Bakuda apparently had enough of Apeiron’s needling, dismissing his ‘dime store diagnosis’ and covering her hand again. The ABB tinker started to mock him about his last failure, but the other cape seemed genuinely confused at the idea. Finally he seemed to realize what she was talking about.

“Are you talking about Monday?” The man asked, as if a conflict that cratered a parking lot, burned a missile barrage out of the sky, deleted one office building while cracking open another like a walnut, and peppered Downtown with bomb blasts and exotic weaponry effects, culminating in a frozen tableau, which was becoming a tourist attraction of all things, happened every day.

“Of course I am.” Bakuda yelled with perfectly understandable frustration She drew a breath through her gas mask and switched back to bragging. “Unlike you, I can control the fundamental forces of the universe. That robot is trapped for the rest of eternity, and no matter what you try, you’re never getting it back.”

It was a good point. The ABB had taken a hit in that encounter, and apparently the impact was still being counted. Something about financial crimes on top of gang activity, but that was outside of Vicky’s experience. Her mother would have been able to brief New Wave on what was happening, if New Wave was still getting briefings.

The point was, despite those losses the battle had cost Apeiron as well. He had shown up with three upgraded versions of his robot suit, and two of them had been lost. Despite the insane crafting wizardry he had demonstrated in that fight, Vicky knew how valuable materials and equipment were for tinkers, and how hard it was when they lost something critical.

The aftermath of the bank came to mind once more. Kid Win, covered in bruises and scrapes, cradling the shredded pieces of his flight board. Dean having to be cut out of his power armor, a suit iconic to his life as a cape, being treated like scrap metal. Even the relief that greeted Browbeat when he confirmed the destruction of one of those nightmare knives.

Thinking like that nearly drove Vicky back to the thoughts she’d been struggling to stay away from. The temptation to use Apeiron as an outlet for all the rage, frustration, and unfairness that had cascaded since his appearance. To ignore any details that didn’t line up with that image and cling to that sense of righteousness. To fall into a comfortingly simple mindset of villains bad, heroes good, and everyone sitting in their little bubbles, and anything anyone did was fine as long as it was pointed in the right direction.

That wasn’t the case. At the very least, Apeiron was more complicated than a standard villain. He might not be a hero, but, assuming he wasn’t playing the entire city and most of the related departments for fools, he was far from a villain, and could possibly have been an asset if she hadn’t made that stupid mistake at a critical moment.

“Why would I want it back?” The cape in question asked, playing off the loss so impressively she could almost believe he didn’t care. It was certainly enough to throw Bakuda off her game.

“What?” The tinker nearly slipped off her overbuilt throne, then quickly pulled herself up again, glaring down through the red lenses of her mask. “That’s what you’re playing at? You want to pretend it doesn’t matter? Acting like…”

Her words died at the sound of Apeiron’s patient reply. “Bakuda, that’s three-day-old technology. Even if I could get it back, I don’t know what I would do with it at this point. I mean, maybe as a curiosity…”

Apeiron just trailed off as he made a dismissive gesture. Vicky actually pulled back from her phone, mirroring Bakuda’s reaction to the man’s words. The back and forth that had defined the exchange died as the bomb tinker tried to wrap her mind around what was just said.

Looking around it seemed most of the people watching the broadcast were in the same position. Even her uncle looked like he was trying to figure out if he had heard things correctly. He pulled his phone away from his ear and gave Vicky a question look.

“Did he just say three days? Three days was worthless?” She gave her uncle a helpless look. He looked jarred by the statement, and she couldn’t blame him.

Actually, he looked extremely jarred, run down, and stressed. At a glance he collected himself, and she was met with the front of reassurance and support that had walked into the meeting, but she couldn’t forget the look behind the mask.

Her uncle had signed up for Brockton’s relief forces. He’d been working since he got to the city, while also dealing with his share of the family drama. It was something she was grateful for, but it also felt like she should apologize somehow. He had met her after coming off a full day shift and, while he wasn’t in top form, was doing what he could.

And would be again. This wasn’t being sent out for the purpose of showing how outmatched Bakuda was in terms of conversation skills. The ABB had something in the works. Something that meant they wanted people to see this, to know what they were planning and how it involved Apeiron.

The ABB was going to war with a tinker who thought, with apparent sincerity, that technology from a few days ago wasn’t worth his time. The horrible things that said about the man’s growth curve had nothing on the real concern burning in her mind.

Apparently the first time Apeiron had gone into battle he had broken Oni Lee’s arm. A week later he leveled a storage yard. The time after that he was removing sections of the city and launching attacks that still weren’t properly quantified. The problem of what Apeiron would be tomorrow, or next week wasn’t important at the moment. The critical question was, what would he be bringing to this fight? And could the city endure it.

A light voice came from somewhere off camera, breaking Bakuda out of her stupor at the insane statement of power. “Three-day-old technology? My, isn’t that precious.”

March stepped into frame. Superficially she was exactly like the pictures Vicky had seen from the villain’s New York career, but there was something critically different. At first she thought it was the uniform. It still had a military cut, but something more in line with a general than the conductor of a marching band. Every element had been polished, every detail tweaked. It was another step up in cape costume design.

But that wasn’t enough to account for the impression. Then Victoria saw it. The reaction to March’s appearance wasn’t because of March. It was because of Apeiron.

The cape clearly hadn’t expected the thinker to appear, but rather than seeming shocked or put off he was poised. There was a tension in his stance that hadn’t been there before, but tension like a coiled serpent. The tension that made you poised to strike rather than the tension that would cause you to freeze up.

He was regarding March as a threat, but rather than backing down or expressing concern he had shifted his stance slightly and was positively radiating menace. Vicky involuntarily moved her phone back a few inches and noticed similar reactions in other people watching the broadcast. The strength of his costume, stance, and body language was being conveyed strongly enough that she could nearly feel it press down on her.

On the screen Bakuda clearly picked up on it, but the rabbit cape was completely unmoved, gossiping with the ABB tinker like schoolyard friends.

“You heard him, he doesn’t want it back. That means it's just waiting there for anyone who cares to take it. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Apeiron clearly wasn’t amused by the threat to plunder his work. “March.” His voice was deep and guarded. Suddenly there was no levity in the exchange. All the little flourishes he had used to needle Bakuda were gone, replaced with a demeanor that was deadly serious. “So, the rabbit’s finally poking her head out of her warren. I had been wondering when Bakuda would finally need to pull you out of her hat. The rest of her little magic show certainly wasn’t serving to impress.”

March somehow ignored death staring at her from across a video call and tilted her head playfully towards the camera. “My, how flattering.” The tone was so saccharine and unsettling that it sent shivers up Victoria’s spine. “And such a charmer. You didn’t mention that. Ah, such a shame.”

Apeiron remained impassive as he leaned forward to reply. “I can’t say I was overly impressed by what I saw of your work on Monday.” March only twitched her head in response, just enough to make the rabbit ears of her mask dance for the camera as Apeiron continued in a tone that would have given Hookwolf pause. “Or your meager attempts to counter me in the aftermath. Impressive timing, but inexpertly applied. I’m guessing you’re new to playing at this level.”

It looked like Bakuda wanted to say something, but March leaned in to cut her off. “Oh?” The ABB thinker crooned. “Wouldn’t people say the same about you?”

That was the million-dollar question. Was Apeiron new? Everything about him screamed experience, but he also seemed to be making rookie mistakes. It was like he had a lifetime of knowledge for combat, strategy, and even negotiations, but none of it matched up with the modern cape scene.

Popular theories had him as a mercenary, possibly from South Africa or maybe touring the worse parts of South America. A place where he would have gotten the combat experience he demonstrated, but could still find himself out of water when dealing with American heroes and villains. He could have triggered years ago and still be relatively new on the cape scene.

It also gave people the comforting idea that he wasn’t actually advancing, just building back up to some previous level. So, not actually someone who would discard three-day old technology as useless, merely technology built with the resources and tools he had access to three days ago.

It was a nice theory, but Victoria had heard lots of nice theories over the past week. Nice theories that only held until Apeiron blew them out of the water. Nice theories that, in retrospect, were mostly designed for the sake of peace of mind for the person who came up with them, not their ability to accurately explain the situation.

March’s follow up statement only drove that point home.

“Of course, I think we both know better. So many things that only we know.”

If Apeiron had been giving off an intimidating energy before, that took him all the way to murderous. The clear reaction, the conspiratorial behavior between the most powerful cape in the city and a supposedly D-list villain, was setting off every alarm in her brain. She could see her uncle react the same way. Other watchers looked confused by the exchange, but he was becoming increasingly tense as the conversation progressed. Whatever they were alluding to, every instinct she had built as a cape was screaming that it was serious.

“Knowledge that will soon become markedly rarer.” Bakuda launched herself into the exchange, either blind to the implications, or unconcerned with them. The weight of presence that Apeiron was giving off dropped as he shifted focus back to the bomb tinker.

“You seem rather confident about that threat. For a self-professed genius, I expected at least basic pattern recognition skills.”

Before she could respond March jumped in ahead of her. “He wants to know about patterns. Should we tell him? Time for the big reveal.”

The sheer childish glee in the voice coming from the rabbit mask was deeply disturbing. Maybe taken alone it could have been dismissed as something trivial, like the Protectorate had been doing, but not with death staring at it from the second screen. The imposing presence of that glowering visor and billowing cape set against the tilting bunny ears only served to fill Vicky with dread.

It reminded her of the time she and Amy had, stupidly, on a slumber party dare, looked up one of the few videos of the Slaughterhouse Nine and seen Bonesaw at work. Amy hadn’t been able to take more than a few seconds of it, but that out of place childishness in a severe setting, it was coming back to her with this exchange.

That discomfort didn’t seem to affect Bakuda in the least. Whether the tinker didn’t see it, or was willfully ignorant, Vicky couldn’t say as she watched the woman settle back onto the throne. “Indeed, you want patterns? You think I can’t manage them? What do you think brought you here?”

Apeiron took the bait with a derisive response. “An overly wide and poorly executed communication base that was largely unsecured and imprecisely managed for the number of people it was intended to coordinate.” Channeled through his new demeanor the joking attitude now seemed threatening. “If the dumpster fire of logistics that led me to this call was intentionally implemented for my benefit then I’m impressed by your commitment, if nothing else.”

Vicky exchanged another glance with her uncle. They knew what that meant. What had been hinted at and confirmed by Apeiron. What this entire exchange was building to. Apeiron had found the ABB operation, and happened on a link they had set up for him. Something was in the works, something serious, and she couldn’t waste time idly watching the broadcast.

She reached under the table and grabbed her bag. “I’ve got to get changed.” She said quickly. “If something happens…” She held her phone awkwardly.

Her uncle pulled his own phone away from his ear. “Go. I’ll watch on one of the other screens. Units are being deployed, but whatever they’re planning it hasn’t started yet.”

Vicky nodded and hurried to the bathroom as the conversation continued. She wasn’t watching anymore, just letting the dialogue play as she frantically changed into her costume.

“More dismissive bravado. You’ve seen what we have, what’s in place.” Bakuda’s voice came from her phone. “Ten times the forces we had a week ago. Positioned, armed, and ready to strike. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Vicky bolted the door and fumbled with her bag, feeling beads of cold sweat form on her back. Assuming Bakuda was telling the truth that would be hundreds of people. Hundreds taken from their lives, operated on, and forced to fight against their will. The statement stood as both a massive threat to the entire city and a monument of horror.

All she could think was ‘how’. How had this happened? How did they miss this? The PRT knew this had happened before. They were collecting people that had been freed by Apeiron. They must have gotten details of Bakuda’s actions and methods. How had they let it happen again? How did they miss a repeat of the nightmare happening in their own city.

Apeiron responded with his own question, but with a very different tone. “And this is a threat to me how?”

It was a simple question, and one that cut to the heart of the matter. Conscripted slave soldiers might be a nightmare for the victims of the process and a critical threat to the city, but their chance of bringing down someone like Apeiron was laughable. The tinker expanded upon those exact sentiments as Vicky pulled the white dress of her costume over her head. “Will your collection of schoolchildren, office workers, and grandmothers be expected to succeed where your parahumans have failed? Or is it desperation because you’re running out of capes that I haven’t personally defeated.”

Bakuda snapped a response as Vicky quickly pulled on her boots. “Posturing! I should have expected it. Claim indifference all you want, we both know you’ll be rushing in. You can’t help yourself, can you, ‘mercenary’?”

Vicky couldn’t surpress a hint of a smile at that, despite the dire nature of the situation, and her own somewhat ridiculous circumstances. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who had been able to put together the obvious hints behind Apeiron’s actions. The fact that the ABB had enough faith in his morality that they were willing to bet their operation on it made her feel both vindicated, and even more mortified for her earlier actions.

“Imply whatever you want. I am perfectly entitled to find your actions stupid and distasteful, though I suppose I should have come to expect that from you.” The now almost-certainly-Rogue tinker deflected Bakuda’s accusations while pointedly not denying them.

She wrestled her cape and tiara into place as the man’s voice continued to speak from her phone. “So, is that it? Another spree of attacks meant to accomplish what exactly? Smash and grab robberies? A fight over power structures that are barely holding together? Or are you just trying to make the city completely unlivable? Chasing the honor of ruling a pile of rubble?”

Vicky shoved her civilian clothes back into her backpack as Bakuda made her onious response. “Big talk, but you know what we can do. We’re poised, we’re ready, and we outgun every other group in the city combined.”

She hurried back to the coffee shop to catch the exchange between the two tinkers. Someone had set up a tablet on the counter and various customers were standing with her uncle watching the capes bicker. Well, watching Bakuda bicker while March looked on in irreverent amusement and Apeiron continued to command the scene with nothing more than a remote camera and a sky backdrop.

“Any GROUP, maybe. And are you that eager for a repeat of Saturday night? You do remember how that resolved, or have you elected to pretend it didn’t happen, perhaps put it out of your mind in the face of your upcoming battle with what is probably a rapidly progressing form of…”

“My medical technology is perfect!” The gas-masked tinker screeched back while panting through her filters. Vicky took a place next to her uncle and barely drew a second glance from the customers, with most of them focused on the tablet or their own phones. “And you said it yourself, everything is personal. Your attempts at denial are pathetic.”

“But they’re so cute!” The rabbit cape cut in and leaned so close to the camera that her mask took up the entire frame. “So stern and collected, and we haven’t even explained the best part.” The laughter of the girl was disturbing in the extreme, but Apeiron was unfazed as dismissed their preparations, called out their pageantry, and mocked the futility of their plans.

Bakuda fired back, this time trying to match the way Apeiron was able to convey power through slight shifts of his body. She mostly ended up looking uncomfortable and petulant. March, on the other hand, seemed to be relishing the exchange, even when her opponent took the lead.

“You see, it’s all in place.” The thinker chittered “Little dominos ready to fall wherever we want them.” She mimed flicking with one of her fingers. “One strike, one reaction, one reaction to a reaction, and it all falls down.”

Her uncle had broken away from the crowd and was murmuring into his phone. Her own phone chirped, announcing a new text message from Missy.

‘Guard is mobilizing. No details yet, probably precautionary. It’s insane that we’re learning about it this way.’

Vicky grimaced as she keyed a reply.

‘W/ my uncle, BBPD. Let me know if I can help.’

On the screen March’s voice took on a particularly satisfied edge. “Even if you see it there’s nothing to be done. The collapse will happen.”

“So it seems.” Apeiron answered in a grave voice, which seemed to delight the opposing capes.

“Exactly!” Bakuda waved her arms and pressed forward. “Power and direction, already in motion.” Her voice was smug under the robotic covering of the modulator.

Vicky tensed as she realized what was coming. It was cliché, something that didn’t really happen. They were going to ransom the city, hold the attack against Apeiron to press him into some… how would this go? Not in the movies or cartoons, but real life? Would they make a show of it, or just try to get him somewhere where one of Bakuda’s nightmare bombs would leave him dead, or worse? It was incredible. They were so confident that Apeiron was the complete opposite of everything the PRT though him to be that they were flaunting it. Building their schemes around it.

The masked tinker sat on her pseudo throne and glared down in triumph. “And if you want to have any chance of stopping it…”

“You.” Apeiron cut her off abruptly.

“What?” Bakuda gasped, an action that was mirrored by more than a few of the people watching the tablet.

“Stopping you.” The cape calmly explained, as if he wasn’t discussing an attack that could leave the city devastated beyond belief. “Whatever you were thinking, did you really expect me to play along? Follow directions from a bomb tinker and a timing thinker?”

It was March who recovered first. “You’re serious?” The thinker asked in an almost perplexed tone.

“I’m not going to chase you down this rabbit hole.” He mocked, shifting posture and the placement of his cape to drive home the point. “Whatever Wonderland you’ve prepared, it can get by on its own.”

Vicky saw her uncle finish his conversation as Bakuda leaned in and growled. “The city will burn.”

The strength of the woman’s conviction sent shivers up Victoria’s spine and she saw worried looks being exchanged between customers. And hopeful looks being directed at her. She hid a gulp and put on her best press conference face.

“As will you.” Apeiron replied glibly and made a derisive gesture. “Or have you forgotten that as well? That consequence of your last overreach? You can play with scale and position, but what convinced you that this would end any better than Saturday night?”

It was a reminder that this wasn’t just bravado. Apeiron could, or believed he could, counter the ABB at the top of their game. The gang was stronger, but the tinker advanced in a way that defied all belief. ‘Three day old technology.’ Nobody else thought like that. Whether he was advancing, rebuilding, or even gaining new powers there was at least a chance he could back up his threats.

And he might be the only one who could. She moved out of the crowd as her uncle gestured for her. The only member of the family consistently working to help the city, and he wasn’t even on the team. She had no idea what was happening with her Aunt Sarah, but from what little she had heard from Crystal and Eric it wasn’t good. Uncle Neil was God knows where. Her mom was more concerned with that PRT thing than the city burning down around them. Her Dad was risking his life on a nightly basis, and Amy was still locked up. Or sort of locked up.

Really, who could manage something like this? The Protectorate would have been hard pressed with focused leadership and the team at full strength. The Wards were technically on duty, but it was a new and unstable team. Like it or not the city’s fate seemed to rest on a mercenary who stated himself more devoted to bringing down his enemies than helping their victims.

When she put some space between her and the crowd she whispered to her uncle. “What did you hear?”

“Attacks started.” He relayed in a low tone. “Reports of strikes at the edges of ABB territory. Some further out. Looks like Apeiron going against them, or at least his robots. Just hit a team that looked to be moving on the PRT headquarters.”

Vicky’s eyes widened and she looked back at what was now confirmed to be a delayed broadcast. “Should we go…?”

Her voice died as she heard March’s words. “Little dominos. All that work, and for what?”

Once again it was the casual approach to brutality that made the brightly dressed cape so unsettling. Cheerfully announcing the recapture of the victims Apeiron had saved on Saturday night, mocking his attempts and victories. Against someone with Apeiron’s power and arsenal it seemed foolish.

Then you looked at the tinker’s response, and ‘foolish’ was quickly upgraded to ‘suicidal’.

“So…” There were probably parts of the ninth circle of Hell less frigid than the tone the tinker used in his response. Whatever illusions she had about him being at peak intimidation in earlier portions of the exchange evaporated under the intensity of his presence. Even the ABB villains seemed taken aback. “You lashed out at those who slipped your grasp. Breaking toys that would be taken from you. And you thought this childish ploy would stay my hand against you?”

“You…” The electronic distortion couldn’t cover the apprehension in Bakuda’s voice. Vicky doubted she would have done much better if she was in the bomb tinker’s shoes. “You say that, but can you back it up?” The woman visibly gulped and steadied herself. “Maybe I should introduce you to what you’re dealing with.”

The image being broadcast shifted to allow a third video frame. This showed a darkened room with a man tied to a chair. Asian, with thinning hair, and wearing a maintenance uniform of some sort. That was about all that you could be sure of, under the blood and swelling. The man had been horribly worked over. His breathing was shallow and he had numerous broken bones. She hadn’t seen anything like that since…

Dumpster. Lazy rotations through the air after a kick sent it flying. A figure limping down an alley, flipping her off as he struggled to get away. Impact, skidding metal against asphalt. He didn’t get up.

“Your little helper from that mop up attempt.” Bakuda’s taunt broke her out of the memories of the last time she needed to be bailed out by her sister. She focused on putting the thoughts out of her mind and focused on the screen, as unpleasant as it was. “Everyone was talking about what he did. How BRAVE he was. Well, I’ve made something special for him, and if you want to see him alive…”

“No.” Apeiron managed to deliver the word like a punch from Alexandria. Bakuda looked like she had been physically struck. March seemed to snap out of her childish dream land and actually pay attention to the conversation. Confused murmurs went through the crowd until Bakuda managed to screech a response.

“Excuse me? If you don’t…”

The man’s cape flared as he wheeled on the camera. “What if I DON’T?” For the first time in the exchange Apeiron had raised his voice, and Vicky could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise to meet it. She stood staring, along with the crowd, as the tinker let loose.

“He’ll suffer? He’ll die? And will no one else? Will it end? No. You don’t get to stand in a river of blood and make deals for people’s lives. Don’t insult me with false offers to discount your barbarism. I keep my contracts, and if you think for a moment I would entertain this farce of an agreement then you are talking to the wrong person.”

The coffee shop was silent as a church, the last vestiges of the tinker’s rant seeming to hang in the air like a physical presence. Nobody seemed to know what to do. Even Vicky’s knowledge that she needed to get out there, to help somehow was overridden by the intensity of the act.

“Well, hasn’t this been enlightening.” Unsurprisingly it was the deranged thinker who was the first to recover, though at least she seemed to have abandoned some of her levity for the situation. “Not that it matters. The dominos will fall with or without you. Do have fun watching the collapse, and we’ll see how you manage. Such a shame you couldn’t draw things out long enough to finish your little trace…”

The screen suddenly cut out. Abruptly, like a hasty video edit. They were covering something up. Something they didn’t have enough time to manipulate, so they took a guillotine to the recording and pretended everything was normal. That whatever Apeiron had done to upset things didn’t happen.

No, instead they just broadcast a video announcing their threat to the entire city, as well as Apeiron’s indifference to it in the face of bringing them down. Effectively they announced to everyone that they would be in the middle of a war zone between the two forces that had defined cape news for the last week, and redefined power structures in the city.

To say there would be panic would be an understatement. If this got out of hand Bakuda wouldn’t even need to burn down the city. She could already see rumblings of unrest amongst the staff and patrons. It was something she didn’t know how to handle. Worse, her uncertainty seemed to be leaking through her aura, even in its reduced state.

If they were waiting for Glory Girl to float up and give a speech about the triumph of good over evil before flying off to save the day they had caught her on the wrong week. The best she could see herself manage would be something along the lines of ‘things might not be quite as shitty as they appear’.

Fortunately her uncle stepped forward before she was driven to try her hand at improvised public speaking. He already towered over most of the people in the shop, and when he straightened to talk he seemed to grow an extra six inches just from his presence.

“Everyone, I know this is a serious situation, so I’ll try to make this brief. Some of you might know me as Lightstar. I’m sure you know my niece as Glory Girl.” Vicky gave a polite wave from his side. “I am a former member of New Wave and part of the current relief force assigned to the Brockton Bay Police Department.” That got everyone’s full attention. “I’m sure you understand the full magnitude of this situation. We will be doing everything we can. Until this is over I would like to ask you to stay inside and off the streets, for your own safety and the safety of those working to end this crisis.”

It didn’t exactly get a round of applause, but the murmuring had died down and people had shifted from anxiously eyeing the door to frantically making calls or checking their phone. Vicky fell in behind her uncle as he made his way out of the shop, leaving her bag with the barista before she departed.

“Uh, that was pretty good,” she glanced back, “but I don’t think it's going to be enough for the rest of the city.”

“Help where you can, when you can, and build from there.” He said, stepping onto the street. Mercifully it wasn’t exploding around them, but they could hear the echoes of blasts from further into the city.

“Right.” She took a breath and realized how lost she felt. “Uh, where do we go from here?”

Her uncle took out his phone. “Apeiron has a robot attacking what they think might be Bakuda’s lab, just based on the number of explosions. There are reports of what look like five or six more of those things across the city, plus a small army of his crystal drone things. No clue as to where he really is, and the ABB is hitting ten times as many places as he can cover. Everyone else is playing catch up.”

Vicky let out of breath. “So, what do we do? I mean,” She looked towards the source of the echoing explosion sounds, remembering the horrible bombs from the Saturday broadcast.

Her uncle smiled at her. “What we can…”

“Where we can.” She finished. “That was from the Brockton Bay Brigade, right?”

He grinned. “We shopped a lot of slogans. That one never really caught on, but I always had a soft spot for it. And it seemed appropriate for the current situation.”

She nodded. The city needed all the help it could get. They couldn’t just leave this to one cape, no matter how strong he seemed. They would do what they could. They would help. It was time to make a difference. It was time to be heroes.


	50. 41.2 Interlude Vicky

(Author’s note: Once again, I ran into a shortage of writing time thanks to a busy week at work and various social commitments. As such, rather than delay the chapter, I’ve decided to split it again. I would have preferred not to have this interlude stretch over three weeks, but I want to hold to my weekly schedule, and feel the stopping points work within the story. The interlude will conclude next week, with possibly some addendums that will let us wrap things up and get back to Joe.)

Vicky was surrounded by chaos, fire, the smell of charred metal, and her uncle screaming to be heard over the rain of explosions and the panicked roars of the crowd. Somehow when she left the coffee shop with heroic intentions she hadn’t pictured ending up in a situation like this.

She had been in shootouts before, but she couldn’t remember the last time it had been this chaotic, or this terrifying.

Even with the recharge time of her forcefield she knew she could take a hit, and how to work around it to some extent. Most people didn’t know about the recharge, and her Aunt Sarah had made a big deal from the start about limiting information on your power. So, most people didn’t know about that particular weakness, and to the average citizen she was as good as invincible.

She didn’t feel invincible crouching behind cover with her uncle as a police officer yelled into his radio next to them. When they got to the scene of the attack Uncle Mike had called her back from following her first instinct, charging in and smashing through the ABB’s entrenched position. It was a police operation after all, and he had to follow their lead.

That had saved her life as a grenade bloomed into a miniature black hole directly in the path she was going to take. The cluster of coerced civilians had enough firearms to cause the police trouble, but the two or three tinker tech launchers were more than enough to make them a threat beyond the capacity of any police response.

Her uncle extended one hand over the roof of the car and swept it back and forth. A swarm of glowing projectiles streamed out, moving at a crawl compared to most blaster powers, but that only served to saturate the street with them.

A response came from one of the positions, that damn rocket launcher again. As soon as the missile was away her uncle detonated the nearest orb, wrecking its propulsion and sending it off balance towards another of the slow-moving points of light. Close enough that the detonation shredded the remains of the projectiles.

He smiled at her just as the blasts reached the ABB positions and suddenly it was their side of the street that was awash in explosions. She was reminded of her Aunt Jess’s stories. Mike’s blasts traveled at a crawl, about 15 feet a second, but he could detonate them at will, and always knew the location of each of his shots. Working together with Fleur’s energy seeds the two of them could lock down an area in a way the rest of New Wave could only dream of accomplishing.

It was the kind of thought that brought up all those little ‘what ifs?’ that always floated around. What if Aunt Jess had never been killed, and her and Mike stayed with the team? How would they have changed things? How many narrow losses could they have covered? How much of a difference could they have made in the city?

That was assuming it would have made a difference, that the rest of the family’s problems wouldn’t have led them to this place. Well, not this exact place, hiding behind a police car with her uncle signaling to her with one hand while the other laid down another explosive swarm.

She pulled her mind out of the past and nodded at his meaning. Leaning down she grabbed the car and lifted it, angling it to provide cover against the few ABB who had weathered the blasts well enough to still return fire.

Mike had only detonated the blasts that were at a safe distance, close enough to the ABB cover to stun or disorient, but not enough to kill. The same reluctance was evident in the police officers. Despite the horrible situation, despite the firefight, nobody wanted to go lethal against someone with a bomb in their head dictating their actions. The stream of bullets from the entrenched forces effectively forced the police’s hands, but they clearly were conflicted about it.

Floating a few inches above the ground she carried the car like a giant shield while her uncle and the police sergeant scrambled behind it towards a cluster of two squad cars with a half dozen additional officers taking cover and occasionally returning fire.

She set the car down, lining it up with the other vehicles to create a barricade while her uncle quickly sent out another wave of blasts before speaking with the officers.

“God damn mess.” He began, earning a sardonic smile from the sergeant. “What’s the plan from here?”

The man shook his head. “This is happening all over the city. Best I can tell, we’re looking at one of the more forward positions, but every one of the attack teams are either set up like an ambush or dug in like ticks.” The officer glanced over her uncle’s shoulder where the man was starting to detonate his earlier blasts without looking at them. The near constant stream of explosions at least stopped the flow of bullets from the ABB position. “We are fighting on too many fronts and there’s not nearly enough resources. We’d need SWAT or sniper support for this group, and that would be beyond messy. Best we can do is try to hold them, unless you have any ideas?”

Her uncle turned and gave her a hopeful look. Vicky felt herself begin to sweat. She might have been proud about not actually being a dumb blond, but there was a big gap between that and being able to spontaneously come up with a battle strategy, at least if you were asking for something more complicated than ‘fly in and smash’. This was the kind of situation where Aunt Sarah would be calling the shots, usually after a careful briefing pre-battle. The bank had taught her how poorly her default strategy could go, and she wasn’t about to suggest it now.

Not with that mid-street void that had been caused by the black hole bomb. Or the patch of wall that shattered like glass with cracks that were somehow spreading to neighboring buildings. Or the car next to them which was now a puddle of metallic soup.

This was Bakuda’s fury. The power she brought to bear, a power it had almost been possible to ignore thanks to the distance she had kept from the fighting, the diminished impact of watching the conflict through news reports and internet broadcasts, and, of course, Apeiron.

The fact that he could look at the potential chaos the bomb tinker could unleash with an attitude of derision could make you lose perspective on how powerful the girl in the gas mask actually was. How she had brought the city to the brink of destruction, and how much further, how much worse it could have been if Apeiron hadn’t been there to gut the momentum of her first offensive.

They were seeing her second offensive, second true offensive, not the skirmishes her technology had been tangentially involved with during the past week. Only this time it wasn’t the two tinkers fighting in an abandoned facility on the edge of the city. All of Brockton was their arena, or at least as much of it as the ABB could reach.

Based on what her uncle had let slip, that seemed to be the unspoken strategy in dealing with the attack. Containment. It wasn’t exactly something that would go down in history as one of the great military maneuvers, but it was the best anyone seemed to be able to manage. They could barely understand the scope of the attack, but there were areas that hadn’t been hit, and movement towards those areas. The best idea anyone could come up with, try to push back when the ABB pushed first.

Vicky didn’t like it, but she didn’t have any better idea, either for the city in general, or for the current engagement. The attack patterns were locking down routes of travel through the conflict zone, either setting up ambushes, or making strikes that left tinker tech explosion effects that made the area impassable. Fliers might have been able to push through, but the Protectorate was down to Dauntless, New Wave wouldn’t be coordinating a response, and the idea of putting a helicopter over those rockets was insane.

The only person who seemed to be able to act freely within the war zone was Apeiron, or at least his machines. From what she had heard the man had pulled a small army out of his back pocket, but was only just managing against the LARGE army the ABB had produced.

Her uncle seemed to follow her thought process as he replied to the officer. “Cape assistance isn’t likely. My guess is they’re dealing with the same problem as you, only will probably take longer to figure out any organized response. And be worse if any of the other gangs get involved.” He looked back at the collection of parked cars, dumpsters, and alleyways the ABB was using for cover. “If I can get a better vantage I might be able to flush them out, provided you can deal with anyone who scatters.”

Vicky steeled herself and spoke up. “I can probably manage that. Uh, I’ll probably need to go in fast. Some of them will probably get hurt, but I’ll do the best I can.”

The sergeant nodded grimly. “Horrible situation, but I can agree. There’s no way to manage this with kid gloves. I’m signing off on this. Just make sure you take out anyone with Bakuda’s technology, and we should be able to manage the rest.”

Manage the rest as in manage a bunch of armed people who were probably ordered to fight to the death. Still, that was a step up over the prospect of whatever those bombs would do to them. There was a crackling sound as the fractures in the building behind them spread again, causing a section of wall to fall to the street and shatter in a pile of bricks.

That was probably why they didn’t notice the incoming attack until it was on its way. From a window above the rest of the ABB forces came a whistling sound as a rocket launched down towards their position. Her uncle started spinning and bringing up his hands, but Vicky knew it would be a lost cause. Uncle Mike might be able to lock down an entire battlefield with precision blasts, but if he didn’t already have them in play there was nothing he could do against something like this.

She dug her hand into the armored side of the police car. Her strength was based on her forcefield, and as such she didn’t need to really worry about things like leverage or centers of mass. It was a blessing now, because the only thing she could think of was to hurl the squad car into the path of the attack and hope whatever was being fired at them wouldn’t make it past two tons of metal.

There was a sound like a thunder crack and a beam of light rained out of the sky, piercing the missile and sending up a plume of vaporized asphalt from the road. The rocket was consumed in a burst of flame as its fuel tank ruptured and whatever deadly warhead it had carried was reduced to slag.

The shot was immediately followed by a roaring sound as another, more advanced missile, fell out of the sky and made a sharp turn towards the entrenched ABB force. There was a blast that sent her hair streaming back and caused everyone without a protective shield to flinch under cover. When they peered back the former defensive points was a mess of some kind of rapidly solidifying chemical webbing. The feeble attempts the unwilling soldiers made to free themselves only caused it to constrict around them more securely.

Vicky forced her eyes away from the spectacle and up to the window that still sported a smoke trail from the rocket attack. She tensed and prepared to launch herself into the fray when a pair of crackling shrieks drew her gaze further up.

Diving out of the late afternoon light, their wings and claws gleaming in the sun, were a pair of immaculately crafted crystal hawks. Each with maybe a five-foot wingspan of transparent plates suspended around a glowing core. The bodies of the constructs sparked with discharges of lightning and trailed a line of thunder clouds behind them like the exhaust from a jet.

The creatures crashed bodily into the side of the building. Despite their fragile appearance some kind of field surged around them, tearing apart the material of the wall and pulling it into a kind of orbit around them. Not just the wall, but parts of the room behind it, and even the ABB member who had taken a vantage point there.

The second hawk had performed the same maneuver on an apparently random section of the building, but had pulled out another gang member, this one in full gang colors with a larger rocket launcher and what looked like a radio headset. Lightning jumped from each of the hawks and their captives went limp before sinking to the ground along with the collection of building debris torn loose by their attacks.

Then, without the slightest delay, both crystal birds angled themselves directly upwards and launched into the sky, leaving a sparking trail of water vapor behind them. It took Vicky a moment to adjust to the unearthly silence left in their wake. It wasn’t just the fact that everyone had been left speechless, but the constant barrage of gunshots and explosions that had been pressing in on her had vanished, leaving a silence that was almost deafening in its severity.

Slowly, but with professionalism, the police officers started moving out of cover and towards the incapacitated gang soldiers. Vicky and her uncle followed, letting them set the approach pattern. It was different from the principle of direct action she was used to, but this was a different operation. She was okay letting them set the pace.

Upon approaching the scene, she could see that the ABB were much more incapacitated than she would have thought. The group, consisting of people from all corners and ages of Brockton’s Asian community, was only making a few feeble attempts to untangle themselves from the webbing. Most of them had been knocked down by the first blast with those still on their feet finding themselves badly entangled. She looked at their sluggish movements and drooping eyelids with concern.

“Don’t touch the netting.” One of the officers warned, causing her to quickly pull back her hand. “We’ve gotten reports about it from other sites. It’s something like Apeiron’s answer to containment form.”

Vicky looked at the fairly wide mesh of the web strands and gave the officer a questioning look. “Really?”

The man just nodded. “Yeah, really. The stuff is pretty much unbreakable, at least from anything I heard about them trying. Bolt cutters did nothing, and it’s too tough for a hacksaw to get through. Apparently it contracts if you stress it too much. Not that bad with normal strength, but it’s probably intended for brutes.” He gestured to the slumped forms of the people caught in it. “It’s also soaked in some kind of tranquilizer. Doesn’t take much to put someone down. Luckily you don’t seem to be able to overdose on it. Doesn’t really make sense but, you know, tinker stuff.”

Another officer jumped in. “Heard some of the paramedics managed to get the mesh removed from some people safely, but no idea how they managed that. Tinkers, right?”

Vicky nodded, and looked over the scene. She tried not to feel indignant at how quickly the tinker had resolved the conflict they had been struggling with since they arrived. Two shots and a handful of seconds from his drones and it was over.

“Anyone know what those crystal birds were?” She asked the assembled police, where they were securing the two non-webbed ABB members and trying to figure out how to manage the tangled mess of unconscious suspects/hostages they had been left with.

Her uncle pulled out his phone and sorted through his messages. “Upgrade of those crystal spheres he used to use, probably. There’s no sign of the old design, but those things are being reported all over the place.”

She followed his gaze up to the ruined side of the building and winced. That kind of power and precision would have made any Protectorate cape proud, and apparently it could be managed by Apeiron’s disposable drones. Then again, one of his robots managed to lock down the attack force in the space of a few seconds, and another was apparently holding its own in an attack on Bakuda’s workshop.

“How many of those things does he have?” She asked no one in particular. One of the younger officers turned from his work to answer her.

“Nobody’s got a clear count. They’re moving too fast. Best guess is around a half dozen, but it could be twice that.” He didn’t sound as worried about the prospect of a robot army as she would have expected. Then again, it was reasonable for the police to take a more pragmatic view. Concerns about Apeiron’s power level were something the PRT was struggling with. The BBPD would probably have welcomed ten times the number of super robots if it got the ABB locked down before they could cause more harm.

Honestly, she was kind of with them on that point.

Once the silence had settled, or their hearing had recovered, she realized she could hear the sound of distant explosions. She pulled out her phone, scrolled past the emergency notice from the news service that was still being updated in a piecemeal fashion, and checked her new messages.

The Guard unit Missy was attached to had been deployed towards the boardwalk. The shaker proudly recounted how she had been able to bypass the roadblock blasts that ABB were using to keep them out. They were trying to contain forces towards the east side of the city, but were mainly in a holding pattern. It was still too early in the fight to figure out what would be the plan of attack.

“Uh,” She turned back towards her uncle, “what happens now?”

He shrugged. “Mainly we would secure the site and wait for dispatch.” He glanced in the direction of a distant explosion. “I’ll need to stick with them. They will probably shuffle me around wherever they need the firepower.”

The sergeant smirked and leaned in. “Always happy to have a blaster five on our side of the line.”

Her uncle smiled back before continuing. “The police aren’t going to be taking point in this, probably holding the line while the PRT gets forces deployed.” Vicky noticed a few frowns spread through the officers.

She tried not to look visibly nervous as she considered her next move. She WANTED to help her uncle, but he admitted he’d be playing support for the main conflict. She wanted to do more. She felt like she needed to do more.

“Um,” she started, “part of the Wards are deployed with some Guard forces, up near Grove and Bayside. If things are as confusing as you say they could probably use someone who could give a bird’s eye view of… things.” She frowned towards the end of her statement, but forced herself to rally. “Are you alright here? If I go?”

Her uncle glanced at the officers and nodded. “I know the guys would love to have you backing them up, but you’re right about doing the most good somewhere else.” He suddenly turned serious. “Vicky, be careful out there. I know things didn’t go that well that last time you worked with the Wards, but please stick with them. It’s your best chance to make a difference and stay safe.”

There was probably more emphasis on his last word then he had intended, but Vicky got his meaning. That mask of supportive strength was cracking again, and she didn’t want to see it fall. “I promise.” She assured her uncle. He nodded as she lifted into the air.

“Good luck, Glory Girl.” He waved her off, along with a few of the police officers who weren’t puzzling over the webbing. She smiled and waved back before taking to the sky at her best speed. For the first time in almost a week she really felt like a hero.

Taking an elevated look at the city she could tell it needed one about now. The ABB territory was ringed with so many crazy bomb effects it was like a dotted line had been drawn around it on a map. Getting more height, she could see the effect of more capes entering the fray, and not the ones people had been hoping for.

A column of smoke was rising from Merchant territory. Columns of smoke weren’t hard to come by with the city in its current state, but the rest of them lacked the greasy clawing depth that characterized Squealer’s exhaust systems. The other trails of smoke weren’t barreling towards the scene of the fighting at a concerning speed that seemed to be taking more of a ‘line from A to B’ route than paying any attention to the layout of roads.

On the other side of the city she could see dozens if not hundreds of white shapes swarming around an area of Downtown known for being an extension of Empire territory. Crusader was opening up in a way he rarely attempted. Normally that kind of force could overwhelm any defense, but she could see a series of dark violet spheres bloom around the edges of the mass, each one carving scoops out of the swarm of ghosts.

Looking towards the north docks themselves she could see the various ABB strikes ringing the area, pushing out in some places, but stalled in others. There was a kaleidoscope of lights and sounds centered on one of the older factories. Between the flashes Glory Girl could just make out a series of shapes buzzing around the building. Apeiron’s robot attacking the workshop.

Her instinct was to run in and help. Well, honestly her instinct was to rush in and take down the tinker herself, with a small, petty corner of her mind still wanting to entertain those fantasies about capturing Apeiron and turning him over to the Protectorate, making him answer for his imagined crimes and offences against her family. Logically she knew how insane and impossible that was, but she couldn’t stop her mind from jumping there just for a fraction of a second.

No, she wouldn’t be charging in. You didn’t need to be a tinker to see how dangerous that area was. Three of the surrounding buildings had been consumed by an array of exotic effects. And they were not small buildings. These were industrial estates and storage warehouses. It took work to overwhelm that amount of material, and Bakuda’s combinations of corrosive slimes, growing crystals, blinding heat, and what seemed to be complete reality deletion, seemed more than up for the task.

The most telling element of that conflict was that Apeiron wasn’t there. She wasn’t sure where the tinker was, but if he, the man with all those bullshit protections and defensive technologies, was staying back while he left his robots to take point then she wasn’t going anywhere near the place.

Instead, she wheeled towards the Boardwalk, towards Missy’s position while continuing to scan the city. There actually weren’t as many of Bakuda’s explosions as she expected. The threats made in the video had made it seem like she was going to level the city, instead of just a set of isolated if still destructive effects.

She remembered the force they had just fought. Nearly a dozen soldiers with four tinker tech weapons between them. It seemed that even for a tinker as powerful and prolific as Bakuda there were still limits to how many explosives she could produce. Not that you really needed that many, given the damage down by the handful of blasts.

Checking the city again she spotted one of Apeiron’s robots. A sleeker and more elegant version of the suits he had deployed on Monday, one of which was currently the centerpiece of Batchelder Square’s new display. It roared and banked over the streets, occasionally firing a missile or sending a searing beam of light down from a pair of weapons on its shoulders. Maybe a half dozen crystal birds flanked around it with extreme precision, breaking off or returning at a moment’s notice, trailing thunderclouds all the way.

She scanned the rest of the combat zone for the other robots, looking for the flare or robot thrusters or the tell-tale trails of storm clouds. She didn’t see any. Not even a hint. Instead, the single robot zigzagged over ABB territory, seemingly disrupting attacks at random. Sometimes it looked like it was chasing something, a red flash bloomed at street level and occasionally dipped above the line of buildings as a crimson blur. Bursts of orange, yellow, blue, or purple light seemed to mark its passing, always in an instant.

It took her longer that it should have to put the pieces together. The robot wasn’t chasing the red blur, it was branching off, hitting ABB attacks nearby and then working to keep up. There weren’t any other robots in the air, just one moving at a breakneck pace with blistering coordination. And that red blur had the same tone she’d seen when Apeiron had decided to take the fight directly to Uber and Leet’s mechs.

Apeiron wasn’t attacking Bakuda’s lab because he was fighting at street level. He didn’t have an army. He possibly had fewer forces than he did on Monday. Maybe just the two robots, plus however many drones he could manage. It was just that everyone else had been scrambling, dealing with the impact of the broadcast and trying to sift through the chaos of the attacks while he had been running a one-man strike team against all of Bakuda’s efforts.

No wonder he looked like he had an army. Next to him everyone else might as well have been standing still.

She needed to get this to the Protectorate, or the PRT. Normally she’d assume they would have someone on top of this, but after the last week her confidence in the local cape authorities wasn’t what it used to be. She could admit it was probably just overwork causing them to miss things, but when her family were the ones paying for their mistakes it made her a bit less forgiving.

She focused back on the route to the Boardwalk and was surprised to see the perfect vehicle for conveying this information. A blue and red streak, bouncing along rooftops at speeds close to the best she could manage in the air, and something she had never expected to see.

Glory Girl dove down towards the figure, waited for him to complete a jump that took him across a street and onto the roofs of a line of stores, and then called out.

“Kid!”

The young tinker slowed and swung his visored eyes up to her. Rather than make him stop she pulled in alongside, getting a better look at his new equipment.

Well, not new-new. She recognized the blue glow that used to characterize his hoverboard, now streaming from a pair of devices strapped to his shins like soccer pads. He had a matching pair on his forearms, which he was using to assist with steering and in completing the jumps when he needed to clear a street.

Missy had told her about his repurposed technology, but she had the impression it was more of a desperation measure, some kind of attempt to make the best of a bad situation. This looked like something completely new, and honestly better than what he had before. The hover-skating effect wasn’t full flight, but Kid Win was hitting speeds and levels of control that he never could have managed with his board.

“Hey Glory Girl.” He breathed while maintaining the swinging motion that seemed to magnify his forward momentum. “You heading for the Boardwalk?”

She nodded while keeping pace beside him. “Was helping my uncle, but figured I could help more with the Wards. I mean, if there’s not a problem with teaming up again.”

She saw the boy smile. “Emergency measures. Well, right now it’s probably emergency measures on top of emergency measures. There’s not much they can hit us for during this response. Even pulled me off console. Clock will need to make the call, but I know he’ll be grateful for the help.”

Despite the jarring experience of 1. Being under Dennis’s authority, and 2. Somehow trusting him to be responsible in that position, she was relieved. She had barely escaped punitive measures for her actions last Thursday, and that was only because she was on a different team, and the mess with Amy had taken center stage. There was definitely an impression that it would be a long time before the next ‘Wards Team Up’ opportunity. She wasn’t exactly happy about the circumstances that had brought it about, but at least her earlier actions wouldn’t get in the way during this crisis.

“Good thing,” She replied. “It’s turning into a disaster. Nobody seems to have any idea what’s going on.”

To her surprise the tinker smiled. “Someone does.” He leaned to one side, coasting on the thrust from his boots while bringing the device on his left hand. Glory Girl started as a screen appeared floating in the air above it. “I had a holographic targeting system from one of my earlier projects. Never got it to work right, just ended up as… junk.” He spoke the last word in a dour tone, then shook his head. “Was able to rig it along with part of a ballistics computer as a mobile display.”

The boy seemed almost embarrassed about the method he used to assemble the floating screen. Possibly because of the obvious inspiration for that kind of interface, but that wasn’t the sense she got. Regardless, the screen, which was bigger and clearer than the one on her home computer, displayed a map of the city peppered with blinking icons. Live updates modified the map and Kid Win cycled through the entries, bringing up listings of ABB forces, active bomb effects, obstructed roadways, and even listings of downed gang members along with their status.

“This is incredible.” She breathed, and saw Kid’s smile flicker. “Who put this together? Dragon? Armsmaster?” She had heard the Protectorate leader was partially recovered, if not fully mobile. She realized the idea of the man watching out for them, even from a computer console, did a lot to put her at ease. She was still frustrated with how he had treated Amy, but in a situation like this she wanted the assurance of the reputation he had cultivated over the years.

“Wrong tinker.” He replied dryly. One look at his face and she immediately understood.

“You mean…”

“Apeiron.” He answered. The slight motion of the fingers of one hand shifted the screen to a detailed list of data. “Custom designed web interface, held on a third-party server. Live updates from what looks to be his scanning systems. Even has the medical status of anyone he’s restrained.” Another shift brought up a mosaic of websites. “Link’s on PHO, the comment section of every article and blog post about the attack, sent directly to media companies, the PRT tip line, and every direct contact the Protectorate and PRT has publicly available.”

She blinked at the depth of information, shifting her body in flight to better read the screen. She didn’t like flying laterally, even if she could manage it. It felt weird to have that kind of profile against the wind, and it didn’t look properly heroic. Still, she endured and looked over the information.

“How did he manage this?” She asked, then glanced back at the city. “He’s still fighting out there. I think he might have been since the call with Bakuda finished. Oh, and it’s not a half dozen robots, just one moving really fast.”

“I figured about the robots.” Kid answered. Another adjustment brought up the map again, only this time with a line jumping back and forth across it. “I’ve been saving everything since the site went up. He updates everything whenever a group is taken out. Excluding confirmed successful engagements with police, PRT, Protectorate, or National Guard forces…” A pitiful number of the icons shifted color. “and you’re left with this.” The line vanished, then started to move across the map. A timestamp on the bottom showed the scale of how quickly the attacking groups were being taken out. The important thing was the sequence. No two taken out at the same time in different areas. Always clustered in a tight corridor that snaked back and forth across the conflict.

Everything could be attributed to Apeiron and a single robot, plus his crystal bird toys, which could apparently outdo most capes in the city on their own. It was terrifying, but also confusing.

“Why is he moving like that?” She asked. The pattern made no sense. He wasn’t taking out teams in sequence, he wasn’t going after the ones pushing out, on the ones more entrenched, or any theme that she could put together. It looked random, but that didn’t seem right.

“No idea.” He confessed. “The ballistics computer I built this out of has some analysis and tracking programs that I’ve got running, but I have no idea if I’ll find anything. Or if there’s anything to find.” The map shifted again, showing a red icon near Bayside Road. “That’s where Clock’s team is set up.”

They were approaching so quickly that she didn’t even need to ask for details. With a nod to Kid Win she took to the air and saw the battlefield spread out before her.

The ABB had set up in one of the small shopping centers that took advantage of being within a block of the Boardwalk in an area where pedestrian traffic was encouraged. It was really more of a dressed-up strip mall, except trying to skew to the more classy end. There was a modern art sculpture in an open-air fountain and plaza that was ringed on three sides by the glass fronts of stores and a small air-conditioned walkway. The outlets were cheaper than what you found amongst the Boardwalk boutiques, but nicer than the usual offerings for part of the city.

At least they used to be nicer. Now the glass was shattered, the fountain had been split open by a crack in the chasm running through the plaza that looked to be twenty to thirty feet deep. There was a mass of ice cutting off one of the exits, trapping civilians in the crossfire between the ABB and the combined forces of the Wards and National Guard.

What surprised her was seeing the three Wards right in the thick of the conflict. Browbeat was a good half again the size he had been in his bulked-up state at the bank and was acting as a kind of mobile cover for Dennis and Missy. Missy was clearly limited by the panicked civilians either running for their lives or cowering behind what little cover they could get. Even so, she saw distortions in the air above the square and noticed shots from some of the elevated ABB forces curving off randomly.

Shots from positions closer to the ground were more on target, and she could see rounds from rifles and handguns bounce off Browbeat’s forcefield. He was lucky in that he didn’t seem to have to worry about the kind of recharge she lived with, meaning the effect was closer to her Uncle Neil’s powers.

The big cape might have been bulletproof, but she was quickly reminded why she hadn’t tried this kind of bold strategy herself. One of the more professional gang members popped up and raised a grenade launcher, sending a round on a tight arc directly towards Browbeat.

She watched the deadly payload close helplessly, images of a hundred horrible fates flashing through her mind. Instead, Missy and Dennis stepped out from behind Browbeat in a nearly coordinated motion. Dennis held up a small object that unfolded like a pocket umbrella. Thin plastic stretched into place creating a disk about four feet wide before freezing in place. It was a massive step up from the sheets of paper he used to throw around, and even though the material seemed as thin as cling film she knew it would be completely indestructible.

But that wouldn’t be enough. Maybe it could cover Missy, and Dennis might be able to crouch behind it, but Browbeat was a lost cause unless he could change form much faster than she thought he could. Then Missy showed off her part of this particular maneuver.

The time-frozen film warped and stretched under the iconic influence of Missy’s power. What had been a decent sized personal shield became an impenetrable bulwark, completely covering the three capes in a half dome, just as the grenade made contact.

The best way Glory Girl could describe the blast would be an angry void. Dark sections of nothingness flayed out from a pitch-black orb, leaving gouges in the ground that had an unnaturally smooth edge to them. Matter deleted, torn away like nothing.

The blast splashed repeatedly against the barrier to as much effect as a summer shower. The few seconds of clawing darkness seemed like hours, but when it passed a gesture from Missy caused the film to shrink back to its normal size, showing a half circle of destroyed tile and cement in front of them.

The ABB forces were stunned by the display, and the Ward team took advantage of their distraction to close on their position. She watched Dennis and Missy repeat the trick with the plastic sheeting, creating barriers to cover the retreat of the people caught in the plaza. Some of them were even thrown out by Browbeat with the cape’s tactile telekinesis. The result was more effective and better spread barriers, but she could see the effort Dennis needed to put into affecting the larger pieces of plastic.

She suddenly realized she actually had no idea what the limits of his power were. She knew he could freeze a person no problem, including everything they were wearing or carrying. His trick with sheets of paper was well documented, but he had always used multiple smaller objects to make barriers. This was the first time she had seen him really exert himself, and the results were shocking.

In the handful of seconds it took the ABB to recover and Glory Girl to close the final distance they had turned the plaza into a set of defenses worthy of a World War One trench line. The civilians were taking the opportunity to flee from the… other civilians who had been forced to fight them. Once again, the insanity of what Bakuda had wrought weighed on her, but she put it out of her mind as she dropped down next to the team.

“Vista! Clockblocker! Browbeat!” She called. The younger cape waved her down and she slipped through the spatial distortions the girl had set above the plaza. A flare of blue energy behind her showed Kid Win had caught up, entering at a lower angle and using some of the frozen barriers as control surfaces to arrest his momentum on the final approach.

She looked around at the time-frozen walls, marveling at the combination of powers that the group had managed to pull off. Vista smiled upon seeing her expression and Dennis was surprisingly reserved in the face of his accomplishment.

“It’s good to have you here.” He said seriously. “You too, Kid.” Chris nodded and brought up his display again, this time showing an aerial view of the shopping center.

“I got some scans on my way in. Looks like nine of the ABB, no idea what the mix of career members to forced recruits is. Six on the ground floor, three on the upper level. One on the roof, two on the second floor of the Urban Explorer store.”

Dennis seemed to look at the information seriously, or as seriously as he could appear to be with a full-face mask. “Less than I thought, especially with what it took to make it this far.”

Chris shifted the display again. “They have four launchers between them, and a pretty ridiculous amount of ammunition for their other weapons. Assault rifles. Don’t even need to aim to be dangerous, just keep people’s heads down while they line up the next grenade or rocket.” He saw their expressions and continued. “Same strategy they’ve been using all over the city. The average troops are too dangerous to ignore, and it lets them set up strikes for tinker weapons.”

Clockblocker nodded, then looked around. Some of the Guardsmen had advanced and were leading the last of the civilians out of the area. He turned to Vista. “Plaza’s clear. You ready?”

Before Glory Girl could ask what they were talking about the tiny cape took a deep breath and let it out. The entire square seemed to expand and contract with her breathing. The girl smiled and turned towards Dennis. “Ready.”

He nodded then turned to Chris and Vicky. “We’ve got a rush planned, it should let us clear the ground floor, but the upper level could be a problem. Can you manage that?”

Kid Win angled his screen towards the shopping center. The image turned blue with three human shaped red-orange blobs standing out prominently. “I can handle the ones on the second floor. Glory Girl, can you handle the roof?”

She looked at the image and nodded. “Looks like he’s prone, set up on the edge. Can probably hit him from the back and he’ll never see me coming.”

“Right.” Clockblocker poked at one of the animated clocks on the arm of his costume. “Best if we coordinate the hit. Ninety seconds to get in position, then we move.”

Vicky blinked. “Wait, those are clocks? Actual clocks? Like, you can keep time on them?”

He shrugged. “It a design idea from when I started. Idea was to help me track how long something was frozen, back before we confirmed it was completely random.” As if to drive home the point one section of barrier unfroze, turning from a completely impervious object to a thin sheet of plastic flapping in the wind.

She just shook her head and quickly accessed the timer feature on her phone. “Fine, ninety seconds?”

“Mark.” Dennis said professionally. Vicky took to the air, falling back from the square and looping around once out of sight. She still couldn’t get used to seeing Dennis like that. It should be comforting to know he was taking his responsibilities seriously, but that wasn’t what was sticking with her. Seeing the shift from irreverent joker to solemn leader, more than anything else, drove the severity of the situation straight home.

She knew how bad things were. Her family, her team, would never be the same. The city was scared and exhausted. Entire buildings, landmarks, were just gone. There had been rioting, fires, and unprecedented destruction. She knew there would be consequences to it, changes, but it didn’t really sink in how bad it was until she saw Dennis. Dennis was taking this seriously. Dennis, who joked around after the time the Wards had driven off Lung, Dennis who had still had hints of humor when traumatized by Khepri after the bank battle, Dennis was different. Things were serious enough that Dennis wasn’t making jokes, and that frightened her a little bit.

Maybe it was temporary. Maybe when he could hand things over to Weld or when Dean was back then Dennis would revert to being the goofy cape with the joke name. But it wouldn’t be the same. You couldn’t see someone take on responsibility, step up like that, and then pretend they were just a goofball. She knew what he could handle when he needed to, and so did the PRT. They would probably never let him sink back to his former level. It was one thing to see the city change, it was another to see it happen to your friends.

Somehow it made her want to make sure she could live up to his example. She never would have thought of Clockblocker as the inspiring type, but with what he was doing, what he was taking on, at the very least she wanted to make sure she wasn’t the weak link in his plan.

She had circled around behind the block and was approaching the rooftop from behind. Above and behind, she remembered that from her Aunt Sarah. Lady Photon had needed to handle her flight training, usually along with Crystal and Eric. Dogfighting principles didn’t precisely apply to aerial combat between capes, but some of the principles were still useful. She slowed, holding position until her phone buzzed.

She was confident she was too far away for the man to hear the sound of her phone vibrating, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She dove forward, actually aiming for the lip of the roof rather than the man lying on it. Concrete crumbled under her blow, leaving the amateur sniper without a stable perch. She turned to grab him and dragged the man down to the ground of the plaza.

On her way she saw Kid Win launch into the air with a pistol in each hand. At the peak of his jump bursts of electricity launched from each weapon, striking positions on the second story of one of the shops. She continued down, watching the ground between the three remaining capes warp like an old TV set as suddenly Clockblocker was right on top of the ABB’s defensive position. Any he couldn’t immediately tag were sent flying his way by the push from Browbeat.

The entire operation took less than five seconds, and that included the time needed to check her phone. Kid Win did another scan before Clockblocker called in the National Guard forces to secure the ABB and their weapons.

And like that, the fight was over. At least this time Vicky felt like she had accomplished something, rather than being massively upstaged at the last minute. She found a seat on the side of the plaza while the guardsmen went about their duties, and then Missy found her.

“Thanks for your help.” The younger cape said as she settled in next to her. The girl was trying to play things cool, but Vicky could see signs of exhaustion on her. Probably an adrenaline crash, but it might just be the effects of the conflict. She knew how quickly even a short fight could burn you out, and Missy didn’t have the brute powers Vicky could rely on.

“I think you had things handled well enough.” She complimented. “That was really impressive work out there.”

Vista nodded. “When he’s not being insufferable Clock is actually decent to work with, and our powers work well together.”

Vicky grinned. “Time and space?” The younger girl froze, and seemed to realize the implications for the first time.

“No.” She whispered.

Vicky looked out at the crowd being held back by the guardsmen, and the large number of civilians who had seen Vista and Clockblocker working together. “What do you think they’ll call it? Continuum?”

“Please God, no.” Vista sank her head and Vicky placed a hand on her back.

“Don’t worry, they won’t take things too far. And it WAS really impressive.” The girl perked up slightly at that. Vicky cleared her throat and gestured towards the guardsmen. “So, do you know what’s next? I’m good sticking around to help, but I’m still not sure what the end goal is. You heard anything official?”

“Not yet. We’ll probably get new orders once intelligence is confirmed.” Missy’s face turned sour. “Kid told me about the scan data. They’re probably going to use that to set our deployment.”

It sounded like the girl desperately wanted to find some flaw with Apeiron’s actions, but couldn’t place one at the moment, so was settling for a regular sour mood.

“Any idea how long that’ll take?” She asked.

Missy shrugged. “Hopefully long enough for Clockblocker and Browbeat to finish.”

“Finish what?” She asked, and then saw the medical equipment being moved in. Missy’s stories from Saturday night jumped out at her. “No. Here? Seriously?”

The girl shrugged. “Kid said it looks like the same design, or close enough. Any changes were made to counter Apeiron’s technique, not Clockblocker’s. No way of telling if we’ll get another chance, or if Bakuda will try something with captured conscripts, so they’re moving now.”

She looked at the pair of capes. Dennis was as stoic as she had ever seen him, but Browbeat looked like he might pass out at any moment. “Can they handle that?”

Vista nodded. “Browbeat’s been recognized as a trauma responder, only class two, but they’ve had him doing medical training since Saturday night. He’s got nothing on Amy, but apparently he can do patchwork and rough surgery. Good enough to stop bleeding without infection, and that’s like ninety percent of this kind of thing.”

The mention of her sister banished the last of the combat high that had been floating in Vicky’s system. Missy picked up on her reaction immediately and leaned in.

“Um, how are things going? Did your uncle know anything about it?”

She shook her head slowly. “They’re still testing things. There’s something there, but he’s pretty sure it’s not Apeiron.” She paused when she saw Missy’s expression. “At least not directly. They’ve taken her somewhere else, observation or something. Did you know she was moved out of the tank?”

The younger girl shook her head. “They keep stuff about Master-Stranger protocols wrapped up pretty tight. But if she’s out that’s probably a good sign.”

Vicky let out a long breath. “Maybe. Whatever my mom’s been dealing with, it’s not about Amy.” She paused. “Or New Wave. There’s something else going on, I don’t know what it is, but Mom’s been putting it ahead of everything else and I can’t figure out why and it’s driving me crazy.”

Missy nodded slowly. “I get it. Not directly, but I get where you’re coming from.” The admission seemed difficult for the girl, and she turned back to the medical tent. “With everything happening I really wish we had New Wave to fall back on. Don’t think I realized how much of a safety net you were. Not just Amy, everyone in the team.”

Vicky slumped. “Not sure if there’s going to be a team for long. Not sure if we even count as one now. Mom hasn’t touched her costume in over a week, Dad’s practically a solo cape, Aunt Sarah is a mess, and I don’t know what’s happening with Uncle Neil. It’s like the only stable person is Uncle Mike, and I’m the only one talking to him.” She glanced at her phone. “Actually had to sneak out for that. Mom wanted me to stay in until whatever she’s working on is over.”

Vista looked at the assembled guardsmen and shattered plaza. “Given the situation I think she’ll understand your decision to help out.”

She smiled slightly and the two girls sat awkwardly, watching as forced gang members were taken into a rapidly assembled medical tent one after another. She was legitimately impressed with the pace, barely a minute per subject, each one leaving with a white scar on their face and an expression of desperate relief.

Vicky felt a sense of pride at that, despite having nothing to do with the process in question. Just the fact that the city’s heroes could make a difference like this, could actually save some of Bakuda’s victims, it was like they had taken back some ground. They weren’t completely irrelevant. Sure, they weren’t doing painless assembly line surgery while also healing every ailment the patient had ever experienced, but they were pulling people out from under Bakuda’s control. That counted for something.

The work continued as Chris made his way towards them, a concerned expression on his face.

“Something wrong?” She asked in her best attempt at a level tone.

“Not with the surgery.” He glanced back. “Browbeat’s like a machine. Think it’s because he wants it over as quickly as possible but also is terrified of making a mistake. He’s kind of in the zone. They got a whole system going.” He sighed. “Wish I could get a look at those bombs, but they’re too dangerous. Clockblocker’s got them wrapped in six layers of time-frozen plastic as soon as they’re out, and they’ll be sealing off the area in case there’s anything poisonous, or something that can spread.”

“So, what’s the problem?” Vista asked. In response Chris pulled up his Apeiron-knockoff display screen again.

“Apeiron’s stopped hitting ABB attack teams. Pattern shifted, and there were a couple more strikes, but then it’s stopped.” He explained.

“Maybe he’s given up?” Vista suggested, and looked at the map. “Or maybe one of the bombs took him out?”

The girl made a commendable attempt to hide how excited she was about that prospect, but Chris shook his head. A glance from him at Vicky expressed a mirror of everything she’d been experiencing with respect to Vista’s fanaticism on this topic.

“Not likely. Last three strikes were in a straight line, heading to a container yead north of the boardwalk.” Vicky instinctively glanced in that direction, despite it being concealed from their current location. “Also, I think I’ve figured out what he was doing with the random strikes.”

Missy and Vicky sat by as Chris walked them through a complicated set of visual data from Apeiron’s map. Finally, a new set of icons appeared, specifically highlighting interactions between different ABB attacks.

“Wait,” Vicky exclaimed, “They’re building on each other?”

Chris nodded. “Combined bomb effects. A lot worse than any individual hit, and you know how bad those are. Apeiron was breaking sequences that would have merged the impacts of multiple strikes. He got most of them, but now that he’s stopped some of them are combining. There’s some kind of poisonous fire towards Downtown, and an allotrope of ice is spreading through the water mains in the South Docks. Probably more that haven’t been nailed down.”

“How bad is this going to get?” Vicky glanced up to see Clockblocker walking towards them, a queasy looking Browbeat trailing unsteadily behind him.

“No way to know.” Chris admitted. “Did you get all the conscripts?”

Dennis nodded. “They were talking about sending us to the sites where other forced recruits have been captured, get as many of them cleared as possible.” Browbeat looked over the spread of green dots on the map indicating such sites and looked like he might pass out. “But if this stuff is going to combine like you said they might need all hands-on-deck to counter it.”

“Maybe.” Chris admitted. “I guess that depends on why Apeiron left the fight.” He pointed at the line he had traced from the three points. “Any idea what could be happening here?”

“Container yard?” Clockblocker shrugged and turned to Vista and Glory Girl. Vicky didn’t have anything to offer, and Missy was in the same boat, but seemed happy to be consulted. Dennis shook his head. “I’ll have to call in, and check with the CO for the Guard to…”

Chris made a frantic gesture, but Vicky didn’t need to guess what it was about. Not with the tone coming from her phone.

Uber and Leet had a new video. The odds that they were premiering their ‘out of city’ job during the conflict, barely half an hour after Bakuda’s broadcast, wasn’t even worth considering. It was the ABB. They had something they wanted to show.

Around them they could see members of the crowd and even some soldiers get the same alert. The sense of dread in the air was tangible, and Chris was looking to Dennis for permission to open the broadcast.

“Not out here.” He whispered. “We don’t need the public filming a Wards React video. Not with what could be in that broadcast.”

Missy stood up and nodded. With a gesture space warped and the five of them found themselves a step away from the roof of the shopping center. Dennis gave her a nod of thanks as they crossed the compressed distance and the girl returned space to its normal configuration.

With a sigh Dennis nodded to Kid Win and the tinker made some adjustments. The screen expanded to its largest size and the broadcast began.

At first it was just a black screen with a ‘incoming broadcast’ message, the same one Uber and Leet always used. There was the faintest hope that it might be a false alarm. That died immediately, not because of what was on the screen, but because of the echo of thunder that rolled through the city.

It sounded like a dozen blasts fighting to be heard over each other. The roof beneath them shook like an earthquake had hit the city. Flares of light shot up from the direction of the suspected container year, then seemed to spread deeper into the city.

“What the hell was…” Dennis started, but before he could finish his sentence the video sprang to life.

The scene displayed was over so quickly that she could barely recognize what had happened. But it was repeated from another angle, and another, at least four shots of the same event played on a loop and then slowed down, finally letting things fall into place

Apeiron, launching through the air, striking a clone of Oni Lee, but impossibly recovering from a spin out. Truly impossibly, like something out of a cartoon. And then he was swarmed. At full speed it was like a mass of Oni Lee clones suddenly appeared around him. Slowed down you could tell what was happening, at least if you were familiar with how the assassin cape fought.

One clone would appear, and another immediately followed. Well, that would be the original, popping in within the first copy’s sightlines, but angled differently. Reversed in position, so that he could immediately move again, changing position, and so on. The rate at which he copied was insane. It was a maneuver that must have taken intense practice and timing. The cape would have to have known his next three destinations before he began his first teleport.

The result was the most deadly suicide attack she had ever seen, or could ever imagine. The entire mass went up in a cloud of bluish-purple light, which was immediately overwhelmed by a roar of every kind of energy Vicky could imagine, streaming out of the cluster like Legend had decided to open up with everything he was capable of.

“What…” She gaped. “Was that some Bakuda bomb? Did she get Apeiron with one… with, like, fifty of her blasts?”

“Not Bakuda.” Clockblocker said confidently. “At least not at first. That blast? It was March’s power.”

Vicky felt her gut’s wrench and remembered the tinker’s reaction to the rabbit cape during the last broadcast. “I know it’s supposed to be strong…”

“It brought down my time stop.” He said harshly. “That’s never happened. It’s not supposed to be possible, but she did it. She was confident she could do it.” He gestured to where the attack was repeating again. “If anything in the city would work against Apeiron, it’s that power, and I think March knew it.”

“Do you think he’s dead?” Vista asked. Her voice had a complicated emotion to it. Vicky couldn’t tell if she was hopeful, upset, or disappointed. Or maybe the girl just didn’t know how to feel.

“I don’t know.” Vicky admitted as the broadcast changed. The new shot was like a container yard from hell. She could see the signs of a horrible battle, and that wasn’t getting into the building walls of elemental energy stretching out from where she guessed the previous attack had taken place. The obviously handheld camera began to move forward, with the video cutting out to scenes of other attacks. Strikes on one of Apeiron’s robots and various crystal drones. Not as closely shot, but there was the same effect at play. Oni Lee appeared in an instant, followed by that purple-blue explosion that left ruin in its wake.

The video cut back suddenly, showing the camera advance on a broken form spread on the ground. Really spread, in an almost artistic pose. It was as beautiful a position as a broken body could appear.

Broken was probably too generous a word. The young capes stopped breathing as Apeiron came into view. Shattered would probably better describe the cape. His costume was a tattered wreck, his limbs were splintered, and he had suffered horrible injuries across his torso. Miraculously, his chest and head were mostly undamaged, though his visor was half gone and his mask was shredded. If it wasn’t for the fact that he clearly was in horrible pain she would have assumed he was already dead.

“Jesus,” Muttered Browbeat. Vicky was immediately grateful for Dennis’s foresight in moving the team out of the public eye.

Dennis’s foresight. Dennis. Foresight. The words made sense individually, but just didn’t seem to fit when you put them together.

“How is he still alive?” Chris asked the world in general. It was something Vicky couldn’t answer. She wouldn’t have liked the man’s chances if Amy had been standing right next to him. Just from the scale of the wounds she would guess he had minutes of life. Maybe seconds.

The video cut to another shot, showing a roaring wall of flame. It was one of the discharges from when Apeiron had been attacked. On reflection she doubted it was one of Bakuda’s devices. “Is that, all that stuff, it that from when he got hit? When his equipment was damaged?”

“Nobody knows what he uses to power his technology.” Chris admitted. “Most of it doesn’t make sense, and apparently he has low maintenance fusion technology on top of God knows what else.” The boy gestured to the screen floating above his wrist. “You blow apart any power source, it’s going to get messy. Hit the kind of thing Apeiron uses and…”

“Yeah.” Dennis replied dryly. “Does that thing, I guess all those things, extend as far as it looks like they do? Because that could get… messy.”

Vicky glanced up. “I could head up, try to get a look at…” Her suggestion died when the wall of flame parted.

Striding through the fire, ten feet tall and bristling with silver scales, was Lung. The leader of the ABB. The Dragon of Kyushu. The lynchpin of the current crisis. It was almost funny. Last Monday New Wave had been meeting to discuss the implications of Lung’s capture, how the removal of a major power from the city’s cape scene would impact things, and how they would deal with the aftermath. Now the man stood there, in shining glory, leading a team that just struck down perhaps the most promising tinker since Hero.

Lung was fully covered with scales. She had encountered him often enough to know what then meant. He had been fighting. He had found another warm up match, just like he did on Tuesday night, when he moved from one conflict to another until he reached the point where they just had to step back and let him destroy as much of the city as he wanted.

Then she saw how he had been able to ramp up. What Lung was dragging behind him. The crumbled white and gold form, stained with blood. As the dragon-man moved forward he tossed the body aside like a piece of trash. Vicky was speechless. They all were. Finally, Vista managed to get out a single word.

“Rory.” Her voice was empty and wispy, but everyone was hit the same way at the sight of the former ward leader’s crumpled form. Even Browbeat, who joined after Triumph left the team, was stunned.

“Is he…” Chris swallowed and looked at them hopefully.

It was Dennis who stepped forward. “He’s moving.” Really he was twitching, and possibly moaning, but technically that was true. “Rory has a healing power. If he’s not dead he’ll pull through.” His voice sounded like he was trying to use a drop of confidence to cover a small ocean of fear and apprehension. Still, she appreciated the effort. They all did.

She knew his healing factor wasn’t that good. Plenty of times he’d been patched up by Amy instead of waiting for his injuries to manage themselves. Plus, there were hundreds of ways complications could happen, and that was assuming the ABB actually left him alive or let him go.

None of that would have helped right now. Instead, she focused on the sneering maw of Lung’s transformed face as he approached the prone and broken tinker. The broadcast actually switched between cameras, cutting from Lung’s approach to Apeiron’s shattered body, then to a close up on Lung.

The camera on Apeiron was shifting angles, but despite the injuries, the blood, the destroyed clothing, the tinker still managed to look good. It had to be some kind of appearance power working in the background. Nobody should ever look that dignified in a condition where none of their limbs were bending the right way and they had massive open wounds in their torso.

“So…” Lung began in a coarse, growling voice. “The mighty, fallen. Upstarts, ignorant children who think they can challenge Lung, that they know the meaning of power. They all learn. All that have tried to oppose me have paid for their insolence. One more link in a chain of failure.”

Vicky realized that may have been the longest she’d ever heard Lung speak. At least the longest in terms of full sentences, not growled insults said between flurries of fireballs. Had Lung ever spoken publicly? There was limited footage of his fights, just because the ramp up effect made them either too short to film, or too dangerous to approach. This may be the best look the world had ever gotten at the man, and it was terrifying.

Not terrifying like Apeiron had been, where he radiated menace by looking down slightly and shifting his stance so that you were suddenly wondering when he would unleash the apocalypse brewing in his eyes. Terrifying in the promise of violence, the certainty behind his actions and character. Lung wasn’t complicated, but that didn’t mean he was simple. It was a direct form of terror. Lung was feared because of what he had done and what he would do.

The man was strong enough to make sure anyone who crossed him would pay, no matter how much damage happened as a result. Even a tinker as incredible as Apeiron had failed to counter him. It was clear, this wasn’t a power play, or an assassination. Lung was making a point.

A single scaled hand gestured to the side and a bank of fog, also thrown off by the attack on Apeiron, parted revealing a tiny woman in a familiar outfit. Familiar except for two details. The giant sword being carried before her, and the black hood over her head, with holes cut for each of her rabbit ears to poke through.

A shiver went through the group. It should have been obvious, and really she didn’t know what else she should have expected, but seeing it displayed so blatantly, so crassly, she didn’t know how to process what she was seeing.

“It’s an execution.” Missy’s voice sounded empty.

They stood in silence, watching the cape saunter happily forward, swinging the giant ornate blade back and forth. The camera followed her approach, showing the purple-blue trails left by the blade as the tip swung through the ground. Trails that sparked like little lines of gunpowder before popping just as she stepped over them.

“Striker power.” Dennis said robotically. “It can counter my time stop. The blasts can injure Apeiron. A direct hit…” He trailed off, and the tension in the group rose another octave.

Vicky glanced towards the north end of the boardwalk. If she launched herself right now, and moved at her top speed she could get there… just in time to see Apeiron die. And then face a ramped-up Lung. And March, the cape who everyone underestimated terribly. Oh, and Oni Lee was there too. So just her against the combined cape forces of the ABB, possibly save Bakuda, but with her technology in play regardless.

Even if she could somehow carry everyone here, could they get there in time? Could they make a difference? Could they do anything but watch the man die?

She hated it. She hated the powerlessness of her situation. She hated how BAD everything had gotten. People were supposed to be in charge to make sure things like this didn’t happen, that it didn’t get this bad. Except everyone ‘in charge’ had been tripping over their own mistakes and reacting to everyone else’s. Now where were they? The city was being torn apart, slave soldiers were fighting in the street, and the only man who had made a difference was bleeding out and waiting to be executed.

That’s what she hated the most. That dark monkey’s paw wish tracing back to moments of frustration and selfishness. If she had been told a week ago that the tinker who equipped the Undersiders would die in a fight with the ABB would she have felt any remorse?

Maybe, if a camera was on her at the time. Along with some cheesy statement about evil meeting evil ends, and the tragedy of it, all while singing inside her heart that the world had proven her right. That the people she was angry with were bad people, of course, because why else would she be angry with them?

A week ago, she would have silently cheered his death, and the certainty of that disgusted her.

A giggle drew her attention back to the screen. March was approaching Apeiron, or what was left of Apeiron, and laughing in a disturbingly innocent manner.

“So here we are. Little dominos, all falling down.”

The tinker coughed in response, and something wet, stringy, and bright red leaked down his chin, much to March’s amusement. There was a crackling sound and a flash of sickly green light.

Reactions rippled through the capes, causing Lung to tense, Oni Lee to flinch, Triumph writhed and vomited, and March, in direct contrast, sighed and seemed to sink into the effect.

“Like at the storage yard.” Chris said. “Capes react to his damaged technology.”

“But why?” Vista asked. “And why isn’t it affecting him?” The boy could only shrug as March leaned over the brutally injured tinker.

“Re-markable.” Her voice was like a song. “You really did it. You saw it as well.” Vicky’s mind jumped back to the earlier broadcast, things only they knew. Warning lights were flashing in her head, and she could see the Wards putting the pieces together for themselves.

The ABB thinker leaned in and started to whisper something. It was too low to hear clearly. Vicky could only pull a few words, “Curtain”, “Finish line”, Stepping stone”.

“Did anyone get that?” She asked hopefully.

“It’s still on the broadcast, but it's really faint.” Kid Win offered. “Might be able to reconstruct it from the audio, but…”

“Oh,” March spoke up suddenly, “Is that regret? Disappointment? Someone didn’t grab the brass ring when they had the chance and now it’s slipping away.” The thinker looked back as the discharge happened again. Actually, slightly before the discharge happened, and once again seemed to relish the experience. In the background Triumph flailed so hard she was seriously concerned for him. Nobody that injured should move in that way. Really, nobody fully healthy should move in that way.

Before anyone could comment March spoke again. “Did you even know what you had, or was it buried under all that other technology? So many new ideas that you let the best one pass you by.”

The tinker coughed in response, once again managing to look dignified and somehow poetic as he did so. It was almost enough to distract from the terror of March’s words.

“Uh, does anyone have any idea what that was about?” Clockblocker’s question was met with blank expressions, except for the slightest twitch from Kid Win.

In this situation it was enough to get everyone laser-focused on him and Apeiron continued to writhe artfully on the screen.

“Okay, this is just a theory, right?” Dennis nodded to the younger cape and he continued. “Right. Uh, there are a lot of theories about how Apeiron’s specialty works, how he can build so fast, and so much. Some of them are pretty out there, but one idea was he tinkers… with powers.”

“What?” Vicky asked, then realized she had been part of a chorus composed of most of the group.

Chris rubbed his neck and awkwardly continued. “Like, his technology, or his specialization, is about modifying or emulating powers.” He gestured to the screen. “That’s why his broken tech affects capes, because it’s reacting with their powers somehow.”

“But what does that mean? And if it’s true, what does March have to do with it?” Dennis asked.

Chris turned back to the floating screen as March leaned down over Apeiron. “Probably nothing good.”

She was whispering again, something about doors and eternity. Right, just what you wanted to hear from people who were potentially messing with powers. Suddenly March reached towards the tinker.

“Oh, one last thing before the last thing. I promised Bakuda I’d give you a present, especially from her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to get her toys ready before you decided to send that inconsiderate houseguest of a robot, so this will have to do.”

The entire group, even Missy, flinched when March extended a finger towards Apeiron’s face. “Now, don’t flinch, or we’ll miss the big finish.”

The tip of her glove started on the man’s forehead and traced down, followed by an obscene closeup by whoever was holding the camera. It left a shimmering, watermark-like trail as it moved down his face, over a blood-filled eye, and finishing mid-cheek.

Then it started to spark.

Apeiron held rigidly still through the whole process, even as the spark passed over his eye. When it reached the end of the shimmering trail the entire line exploded with enough force to send the man’s head slamming back and bouncing against the ground.

Where the trail had been there was now a bloody chasm in his face. Incredibly he was still alive, but with one eye destroyed and the other behind a shattered lens he was helpless and blind to what was happening around him. It was about the most frightening thing she could imagine.

Then she heard Lung speak.

“Enough. Finish it.”

She tensed, and saw the reaction mirrored by everyone in the group. Frantically she glanced from the screen to the direction of the container yard. There had been enough posturing, showmanship, and gloating, that if she HAD left at the start she would have arrived in time to do… something. Anything. Anything but stand by helplessly as March hefted the giant, ornate blade for a final strike.

The scene was getting darker, shadows stretching ominously from storage crates. March prepared the swing and looked to Lung, just as the last rays of sunlight were vanishing.

March had some kind of timing power. She used it to bring down an electrical grid over multiple states. She used it to make Uber and Leet viable threats once more. She used it to coordinate a strike against the strongest tinker in a generation. And apparently she was using it so that when the sun went down on the scene it would also go down for Apeiron. Permanently.

They stood, watching in disbelief. Nobody had breathed since the spectacle began. How many people was this reaching? How many were going to watch Apeiron die?

Lung posed like a Roman Emperor and lifted an arm. In a single dramatic sweep, he dropped it, signaling March. The Rabbit cape turned back to the prone and bloody tinker, tightened her grip, and began to swing.

The world fell into shadow around them.

And then everything went red.

A particular shade of red. The red that had snaked over Apeiron’s body when he fought Uber and Leet. The red that had danced between buildings as Apeiron had worked to shut down Bakuda’s attacks. The red that, somehow, had enough physical presence to bodily push March back, away from the tinker’s body.

Whoever was handling the camera was struggling to keep it on Apeiron through the force of the crimson light pouring out of him. It was so bright it was actually hard to see the Apeiron beneath the red glow.

The force of the… whatever it was actually began to lift the man’s broken body off the ground. He was still moving, struggling, and managed to get his feet under him. A massive burst levered him forward, leaving him slumped into a forward hunch.

The overwhelming energy passed, or condensed, or something, finally letting the camera focus on the form that was somehow standing despite being broken beyond belief. Vicky had to steel herself against the sight of it, and Missy actually took a step back from the screen.

She had thought Apeiron’s wounded form was the most severe thing she could imagine. She was badly mistaken. The man stood on broken legs. Legs held together by the binding of red fibers that writhed and twisted from his open wounds. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, glowing like the gates of hell and moving independent of any direction.

They wrapped around the tinker's broken limbs, pulling them back into shape. She could see them dip in and out of broken skin, moving inside open wounds. It looked like the most painful thing she could imagine. She didn’t know what she was looking at, how something like this could exist.

And then she heard the laugh. A wet, panting sound that coursed through his entire body. The fibers pulsed in tune with it, flaring and dimming with each unsettling chuckle, casting harsh shadows over the assembled ABB forces.

Then he spoke.

She wouldn’t have thought there was enough of his lungs left to breathe, much less form words, but she was wrong. In a deep, pained, but somehow amused voice Apeiron called out.

“Proto… Aima….”

The words almost sounded like gibberish, but it dredged something up from the depths of her mind. The courses she took at the university, mostly parahuman studies, but sometimes she got snippets of exposure, random discussions from people who wanted to show off the focus of their studies to the visiting cape. One was about Greek, Ancient Greek. How the pronunciation had changed. Single and double consonants, short and long vowels and word accents.

They were all there. Perfectly there, even spoken through pain and a broken body being assaulted but nightmares. Spoken as naturally as she had ever heard it. Which meant, in modern Greek, that would be…

“What did he say?” Browbeat asked meekly, glancing around in concern.

“Proto Aima.” Vicky replied. “Greek for first blood.”

There was a wave of doubt and concern that spread through the group like an electric current. “That’s not what he said.” Chris countered, playing back the disturbing line.

“He said it in Ancient Greek.” They looked at her questioningly. “Perfect Ancient Greek pronunciation, as far as I can tell. I have no idea why…”

“Apeiron is a Greek word.” Browbeat offered, like that explained anything.

“Yeah,” Missy spoke up, and swallowed nervously before continuing. “But ‘First Blood’? In another language? What does that mean?”

On the screen March raised the giant sword towards Apeiron’s twisted form. Despite the insane state of his body, he was still somehow carrying himself with a level of certainty. It was insane; he looked like he was held together with… she really didn’t want to think about the word string right now, but somehow managed that same level of striking appearance he had before. Striking for a very different reason, but still striking.

“You…”

March’s words died as Apeiron snapped upright, then too far back. Slowly he pulled his head forward, revealing the massive gash in his face where his right eye used to be. Only now, instead of a bloody mess, it was zig-zagged by those red fibers, seemingly working to pull the fissure closed. All across his body she could see the… things… at work. Pulsing in and out of skin, holding wounds together like burning surgical stitches, or flailing in the air around him, seemingly looking for anything to connect to.

Even through the video screen Vicky could practically feel the rage radiating off him. The tattered costume, once immaculate, now looked like something from a post-apocalyptic or barbarian movie. Red fibers interwove with the shredded clothes giving the man an even more severe look. There was a sense of coiled power, or danger waiting to be unleashed.

Blind, bloody, unarmed, injured, and thirty feet from Lung, and Apeiron came across as the most dangerous thing in the city, if not the planet. She didn’t know what she should expect.

Then March adjusted the grip on her sword and Vicky found out. Apeiron vanished, leaving a furrow in the ground behind him. Suddenly he was standing in front of, over March, holding the wrist of her sword arm in a crushing grip. The ground beneath them exploded on his arrival, breaking the thinker’s footing and leaving her dangling from the arm of the taller cape.

March started to scream, and Vicky saw the reason. Red fibers, flailing loose from some closing wound on Apeiron’s arm, had wrapped around March’s wrist. The fibers, the same fibers snaking inside the tinker’s body, were flaring with light as they BURNED through the girl’s costume and did God knows what to the skin underneath.

The rabbit cape flailed in his grip while shrieking in pain. Desperately she tried to strike out against the larger cape. Before any blow could begin, much less land, the tinker pulled his free arm across his body and, almost contemptuously, backhanded the other cape.

The apparently casual blow struck with enough force to tear the girl out of his hand. The sword went flying off in a separate direction from the thinker, who bounced along the concrete before impacting a shipping container near the crashed robot. There was a bloody smear on the tinker's left hand, the result of March being torn from his grip by the force of a simple backhand.

With barely an instant to let the event sink in, Apeiron launched forward again, landing a shattering punch directly into the leader of the ABB. Shattering, as in scales shattered from the impact. Unlike the previous backhand this had his full power behind it, and the results showed. Lung shot back like a cannonball, crashing into a wall of containers, ploughing through the first and causing the rest to collapse around him.

For a second there was a surge of hope. Confused hope, but hope. Even Missy seemed happy to see fortunes turn around, but that may just have been from the point of view of villains fighting villains. There was hope. Apeiron was doing the impossible. Blind, injured and half mad, he was fighting. He could win.

And then he screamed.

Apeiron hadn’t screamed when Oni Lee’s ambush took him. He hadn’t screamed when March split his face. He hadn’t screamed when his body became held together by a nightmare of burning threads. But he was screaming now.

He dropped to a knee and cried out in a voice that shook Vicky to her core. The sound had an almost physical presence. They could see the containers shake around him. Specifically, they didn’t need to question if the broadcast was live, not here. Not when they could practically feel the sound emanating from the north boardwalk.

“What the…” Chris started, then fell silent as he realized what he was looking at. It started as a jagged yellow line on the man’s exposed flesh, then more colors joined it, different shapes, different tones, but all bright. Burning with energy, and snaking across any exposed flesh they could see. The energy bleeding off almost took on a tangible form, smoking, sparking, flowing, even seeming to merge with the ground.

Victoria took a step back. They were three levels past the impossible now. This was beyond her earlier helplessness, this was insanity. Apeiron didn’t just break the rules, he was playing an entirely different game. They were watching an unknown force apparently consume the tinker, a different unknown force than the last one that had shown up, all while the ABB was still active and their friend was lying nearby injured.

Apeiron shifted his body and Victoria decided she was done. She would take this one thing at a time. Apeiron was supposed to be boundless, or infinite or whatever, and that was fine. She watched the man stretch a clawed hand into the air and decided then, nothing he could do would surprise her any more.

“TRAUMA!”


End file.
